Firstly I want to start off by thanking everyone who left birthday wishes and congratulations, I was really happy to read all your comments and they are all appreciated, thank you! :)
Yasu worked Tuesday morning and came home about 1pm. I had already packed all our stuff into bags so we loaded it into the car and arrived at the resort just after 2pm after a couple of pit-stops on the way to get some drinks and snacks.
The resort was much more than I imagined, I thought I had stepped into Asia – it was designed like a beautiful rainforest with a boardwalk, water features, statues and ponds going in a zig-zag fashion around the hotel with koi swimming. It was so beautiful and relaxing.

Our door opened up onto this view

Found this cutie hiding in the greenery

Another cutie trying to hide from my camera

This struck me as being NZ'esque but not sure if it is.

The entrance to the resort

The entrance at night

Balcony


The pool looked gorgeous and was virtually deserted but we spent most of our time hopping in and out of the spa in our room and totally forgot about the pool! All those hours clocked up in the garden on the weekend called more for hot spa’s than cool water I’m afraid. :)



I had this for dinner on one of the nights - Chicken, Leek, and Lemon Risotto
We had lots of nice breakfasts, lunches and dinners. I had the above meal for dinner on my birthday at a restaurant overlooking the beach. Yasu really wanted to have this one too but he also wanted to try their carbonara, so I ordered both and we had half each. The carbonara was also really nice.

Tortellini Carbonara
One of the nights we also went to another hotel on the beach for their buffet of fine foods, it was delish, and the dessert bar was to die for. I forgot the camera on that night but I had pecan pie, puchi lemon meringues, puchi apple and custard pies, creme brulee that tasted like the custard in shuu creams and was heaven, um.. chocolate mousse, strawberry shortcake, brownies, cheesecake and fruit salad…oh and a cheese platter…my god. I really ate to my hearts content, diet out the window temporarily…but who could resist such a dessert bar! This restaurant is literally overlooking the beach and we could see the waves crashing on the shore, it was brilliant.
On the actual day of my birthday we went to Ikea and found a couple of things we want to get – we had no plans to buy anything but found some great furniture inside that we just fell in love with. We went to the foodhall for lunch and we had swedish meatballs – oh yum, I just love them so much!! I had a swedish almond cake for dessert, and a Lingonberry Soda, and Yasu had a Princess cake.

After we finished lunch we went to the Swedish Food Market and I bought a few packets of the sauce that go on the meatballs, some apple cider and some Ikea chocolate bars. There was so much to choose from in there, so many delicious goodies but we had to rush as we were going to see a movie.
We got there just in time to see Alice in Wonderland in 3D. It was my first time ever to see a movie in 3D and it was amazing! We got given glasses to wear, not the flimsy paper ones with one red and one green eye – these are real glasses that just look like sunglasses. When you put them on the images look like they are in the space between you and the screen, not flat on the screen like on non-3D. I never got why everyone went on about 3D, but now I do! It’s so amazing! Alice was great, Yasu and I were totally swept up in the movie and the graphics were amazing. Even at the end of the film when everyone got up to leave, we stayed watching as the frame around the screen was 3D and was growing flowers and vines which were blooming in 3D. It was like I could reach out and touch them.
After that we went back to the resort and jumped in the spa again then sat on the balcony and people watched for a while. I realised that you see alot of interesting things when you have a balcony, things you otherwise might have missed. We looked down at the beach, the surfers, and people walking along.
We did a lot of talking and catching up, alot of relaxing in the spa and it was heaven, just what the doctor ordered.
We also went to the aquarium but I will write about that in a separate post as I have a million and one pictures to upload. All good things must come to an end, and so did our holiday, though neither of us really wanted to go home, and Yasu was umming and ahhing whether he could extend the stay for a couple more days but his boss really needed him to come back because he is the supervisor of a big project happening at the moment. I was hoping that there would be an outbreak of bird or swine flu that would make us have to be quarantined inside the resort for another week but no such luck!
We didn’t go home right away, we packed everything in the car and did some touristy things on the way home, and it was really hard to get back to reality today because the last 4 days have been SO perfect and the resort was just so perfect in every way. We are really thinking about when we can go back again..