Up at the crack of about 10am, turning into a pair of sleepy babies. Packed everything up quickly, then out the door to go around the corner to see if there are any other DVDs we want to grab.
The cool DVD shop was closed, sadly, so we decided to try and grab a quick breakfast/lunch at Shinta’s Warung, it was about 11.40am, and our transfer was arriving at noon, so we were cutting it close regardless, and when my meal arrived at about 12:05pm, I scoffed it down real quick, jupmed up to pay, and just as I walked out, Claire appeared with a van and our bags, perfect.
Off to Nusa Dua we go, looking forward to a still more luxurious hotel, but not looking forward to being so much further from the action of Kuta & Legian.
The new hotel is simply amazing, we’re now staying at the Coralia Benoa on Jalan Pratama Tanjung Benoa, it’s a huge place, with 3 huge wonderful pools, a large private beach frontage, and spectacular rooms.
There was a bit of a hiccup when we arrived, with the people who should have been checked out of our room hours earlier still not having left, filthy bastards, the staff seemed quite embarassed about this, and lubricated the situation by giving us some free drinks, this worked out just fine, and gave me a chance to lounge in their bar and catch up on my journal.
The buildings here are amazing, huge wooden structures with a complex lattice work of wooden beams, and what appear to be traditional thatched roofs, it really looks like quite a feat of engineering.
A large group of Europeans arrived, and I thought they were German (it sounded like they were speaking German, at least), anyway, I made a stupid joke about American’s to Claire and she looked at me funny, I said "we’ll, I’m sure the German’s agree with me", it turned out they were Danish. Oops. Hope none of them heard me.
After settling into our room, with it’s gigantic bed, we took the hotel’s shuttle in Nusa Due to have a look at the Galleria and such, pretty big western style outdoor shopping arcade, had a look around, but there wasn’t really anything there for us, had some icecreams at a Baskin Robbins, then caught a lift up to Legian, where we were dropped off right next to Nero Cafe, so after briefly browsing through an amazing shop full of silk sarongs and beautful turned bamboo bowls (lacquered in extremely rich reds, pinks and blues) we headed to Nero’s.
It really is a great place, we started with tapas, some tuna things, shrimp things and some sort of parmesany salad, and some other thing which escapes me for the moment. She had a frozen redbull & vodka, and I had a rather expensive but extremely wonderful champagne cocktail called a Diamond Fizz. Our mains arrived, Claire had ordered a spaghetti carbonara, one of her favourite dishes, and one which she has probably never managed to finish, I got mixed kebabs, which were, as you’d expect, really, really good. It was time for another cocktail, so she had a frozen Bacardi honey & lemon, and I had a frozen Bacardi orange, again, very good – mine tasted just like an orange Fruju.
Time for dessert, but Claire wants nothing more than a shot of non-Balinese espresso, so I opted for a cognac (Hennesy VSOP) and a big fat bastard of a cigar.
We had a different waitress this time, Lani, and as we moved to leave she got us a couple of complementary cocktails (some sort of orange things).
Before hailing a ride all the way back to the hotel, we checked out a DVD shop, I swear I didn’t get any, honest. And if anyone asks, I certainly didn’t get 16 movies.
Back to our cool room and our huge bed for an excellent nights sleep.