To catch up from Tuesday, sorry work got in the way!
Quick New Year trip, flew AA stayed at Hard Rock. Mum, Dad & Miss 15.
We ate at the usual places such as;
Lannai - love this place! Always good food and reasonable prices, nice view, free WiFi, cold Bintang,
Coffee Shop - out front of Beach Melati apartments. Yummy Iced Coffee, good food, nice staff, reasonable price and...although we didn't have any this time they do usually have cold Bintang.
Blue Skyz, - Good food, Icy cold Bintangs, reasonable price, and Nikki, Zye & crew always provide an atmosphere, Tried the Iced Coffee this time and was impressed! Team that with the Chocolate cake Yummo!
Yulia beach inn - Good food, reasonable price, free WiFi, cold Bintang. Nice place to watch the passing punters
La Monde (near Jayakarta). We reckon they have the best Satays in town and always have cold Bintangs.
Febris - nice food, good menu range, reasonable price, free 15min massage when you order food, cold Bintang
Kuta Town house - Great burgers, reasonable price, cold Bintang
Bali Bakery - Yummy Pizza, nice donuts, reasonable price, free WiFi, cold Bintang
We tried a couple of other places;
Baroque café - beach side of Discovery Mall. Love the Hookah's (bong like instruments) on the tables and was very interested watching them be used. Chocolate Mousse was delicious, cold Bintang.
The Balcony - (somewhere between Poppies 1 & 2) only had Garlic bread here as no one was really hungry, reasonably priced, cold Bintang
Kuta Puri restaurant - Beach end of Poppies 1, reasonably priced, yummy Kebabs, cold Bintang
Swell restaurant - about ½ way along Poppies 1 Service was a bit poor but food was nice, reasonable price and cold Bintang.
Harris Tuban restaurant, limited menu, food was ok, reasonable price, cold Bintang.
Do you get the hint from this information that we like our Cold Bintang? Although we are yet to find a place that has not had cold Bintang the hunt is always on! ;-)
Massages and treatments;
On a recommendation from this forum I tried to try InnerGlow. I had emailed them but did not receive a response, should have known that this was a bad sign. 1st visit, early evening, they did not have any massage people and told me with traffic would take about an hour to get someone there so I booked for a 3 hour treatment at 10am next day with the person who was recommended on the forum - Santi.
Turned up next day at 10am and was told 'wait one moment'.
After 20 minutes I asked how much longer and was told 'On the way. Wait one moment please'. I explained that I had to be somewhere else at 1:30 so she better hurry up. They got on the phone and bit of banter and I am told 'She be 10 minutes you wait?' I said 'yes but I might need to change the treatment'.
Another 20 minutes I asked again where she was and again they get on the phone and I am told 'she coming, wait little bit more'. Another 15minutes and as I got up to leave I told them that 'I wait no longer' they just said 'ok'. I don't think she was even coming!
By this time I was really desperate for a treatment of any kind. Girls, you know what it is like when you are psyched up for something and it doesn't happen...! So anyway off I go in search of somewhere else. I wasn't expected home for 2 hours so will see what I can get. I came across Smart spa and salon. All they could fit me in for was a foot massage. So ½ hour and 55,000rp I walk out of there. Now they advertised that they do Foot massage and this includes neck shoulder massage. Let me set you straight, 'for ½ hour we no do neck or shoulder'. Bit disappointed and the massage was nothing special so won't rush back there.
Later that afternoon whilst out walking I spied a busy salon bit further down towards the Legian st intersection. Dikuta, Made a booking for the next day. Me, one hour massage and miss 15 a facial. Let me say my massage with Ketut was amazing! I like a hard massage and she ticked the boxes. She told me 'you like it hard like a man'. Poor miss 15 almost cracked her face laughing so much! We both went back next day for a hair cream bath then I went back another day for another massage. Ah heaven!
On the second last day I had my hair chemically straightened at Secret Garden but I will save this story for a separate JBR.
This trip we decided that we would have a good walk around and see where some accommodation places were and rate them in order of preference of where we would stay. Our preferred standard is; at least a one (if not two) bedroom apartment, (can handle stepping over teenagers stuff while on hols), clean and rather nice but not necessarily 5, 4 or even 3 stars. Plus we are thinking that if we can find somewhere cheaper than where we normally stay, (Dynasty or Beach Melati apartments) then we can stay longer. A couple of years ago we did a few nights here and there to see what areas we liked and staying at. Kuta side was decided. We have looked around Seminyak and the boutique shops are not really our thing so we have conceded that Legian to Tuban is our area. We have also found that food and drink is just a little more expensive from Kuta sq to Tuban. By little I am only talking a couple or few 000 on each item but this does add up and cut into the spending $$.
That said I took 4 pages of contact details of places where we would stay. Every day we went out walking and managed to check out all nearly all our places. Some we could look in at but most were not available as they were in use. I collected brochures from places we were interested in and wrote notes on them. Thanks to Mic as most of my information I copied and pasted from that site.
More to come, hope I haven't bored you. ;-0 Thanks for reading!