Our Day by Design

We found out on the Saturday that we had been put on the Male to London flight the next day, so we were able to enjoy our last full day in the sun before we packed and got ready to come home. Our flight wasn't too early on Sunday so we had time to enjoy our last breakfast and take some final photos of the island. We met the others also going on our flight at the jetty and while we waited we found someone to take our last island photo together. We were taken back to Male airport by speedboat and this time were made to wear our life jackets. Once we arrived at the airport we had to wait around a bit before we could check in. Once we had got rid of our cases we made our way up to the lounge which all Kuoni customers had access too. Here we enjoyed lots of food & drinks {no alcohol as there is none in the Maldives except on resorts} and used the internet to let everyone know we were on our way home. After a fairly long & uncomfortable flight, we arrived at Heathrow a bit la...

Once we had moved our luggage to our new villa, we had some lunch in the main bar. We also made a reservation for Aqua for dinner. The island was quiet so we probably could have just turned up but we wanted to make we didn't have to eat at the buffet again. At our water villa we were much closer to the restaurants so could walk there in only a few minutes. This time I tried the seafood risotto, which was delicious, and we joked that we might get to try a lot more of the menu, depending on how long we were going to be there! We ate once more at Aqua before we left, on what was our second last night, although we didn't know that at the time. I cant remember what we ate that night and I had obviously given up taking photos of our food by then! Breakfast was the same as the previous week we just had to walk round to the main restaurant, which didn't take long. We kept seeing the same people who were also stranded every morning, everyone with different tales about when they ma...

All of the Water Villas are situated beside the bigger Escape Water Villas {which was the villa type we should have had} at the opposite end of the island to our original residence, connected to the island by a short walkway. Aerial View (Image from here ) We stayed in villa no. 403 {which was actually the original villa we were assigned}, located near to the island end of the line of villas on the right hand side. Each villa is 109m² which is still probably bigger than our flat at home, and it was lovely, although it didn't quite match up to the luxury of our first week! The door led straight into the main living & sleeping area which was one large room. The massive bed looked out to the deck and infinity pool. At the back of the villa was the massive bathroom, complete with freestanding bathtub, indoor & outdoor showers. The bathroom could be open to the bedroom or could be closed over. Since the toilet and shower had their own separate cubicles, we usually left it open...

As you will all know, we were stranded in the Maldives because of the volcanic ash cloud , finally getting home 5 days later than planned. We didn't know anything about what was happening until the 15th of April, when we received a text from my mum saying their flight to London had been cancelled because of the ash and they were going to go on the overnight bus instead. We had never even bothered to switch on our TV until then so we had not heard any of the news reports. We watched it for a while as we heard from mum that the bus was fully booked and they were having a hire a car one way instead. We didn't think too much of it at the time and assumed it would all be over by the time we were going home, which was supposed to be on the next Tuesday the 20th. As the week went on were hearing more and more reports of all of the flight disruption and couldn't quite believe what was happening. On the Saturday, the travel counsellor we had booked our honeymoon through called us...

Our package at the resort only included bed & breakfast. We are not fans of eating the same thing in the same restaurant more than once so we opted out of the half board option which included a buffet meal in the main restaurant every night . Since we ended up having a buffet almost every night in Sri Lanka, we were so glad we had made that decision. The breakfast, served in the main restaurant, was a massive buffet spread with loads of different options whether you wanted fruit, bread, cereals or a full cooked breakfast. There were also two food stations where the chefs could make you an omelette or eggs on one and the other was for either pancakes or waffles, depending which day it was. I absolutely love pancakes so I had loads of them! After such a big breakfast, we didn't really need much for lunch, so we often bought snacks back from the shop. We did eat lunch once, at Stars, on what should have been our last day and enjoyed the burger & sandwich we had but it wasn...