Seminyak, Indonesia

Monday 2/7/12

Mark and I started the day as usual with a morning beach walk. We met up with all of the kids at breakfast at 8.30 and spent a leisurely and interesting 2 hours chatting away whilst we dined. Nick and Eleni have a lot of contact with family in Greece and shared their insights into the current Greek situation, from their younger, Gen Y, perspective.

From breakfast we headed down to the beach area to laze away some more hours before heading to our 1pm Spa appointments.

Mark and I did take a walk up along the beach though, north from our hotel. I wanted to check out the Oberoi Hotel. We had initially booked this hotel but changed plans when our numbers swelled. I’m so glad we did too! The Oberoi commands an impressive amount of beachfront land and is only a few hundred meters further along the beach. Whilst pretty and serene it was rather humble and quiet and lacking the holiday vive and buzz that our hotel has. The kids, Gen X,Y and Z, would have found the Oberoi rather dull by comparison I’m afraid. One of the Oberoi staff, very kindly, showed us around and let us see one of their typical rooms or Lanais. They were very nice but the beach front lanais I had chosen did not afford a great beach view anyway so, again, we were relieved that we had opted for the Royal Beach at Seminyak. We wandered further up the beach past the Legian and up to the relatively new Samaya Resort. In my opinion though, the Royal Beach is the best hotel for a family with kids. It has a wonderful setting for the rooms, the pool area, breakfast restaurant and the beachfront. Also, it is in close enough proximity to enable you to stroll easily down the beach to any number of beach-front bars and restaurants so that you don’t have to jump in a taxi all the time.

The 4 of us girls all went for our spa treatments at 1pm. We then headed back to the pool for the afternoon before heading back down to the Crystal Palace for pre-dinner drinks.

Dinner was at Ocean Blue, a short walk from the Crystal Palace, a favourite of Annabelle and Matts.