Tahitian honeymoon day 7: Bora Bora morning

Good morning Bora Bora!  In the morning Nick and I stuffed ourselves at breakfast and walked around the resort - InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa.

Sunrise over the bungalows

 Off to breakfast

 Pool area

The place where we had dinner on the beach the night before

Walking along the beach

Little island with a hammock

Tahitian honeymoon day 6: Bora Bora dinner on the beach

I'm doing a quick post tonight because I'm watching the Top Chef season!

It was evening when we landed and got checked in and decided it was dinner time.  The hotel had a couple of restaurants and the one we decided to do that night was Le Sands - the one on the beach!

Dinner was wonderful and I had a mahi mahi salad for my started, lobster (my fave!) for dinner and vanilla creme brulee for dessert!  The Tahitian islands are known for their vanilla so I had to have that for dessert since it was fresh from another island called Taha'a (they were their on Ali's season of The Bachelorette).

The food was wonderful but the ambiance was unbeatable.  It was just so cool to eat right on the beautiful Bora Bora beach!

Tahitian honeymoon day 6: Moorea and Bora Bora

Day 6 was our last day in Moorea at the InterContinental Resort And Spa Moorea and we spend it at the pool and beach enjoying our final hours before catching our flight to Bora Bora!

Goodbye Moorea - hope to see you again someday!!

Later in the early evening we went to the airport to catch our small plane over to Bora Bora.  I'm not a fan of small planes, but was so excited to get to Bora Bora I didn't even care!

Bora Bora is probably the most famous of the Tahitian islands and the one I was looking forward to the most!  When we were talking about where we wanted to go on our honeymoon, Bora Bora was somewhere we had always wanted to go and staying in an over water bungalow on the island was a bucket list item of mine!

The main island has a large mountain called Mt. Otemanu in the middle and the main island is surrounded by a lagoon and barrier reef  with  little "motus" (islands) in the lagoon.  Most of the hotels are out on these motus facing Mt. Otemanu which allows for the over water bungalows and water that is like a giant pool.

I didn't take this picture, but here is the island from above:

image

And very few people actually live on the island.  Everyone who works at the hotel actually lives in staff housing areas since there really are no houses or apartments on the island, only hotels.

The airport is also on a motu so after you land, all the hotels have boats come to pick everyone up.

Our luggage was picked up and we were whisked away to our home for the next four days: InterContinental Bora Bora Resort & Thalasso Spa!   

Pictures from their website from above:

The boat ride from the airport took us across the "lagoon" and to the resort and we were joined by two other couples (I think one was from Australia and one was from France, very few Americans the whole trip!)

We were met by the main concierge of the airport (who fluently spoke something like 5 languages) and we were taken from the boat dock to the main lobby - on a golf cart! We check in at the hotel and the concierge tells you about the hotel and then takes you on a tour of the hotel on the golf cart

I'll continue more tomorrow about our over water bungalow but here is a picture of one of the coolest parts - a see through coffee table that opens up (to feed the fish of course!)  All this blogging is making me want to go back now!

Week update

The past couple of weeks have been super busy so its time for a little update!

Last Friday a group of us girls went out to celebrate Molly's birthday at an awesome restaurant called Local 360. Its in downtown Seattle and all of their food is locally sourced from no more than 360 miles away (hence the name). 

On Thursday Meghan and I took Brynn out for our birthday tradition dinner to a resturant called Chez Shea in Pike's Place.  It was so good and the view was unbeatable, overlooking Pike's Place Market and the water.

image: Savvy Diner

On Friday Nick and I did a dinner and movie night and saw The Adjustment Bureau which was so good!

And then on Saturday we had a big birthday bash for both Molly and Brynn! 

Happy Monday everyone!

Book Club: The Help

If anyone has done a post recently asking for book recommendations, chances are I left a comment raving about this book, The Help by Kathryn Stockett.  Consider this another recommendation, I loved this book.

It is about African American maids working in white households during the early 1960s and told from the point of view of two maids (the help) and a white woman, Miss Skeeter. 

And, this book is going to be released this summer as a movie!  With Emma Stone as the main character, Miss Skeeter!

And remember the last book we read for book club, Orange Is The New Black?  While the main character is in prison, they try to create new sorts of "recipes" out of their usual food to make things more interesting.  The signature dish of our main character was something called "prison cheesecake" which she made out of everyday items she could find in the prison kitchen such as Laughing Cow cheese, vanilla pudding and coffee creamer. 

Last book club we were all intrigued over the idea of this cheesecake, so last night Carrie made it according to the recipe in the book and we all tried it.  Not bad at all!

March ski weekend

Over the weekend Nick and I headed up to my parents cabin for a snow/ski weekend.  We went on a little walk around the neighborhood where the cabin is and during our walk I looked up and right next to me was an elk just posing for me to take a picture of it! 



We made a snowman

And spent all day Sunday skiing up at beautiful Crystal Mountain