Rhonda Bracey: At Random

A very quiet day lazing by and in the pool today. Read lots, did some puzzles, drank fruit juice and generally did not much at a very slow pace! Isn’t that what a holiday is all about?

Later in the afternoon we took the shuttle van over to the sister resort being built on the other side of the peninsula, not far from the resort where we were staying. The first block of 1-bedroom and 2-bedroom apartments are finished, and they expect to have the main reception, restaurants, bars, spa etc. block completed by Christmas and more 1 and 2-bedroom apartment blocks. The maximum height for any development on Bali seems to be four floors, so these blocks aren’t huge.

The sister development already has two of the three pools completed and has a temporary restaurant/bar. Residents have reciprocal rights at the resort we’re staying at and can catch a free shuttle to the other resort any time they want.

We looked through a 2-bedroom unit and a 1-bedroom one. The 2-bedroom apartment was VERY stylish and HUGE! This resort is a timeshare with a difference — the apartments are for sale ‘in perpetuity’ so there’s no limit on how long an apartment can stay in the family. Also, they can be sold privately or willed with no effect on the status of the apartment.

Although the 2-bedroom apartment could sleep four people in beds, you could actually sleep eight in it at a pinch — the massive sofa would sleep two, the day bed on the verandah would sleep another two, and another day bed in the dining area would sleep another two.

When we got back to our resort, we got a call that my sister and I had got into the cooking school tomorrow, though there was only room for one of us for the market part of the day. My sister graciously let me have the 6:00 am start 😉

Later that evening we went to dinner with some of Mum and Dad’s friends (Mary and Jeff from Victoria, Alan and Diane from NSW) at Giorgio’s Italian Restaurant at the Aston next door (I still don’t know why we ate Italian in Bali!). The food was excellent — I had the linguine with veal meat balls and it was full of flavour.

However, there were some discrepancies in the menu. Of the eight of us, seven had a menu that had ‘grilled aubergines’ on it, but my sister had this:

Oops!