(London &) the Maldives

Our next adventure would take us far, far away...the other side of the world, in fact.  I think I've given many hints as to how we pick our destinations.  Here's how we decided on Maldives:  In 2011, I signed up for a British Airways credit card because they were running a promotion in which you would get 100,000 miles.  You know I could not pass that up!!!  Later that year (after I earned my 100K miles), I learned they were offering a "buy one get one free" deal with miles.  What a deal!!!  We quickly decided that we wanted to go somewhere exotic.  I first looked at Seychelles, but BA doesn't fly there (I could have sworn they did at one time).  We also looked at South Africa, but we ended up booking Maldives.  My friends, Brian and Yvette, had been to Maldives and spoke highly of it.  We had so loved Tahiti, that we just knew we couldn't go wrong with beautiful clear water and an over-water bungalow.  The trip still required non-reving to London, but that was a-ok with us.  I had hoped to spend a couple of days in London on the way, but as it turned out, we only had a day and a half.  Here's my travel journal from London and the Maldives:

5/17/2012 - "A little chaotic, as usual..."

And so our journey begins.  Flights to London were much fuller than I expected, so our route of choice took us to JFK - the only airport where flights were open. 

Today was our annual outing to the Rangers' game, so Debbie and I left the game at the top of the 8th to give me plenty of time to get to the airport.  I got there even earlier than I had meant to, but it turned out to be a good thing.  My first stop was Terminal A to check the bags.  The good news is that our flight did book as a connection (we weren't sure for 2 reasons - a) we were flying in to LGA and out of JFK and b) our JFK-LHR flight was the next day).  The bad news was that I didn't take our passports in to check the luggage.  No worries!!!  I was there EARLY!!!  So, back to the car for the passports and then after having to listen to the agent lecture me on how I could have flown directly to JFK, I accomplished the first goal - the bag was checked.  Next, pick up Joe and change into 1st class appropriate clothes.  Check!  Park the car at Terminal D.  Check!  Finally, get to the gate.  The next delay was the security checkpoint and boy, was it a doozy!!!  The line wasn't that long, but it took us 35 minutes to get through (Joe counted 32 people in front of us!).  By the time we got to the gate, we had already been cleared and the plane was boarding.  I was very excited to be on the plane.  It was pretty full and I thought there was a distinct possibility that we would have to roll to the morning.  BUT, we made it and that is always a great feeling.

Now then...seeing as how I wasn't sure we were going to make the flight, I didn't book a hotel.  This also turned out to be a challenge.  When we arrived at JFK, I started calling the area hotels, but everything was booked.  Finally, Joe called the 1-800 number for Holiday Inn and they said there was a hotel that was only 6 or 8 miles from JFK that had rooms available.  We booked it.  Yeah!!!  Little did we know that getting to the hotel would require a $100 cab ride.  I thought Joe was going to have a heart attack before we even got to our beach destination.  We got to the hotel at about 1:00 AM local time, but I still had work to do.  Since I hadn't been sure when we would get to JFK to get to London, I also hadn't booked a hotel for London.  For a trip that we had booked months in advance, I felt very ill-prepared.  It took me quite a while to book the London hotel because they are SO EXPENSIVE!!!  I think fatigue finally took over and I settled on a Holiday Inn close to the city.  Still, it was $350/night.  Sigh...

I think I might have gotten 3 hours of sleep...

5/18/2012 - "Across the Pond, we go..."

I'm such a sucker for a story with a happy ending and this trip to London had one for us.  First Class!!!!  Yahoo!!!!  The through status helped, but I think we might have gotten first either way.  At any rate, first class on a 777 is heavenly, especially when you're on a 7-hour flight.  I tried to stay awake in order to help me get adjusted to the different time zone.  I think I ended up sleeping maybe an hour, but it turned out just fine.

Another bonus of getting first class was that we got to go to the Express Lane for Immigration at Heathrow.  I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that this probably saved us over an hour!!!  There were so many people there, I was shocked!  A lady in the long line asked me how I got to be in that line.  Apparently, her flights were messed up and she needed to get to Gatwick for her continuation.  I hope she made it...

We picked up our bag without incident and found the Underground.  We did struggle a bit with which ticket to buy, but finally made up our minds and made our way to our hotel.  It was quite a bit further from the tube stop than I thought - about a 10-minute walk.  I had expected it to be just outside the station.  We checked in and with the first challenge of our journey behind us, we finally got some sleep.  A LOT of sleep, as it would turn out.

5/19/2012 - "A day in merry 'ole London"

Our day in London turned out to be about half a day because we slept 12 hours.  I woke up a few times, but Joe was snoozing away and I figured he needed the rest.  So, I would fall back asleep.  The next thing I knew, it was almost noon, and I knew we needed to get up.  Joe still struggled, but we finally were up and dressed and decided to visit the Tower of London.  I had been there many years ago (back in 1999), but Joe had never been there, and it is Rick Steves' #1 thing to see in London.

First we needed food.  Since we missed our free breakfast at the hotel, we stopped at the pub next door for a sandwich - The Plough and the Harrow.  Once we figured out that we had to go to the bar to place our order, I had a ham and cheese and Joe had a tuna melt and they were both good.

No problem with the Tube tickets this time.  We made our way to the Tower of London and had a little over 3 hours before it closed.  We decided to do the Beefeater Tour since it was going to start in 10 minutes.  It was a HIGHLIGHT of the trip!!!  Our tour guide, who referred to himself as "Billy Beefeater" was hysterical to say the least.  We learned a bit about the history of the Tower and about some of the people who were imprisoned and/or killer there, including 2 of Henry VIII's wives, Anne Boleyn and Catherine Howard, and Mel Gibson.  Or rather his character from the movie Braveheart, William Wallace.  Another interesting tidbit - most of the beheadings were actually done on Tower Hill, not at the Tower of London.

Tower of London

Billy Beefeater

Our next stop was going to be the Crown Jewels, but the line was long and following our good buddy, Rick Steves' advice, we decided to to the White Tower first and try the Crown Jewels after 4:30.  It worked out beautifully!!  The White Tower had the original "chopping block" where the heads were cut off and quite a bit of armor and weapons from the time of Henry VIII.  The Crown Jewels were magnificent (to me) and we even had time to "walk the wall" around the Tower.  They have a new "monument" at the place where the chopping block was when I was there the first time.

White Tower

Henry VIII's Armour

The original Chopping Block

Monument where the old Chopping Block used to stand

Next, we walked across the Tower Bridge.  The Tower Bridge is often mistaken for the London Bridge, but I knew this from a previous trip.  On the other side of the bridge was Butler's Wharf, so we had dinner at Brown's.  A bit upscale for us, but the mushroom, beef, and Guinness pie was very good, as were the fish and chips.

Tower Bridge from the White Tower

We finished off our day with a walk around Piccadilly Circus to Leicester Square.  A lot of action going on and we were slightly put off by the warnings to secure our valuables.  But, it was something to see and since we always have our valuables secure, we didn't have a problem!

At the M & M Store in Leicester Square

5/20/2012 - "The rest of the way to Maldives"

Our flight to the Maldives wasn't until 7:00PM, so we had a little time to kill before making our way to Gatwick.  Not taking a chance on sleeping until noon again, we set the alarm.  On our agenda today would be to visit the Churchill War Rooms and Museum.

We hit the breakfast buffet first and realized that we hadn't missed that much yesterday.  Typical HIE breakfast, but loads of (rude) people (the rude added by Joe).  The only thing we missed was a free meal.  Ha!  I had on my "Utah Rocks" shirt and did meet a man from Syracuse, Utah.  He seemed a bit out of place and said it was good to see someone from the States.

We didn't have too much trouble finding the museum.  This was all for Joe, my little WWII history buff.  The war rooms are underground, although we did learn that had the building taken a direct hit, chances are that the tunnels and rooms below may have collapsed.  Churchill actually knew this, but a lot of the people that worked down there during World War II did not.  In the middle of the war rooms, you venture off to the actual Churchill Museum.  There are lots of artifacts about him and a lot of his personal belongings, but Joe and I both felt that the museum was a little disorganized.  It starts with the war years, and then goes back to his childhood and start in politics.  But even more confusing than the interrupted timeline was that it was unclear how to proceed through the museum.  We just followed the crowd, but I think we were supposed to be going up and down each aisle instead of trying to see both sides of each aisle.  For example, when we got to the exhibit on his typical day, we started out with him going to bed.  It was still interesting, don't get me wrong.  After the museum, you finish the tour of the war rooms.  Joe's favorite room was the Map Room.  We also saw of the offices and Churchill's bedroom.

(A little blurry, but...) Mrs. Churchill's Bedroom

Map Room

Churchill's Bedroom

Even with our earlier start and late checkout, we ended up having to rush out of the museum a little faster than we would have preferred.  Most of what I missed was the exhibits of him getting in to politics, but Joe also felt a little rushed through the final rooms, which were the ones he found most interesting.

We made it back to the hotel and made our 2:00 check-out at 1:50.  We decided we had better book our London hotel for the overnight on the way back through, so we sat in the lobby where the internet was free and did that.  Our second meal at The Plough and the Harrow was absolutely fantastic.  It was called Sunday Club and featured roast (Joe had beef and I had pork), these wonderful potatoes, broccoli and carrots, little dressing balls, and Yorkshire pudding.  Absolutely delicious!!  We even got a Sticky Toffee Pudding for dessert for just £1.99.

Another near ticket debacle when we got to Victoria Station.  We were looking for the Gatwick Express Train and got in the line with all the other people with bags.  But, the line was pretty long and moving rather slowly.  So, I went looking around and found that you could buy tickets from a machine.  However, the machine didn't seem to like our selection.  I saw the sign for Gatwick Express and the ticket booth just by it, so we went there.  Apparently, we were trying to buy off-peak when it was peak?  Just a note to the Brits - it would be rather helpful to the tourists if you could identify when peak and off-peak is!!!

Getting to Gatwick, checking our bags, and making our way to the gate were all very uneventful.  The flight was also fairly uneventful, although lots of turbulence for the first couple of hours.  The flight is an overnighter.  We arrived in Maldives the next morning.

5/21/2012 - "We've arrived!!!"

Approach in to the Maldives is quite interesting.  As you look out the window, you see these little areas in the ocean that reminded me of giant amoebas.  They are, in fact, reefs.  Definitely nothing like I have ever seen before - not even in Tahiti.

Arrival was also uneventful.  You deplane on the tarmac and take a 2 minute bus ride to the terminal.  The first thing I noticed was that it was H-O-T!!!  The weather in London had been a little chilly and the long-sleeved t-shirt and pants I had on was way, way, WAY too much for the Maldives.  Clearing immigration was snappy (I noted that we are not eligible for employement here - as stamped in our passports) and our bags were already waiting for us on the carousel.  Finding our person to take us to the resort was also snappy.  The only hitch was that we had to wait about 30 minutes or so before getting in the boat to take us to the resort.

The resort we decided on is the Anantara Veli Resort in South Male Atoll.  The biggest plus was that it did not require further air transportation and I figured that 20 hours flying time to get there would be enough for us.  Veli is all over-water bungalows and has a sister resort across the lagoon called Dhigu.  I looked at Dhigu, but the beach bungalows were the same price as the over-water bungalows at Veli and I'm all about the over-water bungalows (we LOVED staying in them in Tahiti).  And, I'm slightly cheap.

Our boat ride was about 30 minutes.  We were offered cool towels, which would turn out to be one of the repeated highlights of the trip for me.  Not an incredibly smooth ride, but not frightening either.  We were met at the dock with a drum, more cool towels, and a staff member that was ready to check us in.

It's probably worth noting at this point, that when we booked this trip we didn't have a lot of time to research.  Shortly after we booked, I realized why the flights to Maldives had been open for May - it's monsoon season.  I spent the next 8 months fretting (and praying) about what the weather would be like while we were here.  Back to present day - as soon as we were checked in to our bungalow, it started raining.  Drats!!

But alas, the rain only lasted about 3 minutes.  Yea!!!  By the time we were in our bathing suits, the rain had stopped and it was even somewhat sunny.  We were both in desperate need of cooling off, so our first stop was the pool.  We swam, we snoozed, and we completely luxuriated in our Maldivian experience.  I thanked God for the nice weather and even admitted that I had prayed for just one good day and here it was!!  Then, I secretely wished they would continue.

Welcome to Anantara Veli Maldives!!

Looking out to the over-water Bungalows

Our Bungalow

From our back patio to the Indian Ocean!

Back to my impulse purchase - even though I had 8 months to further plan our Maldivian adventure, I somehow didn't.  At the last minute, I read in the guidebook that if your hotel offered a meal plan, you should take it because eating here was so expensive.  That turned out to be my 2nd mistake.  We could have eaten for about half what it would end up costing us for the trip.  And, in fact, we would have eaten a lot less.  We ate way more than we would have without the meal plan - trying to get our monies worth.

Back to present day - between Veli and Dhigu, there are 6 restaurants.  Our first night here, we were just going to have the buffet at Veli, but it turned out to be closed.  The Japanese restaurant was also closed.  So, we decided to get on the pontoon boat and venture over to Dhigu.  There we found the Italian restaurant, Terrazzo.  It was quite good.  Joe had spinach ravioli and I had a Calzone.  The most interesting thing about the resort - they give you bottles upon bottles of free water in your room, but at dinner, they charge you - over and above the cost of the meal plan.

Directly after dinner, we hit the sack.  It had been a long flight from London and we had not slept much.  We slept pretty well our first night, except during the thunderstorm.  I'm not sure what time it was, but it sure sounded violent!!!  Lots of thunder and lightning and, I assume, rain.  I have to tell you that it is slightly unsettling to be in an overwater bungalow in a thunderstorm.  Perhaps I should have spent 8 months praying for our safety instead of good weather.

5/22/2012 - "How do you get sunburned in the shade??!!??"

We almost missed breakfast again, and that would have been a disaster considering I already felt we were overspending for food and breakfast was included with our room.  We woke up at 9:45 and headed to the buffet (which closes at 10:30) at 73 Degrees restaurant.  They have quite a bit of variety there.  I had them make me a mushroom and cheese omelet (Joe would wait until Thursday before he went to the "make-it-hot" station).  73 Degrees is also the buffet we were going to go to on our first night.  Since we ate breakfast there every day, we opted out of dinner.

We would find that our 5 days in the Maldives did not vary too much.  Our goal ws to eat breakfast late since we only ate 2 meals a day.  Our days went something like this:

1. Get up and have breakfast
2. Go back to the room and relax a bit and change into our bathing suits
3. Hit the beach, the pool, snorkel, or whatever our activity du jour was
4. Return to our bungalow and relax
5. Shower
6. Dinner
7. Bed

We decided that our trip to the Maldives would not be complete without a dip in the Indian Ocean.  After all, we had never been to the Indian Ocean before.  So, today our activity was going to the beach.  Because it's low season, it was easy to find chairs with shade (I call them polappas but my spell check can't seem to find that word).  I was sitting in the shade the whole day, so it never occured to me that I should put on sunscreen.  Boy, was that STUPID!!!!!  I ended up fried.  I was red as a lobster.  Joe was a little, too, but he has much better tanning skin that I do, so his was mostly gone quickly while mine would end up lingering.  At any rate, we read a bit, relaxed, and swam in the ocean off and on.  It was utterly relaxing.

Our spot on the beach

Our view from our chairs

Dinner tonight was at the Thai restaurant at Veli, Baan Huraa.  It was repeatedly mentioned on TripAdvisor (see? I did do a LITTLE research) as the best restaurant.  And, we too, thought it was very good.  The waitress even made us a fishing pole with fish out of reed as a thank you for visiting.  Oh, and I guess I should mention that the restaurant is over the water and we did see a ray and 3 black-tipped reef sharks while we were eating.

5/23/2012 - "Discovering life in the Indian Ocean"

For all my lack of planning, I did buy a guidebook and I did read it.  It did steer me wrong on the meal plan, but I'll not dwell on that anymore.  I had made a list of about 4 things I thought we should do while we were in the Maldives based on the guidebook.  The first one was to visit Male, the capital.  Today was Wednesday and the tours to Male were on Wednesday and Saturday.  Since we are leaving on Saturday, I knew this would be our only chance.  I stuck to my decision.  We would to go Male.

Then, we woke up and headed to breakfast.  When we opened the door, it felt like it was 120 degrees outside.  It was like walking in to a sauna of ginormous proportions.  Could I take 3 hours of this to see a couple of mosques and a small museum?  Or did I already know everything I cared to know about the history of the Maldives and should I wait to see the Blue Mosque in Turkey?

It would turn out that we would do none of the tours I had planned and here are our excuses - Male, too boring (and might I add, dirty and run-down looking from the window of the airplane) and too HOT; Local Tribe Life - probably an underlying plan to get you to buy stuff (plus, a friend of mine had a friend who visited the Maldives, did this tour, and said he would pass next time); Sunset Cruise - although our days were NOT full of rain as I had feared, there was a bank of clouds on the horizon and, therefore, no real sunset; Snorkeling Tour - not needed because we had a fabulous reef right on our property!

That brings me to our activity for today...snorkeling.  Borrowing snorkel equipment is free and so after breakfast (I had pancakes today), we went by the Aquafanatics and picked up 2 sets.  From the porch of our lovely bungalow, we entered the water and proceeded to swim all around the entire resort.  Veli is built right on top of a reef (or the reef grew after the resort was build?) and it is teeming with fish.  We swam around the Veli property and were, frankly, amazed at all the life just below us.  It was a wonderful day of snorkeling.  We took a break back on the beach and then snorkeled back.  It was SOOOO much better than sweating our asses off in Male!

Dinner tonight was a Beach Barbecue at Fushi Cafe at Dhigu.  I thought it would be some version of Texas barbecue, but I couldn't have been more wrong.  It was a buffet with lots of salads and breads to start.  Then you go to the cooking station and choose from steak, chicken kabobs, lamb sausages, calamari, snapper, and tuna.  Tell the cook what you want and how much and they bring it to your table.  It wasn't bad.  And, they had a live band.  Tonight we splurged and had a Coke and a Diet Coke.  When asked if wanted refulls, we even said yes.  For 2 Cokes, 2 Diet Cokes, and a bottle of water, the cost was almost $30.  LOL!!!

5/24/2012 - "Now my ASS is sunburned, too!!!"

Today, we decided to go to the sister resort, Dhigu, and snorkel there.  So, after my poached egg breakfast and our relaxation time between breakfast and our daily activity, we headed across the lagoon.  We had been over there for dinner, but that took us through the trees to the restaurants.  I hadn't realized how absolutely beautiful the water around the other resort was.  Since there's not a reef around the resort on that side, the water is absolutely clear and beautiful (our water is clear and beautiful, too, but a different color because of the reef).  The water is also fairly shallow.  We walked around to the other side of the island and snorkeled around the overwater bungalows and out to a little island where the house reef is.  Under the bungalows, there wasn't a whole lot to see, but we did see a HUGE puffer fish.  I'd never seen one that big, but I know it was a puffer.  While we were examing the puffer, we kind of floated over the biggest stingray I think I've ever seen.  I didn't even see it at first because it was burrowing in to the sand, but I noticed the sand moving and I looked down and saw HUGE EYES looking up at me.  It was bizarre and incredible at the same time.

We walked around the little island before checking out the house reef.  The water was a little rough, but there were a LOT of fish there - and HUGE fish.  I was pretty exhausted when we got back and even though I had put sunscreen on the backs of my legs, I hadn't sprayed high enough and I got my ass cheeks sunburned.  It was pretty funny.

At Dhigu

We snorkeled out to this little island.  The house reef is just on the left side of the picture.

So many colors of Blue!!!

Dinner tonight would be our big splurge (calorie wise, the money, as you know, was already spent) at Fuddan Fushion Grill.  This restaurant is also at Dhigu and features grilled steak and seafood.  We both had steak and it was very good.

5/25/2012 - "How do you get sunburned in the shade, Part 2"

Since we saw the fabulous pool at Dhigu, we decided to spend our last day there.  So, we went back to the pontoon boat for a ride across the lagoon.  I also wanted to take some pictures, so we did that first.  By the time we got to the pool, I was dripping with sweat.  It felt darn good to get in the water!!!  The pool was probably twice as big as the one at Veli, but there were more people there, too.  We spent a little time there and then looked up and it seemed that a huge storm was coming.  We decided to bail before it hit, so we headed back to Veli.  Of course, before we even got back, the storm seemed to have circled around and disappeared.  Instead of going back to the room, we headed directly for the Veli pool where we spent the rest of the afternoon.  Like any genius that had already been burned lying in the shade, I decided to put on some sunscreen, but when I took off my t-shirt to swim, I failed to put more sunscreen on the areas that were previously covered.  No problem, I thought....I'M IN THE SHADE!!!!  I guess I don't really have to tell you what happened.

On our last night, we decided to have dinner at Geckos, the Japanese restaurant.  We went for the teppanyaki, which I would actually call hibachi.  I could tell the chef was still learning, but I thought the food was okay (except I had a crab leg that was a little tough).  However, the couple sitting next to us was not happy AT ALL.  I thought they were just upset because they had ordered prawns AND scallops as their appetizer, but they only got one of each.  That really wasn't the chef's fault - he just cooked what was brought out.  But, apparently, they were unhappy with the chef in general.  Several of the wait staff were talking to them, then the restaurant manager came by.  The next thing you know the manager and the chef are having a little chat and then the chef disappears and someone else comes out and cooks the rest of our meal.  As a consolation, the restaurant gave the couple 2 extra lobsters, which they shared with us.  It was very good, I will admit, but I did feel bad for the poor chef.  He was trying!!!  Then again, I guess if you're unsatisfied with the food or service, you should say so.

5/26/2012 - "Back to London"

As they say, all good things must come to an end and that was true of our Maldivian adventure.  This morning we got up and prepared for our return.  Our bill was wrong, so I had to get it fixed, but they did fix it, so I was satisfied in the end.  At breakfast on your last day, they seat you at a table that has a farewell written in sand on the table - a nice touch.  We had our breakfast, got checked out and headed to the boat to take us back to the airport.  We discovered that we had been on the luxury boat on the way from the airport to the resort - this time, we were in a regular boat, i.e., no air conditioning.  The ride back was also uneventful, as was check-in and the whole process.  They get you to the airport super early, so we had a lot of sitting around to do.  As a final note - it was pouring down rain the whole morning.  The waitress at breakfast said the island was crying because we were leaving.  Ha!!  Yes, we were crying, too...

Paradise!!!

5/27/2012 - "The End of the Adventure"

We got up fairly early to get to the airport.  We wanted to get a good spot on the standby list and we wanted to be listed as through passengers to avoid the taxes (which is perfectly legal!!!).  So, again, we had some time at the airport, but that's the way it goes, right?  It was worth it when they handed out our boarding passes and we got first class!!!

Overall, some reflections on the trip:

I have never sweated so much in my life.  With the temperature hovering between 85 and 87 with 80% humidity, it is sweltering!!!  I know it was humid in Tahiti, but I sure don't remember it being this bad.

I said I wouldn't, but I do kind of regret not doing the things on my list.  I guess that maybe we should go back when it's not monsoon season and then we could possibly enjoy those things.

It was a great and beautiful adventure, but with 40 hours of flying time (round trip), I think I would try to stay longer next time.  Ha!!!

Last, but not least, Joe left his St. Joseph necklace in the Maldives.  He was sooooo disappointed when he got home and realized it.  I contacted the resort and they did respond to me, but said they didn't find it.  Joe was sure he had put it in one of the coffee cups.  I'm sure someone just threw it away.  It certainly wasn't valuable, but had sentimental value to Joe.  It was so old and worn, it wasn't even recognizable anymore.  I bought him a new one for his birthday, but I'm sure it's not the same.