Typical Mauritius Anniversary

This is my (Alex) First attempt at a post.  I am pretty sure I will be amazing at it but bear with me through the bumps.

After our daily very good and large breakfast we went dolphin watching. We were a little skeptical because we very Americanly didn’t know for sure there were a lot of dolphins but we were wrong, there are a lot and they are large. We also saw some snorkelers trying to snorkel with the dolphins but I was skeptical that they could actually swim, so that was entertaining to watch.

After that we got the suits on and laid around like professionals.  Kate was super stylish as usual. Of course We had to get drinks, I had some beer but Kate’s coconut drink photographs a little better.

               

                                        

Next we went out on the paddleboat because we could.  Out on the water we recited our love poems that we wrote to each other early that morning and then sang our wedding song together. Either that or took pictures of fish, I cant remember which.

  

Kate then got a lovely massage while I went for a run on the beach.  The run was very hard in the deep sand but I wanted to say that I did it and it was very beautiful.  Pre-dinner drinks were decent and 50% off which was good because drinks are definitely pricey.  Dinner was at a hotel restaurant.  it was an A for presentation but B- for goodness. I think we were just expecting more.  The Hilton Gave us a cake and champagne so we cant complain too much.

All in all a great day in island paradise.

 

I almost forgot, I got kate a bouquet of local flowers – it turned out really neat.

                                           

sunday part 2

i’m not wordpress savvy enough to figure out how to add two galleries to one post so here goes our second run-down on today.

 

i want to make sure we capture every day because i know i’ll forget about all the details if i wait to post until i get back.

 

and before we knew it, we were ready to go out skiing. i haven’t ski in near 20 years at summer camp and even though i told our guide this he proceeded to call me professional all day and did not give me any instruction. i was very, very nervous. alex was a good sport and was on the fence but decided he did want to go out. we want with a nice french couple that knew as much english as we knew spanish — nill.

alex tried so hard and got so close. i really thought he was going to get up. that’s ok, we’ll try again later in the week.

i got up the first time and i forgot about much it hurts my legs. i’m weak sauce!

but this is my favorite picture all week, thanks to alex being a fantastic photographer:

 

 

on the water

today we filled up on our buffet breakfast and spent the rest of the day by the water.

i had to get a picture of our breakfast — apparently i like my breakfast aussie style. and i LOVE crepes. they have a whole crepe station. heaven.

and here’s alex with his made to order smoothie

in the morning we took a glass bottom boat tour. we knew we were close to a coral reef but i didn’t realize how close and how amazing it was.

mauritiusly yours . . .

island greetings from mauritius.

it’s really hard to attach quick pictures or updates to let our folks know we made it so we’re resorting to the ‘ole blog. mom, tell mrs. b to check it out, too.

first, let’s get the bad out of the way. traveling to mauritius is not the easiest nor most pleasant experience. on the flight from atlanta to paris alex was able to sleep most of the flight. i had an aisle seat with a nice lady that must have had a very small bladder because she got up no less than 4 times. we relaxed in the air france lounge in paris for a few hours where i drank at least 5 bottles of evian and grabbed a few zzz’s. we found this guy just next to our gate. heaven.

 

then i slept through a good bit of the paris to mauritius leg while alex slept, watched 3 movies, and snacked. we landed around 7 am mauritus time (which is 8 hours ahead of EST) and felt pretty decent. customs was a breeze and thanks to mauritius rush hour we got to our hotel around 9:30. the level of service at the hilton is amazing — almost to the point where they’re so nice it’s awkward. instead of standing in line for check in we were greeted with a person attendant that brought us drinks while she did all the work.

and thank goodness for hilton upgrades, they gave us a ridiculous junior suite. i hopped in bed thinking i would take a quick rest and we ended up napping for 6 hours! i must have been tired because i slept through lunch. and i don’t miss meals.

we woke up just in time to see the sunset. our room is about 10 steps from the beach so we could lounge on our patio watching the view.

we were greeted by these delicious goodies as well. MACARONS!

we noshed on a thai buffet at our hotel and we learned our first lesson of the trip: mauritius = expensive. check. suspicions confirmed. we discovered lots of these little guys on our walk back.

we also learned our second lesson of the trip: mauritius does not = american. lots and lots of french speaking folks. almost everyone speaks english, so it doesn’t inhabit getting around.

 

today we had the most amazingly relaxing day on the beach. the hotel has lots of free water sports so we took out a paddle boat for about an hour and signed up for skiing and glass bottom boat tours tomorrow.

 

tonight for dinner we went off the resort to a little chinese restaurant. it was soooo good and i had my first (2) diet cokes of the trip.

we made it back to our hotel just in time to make a dancing show. it was pretty entertaining.