The final of our 3rd wedding anniversary holiday blogs – finally!!
I’ve held off this blog, because I wasn’t sure there was that much to say. We had a short but sweet time in the Seychelles, and it is exactly as you would imagine it to be – much like the Maldives and Bora Bora… Fiji & Hawaii (though we’ve not been to the last 2!) – warm, white sands, beautifully perfect aquamarine blue seas sparkling under the glistening sunshine. In essence – a typical idealistic “honeymoon” destination.
We’ve been to both The Maldives and Bora Bora and loved both (my heart is still in Bora Bora), but it’s funny how easily the mind can forget. When we saw those gorgeous white sands and blue seas in the Seychelles, we both said to each other it’s the whitest sand and bluest sea we’d ever seen – but, we both know that’s not true. The Maldives and Bora Bora are exactly like that.. in fact, some beautiful areas of Scotland are exactly like that too (though largely minus the 30 degree sunshine I so adore!!)
Happy Place!
So, the Seychelles. We had just a short but sweet 4 days there, tagged on as the “hot, sunny, naked sunbathing (me!), relaxation” part of our holiday.. whilst we were so close (4 hour flight from SA).
Hotel
The Valmer Resort
My criteria – as always – is for a hotel where we can have a private pool villa, because, well, I don’t do tan lines….!! We selected The Valmer Resort purely because it was the cheapest… poor choice for me because I failed to do any research (there was only one pool villa in this resort so I was panic desperate to just book it!) into it until about two weeks before we flew out.. queue huge anxiety! Trip Advisor reviews were shocking, while booking.com reviews were ok… I’d say we met somewhere in the middle…
Pool Villa ☺️
Service in general just wasn’t really a “thing” in this resort. We arrived really late in the evening due to flight times (& delays) and as it is seemingly a small, family owned/run resort, the place looked like it was shut up for the day – no chance of some room service food then! Throughout our stay we were never asked if things were ok or if we needed anything, but when it came to taking payment for our room bill, they were keen to get it sorted ASAP… still not asked if we had had a nice stay though!! And given we had roughly €160 stolen from our room (presumably by the cleaner, accidentally left in husbands shorts pocket 🙄), it wasn’t all ideal!! We only ate dinner one night in the hotel (after a long day out on a trip) and it was overpriced, poor buffet food – if I’d have known how disappointing it would have been, we’d have gone out literally anywhere, or starved!!
Bedroom
We felt like we just seemed to be the wrong side of the island at this resort. We were up in the hills and it was often really windy and therefore not all that sunny – I didn’t come back very tanned, disappointingly! Frustratingly we could see in the distance gorgeous sunny beaches, and everywhere else seemed to be fine so it just literally seemed to be like a grey cloud following us around. All in all it was ok. Our room was nice, with a huge bath and lovely outdoor shower (although there were cockroaches spotted here as well as throughout the resort!!), and the private pool is always lovely to have, and the views went on for wonderful miles.. but would have been nice to have room service as an option! I’m not sure I’d hurry back..
Restaurants
This restaurant was so lovely. I’d definitely recommend going here. When we went there was only us and three other tables booked so it was very quiet, which was a bit of a shame for the wonderful band that played there twice a week every week, but the location was a beautiful colonial style house.
La Reduit
We visited this restaurant solely based on tripadvisor reviews and recommendations – but I have to say we were several disappointed! It was supposed to be a traditional, Creole-cuisine restaurant… I’d say the best thing about it was watching all the geckos (I LOVE them!! 🦎) and what they get up to! The food wasn’t all that great and was served with plain rice (I hate plain rice!) or “homemade” chips… the chips were homemade in the oven out of a McCain’s packet I’d say!
On the other hand – we were the only customers seemingly for the entire night, so it was really sweet of them to even bother opening for us!
TripsRobinson Crusoe Island Adventure As we only had a few days in the Seychelles, we didn’t have much time to explore or go on trips, so we had to pick whichever looked like it covered the most – and although quite a long day, this trip most certainly did!
We covered a few islands and lots of snorkelling, as well as getting to Curieuse Island which is the home of giant land tortoise’s which is one of my most favourite things EVER! They are amazing – you get to feed them and pet them as they room freely around the island – they LOVE to have their necks tickled which cracked me up! I would really recommend this trip for anyone in the Seychelles. We had lunch on board our catamaran too which was also lovely (much nicer traditional Creole food than La Reduit!!)
Finally – we [for the first time!] flew economy with Emirates, om our journey home – which, from the Seychelles to Dubai in particular (just 4.5 hour flight) I would recommend.. the flight was empty and if we had wanted to, we could have all had an entire 3/4 seats ourselves! We walked through our “usual” (☺️😂) business class on the way to our seats and there was literally 2 people in there! Thankfully, we have high enough air mile accreditation with Emirates we could still relax and freshen up with a shower in the lush lounges on our stopover in Dubai!! 😉 so save yourself some 💸 and fly economy from there 🙃
xx
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