Welcome to Paradise

We begin our Maldivian journey at roughly 1030pm after our 4-hour Singapore flight (SQ452) lands at Male International Airport. The airport is smaller than the one in Manchester, NH and we taxi to the somewhere on the tarmac and they drive over the stairs for us to walk out. I personally hate deplaning that way even in tropic weather, and tonight it was fairly rainy and humid. Not fun. We disembark, immigrate, go through customs all with no problem. We exit the main area to see about 50 people all holding resort signs to greet their guests. The problem...ours was missing. We were going to stay the the airport hotel anyway that night since you need to take seaplane to get to the W and they only operate during the day. Once we checked in we were told that the seaplane check-in was at 515am (about 6 hours later)...we still didn't have much information to go on, but ok, 430am wake up call it is.

This morning, still no one, and when we checked in at the Maldivian Air Taxi desk, we were mistaken for staff since no one was escorting us!! Incredible. but when the seaplane staff found out we were actually tourists, they took good care of us. From there, life was good. We were driven to the W seaplane waiting lounge, where we checked in to the hotel and got something to ate. After a short wait, we were escorted to the seaplane that took us on a 25-minute picturesque ride to the W.

The W is simply amazing. The setting is stunning - a row of over-water villas atop the turquoise blue waters of the Indian Ocean. On the beach, there are several larger huts which make up the reception area, the three restaurants, the club, spa and water sports areas. It's about 4pm and we've had a full day already. Breakfast was amazing - a full buffet with made to order eggs, waffles, pancakes, dim sum and fried rice. We went swimming in the private plunge pool and the resort, pool, went for a long walk on the beach and snorkeling. The room is amazing too - you'll just have to see in pictures. Well, then again it should be amazing for what we're paying! Random thought - given how much the room is, the food is actually relatively reasonable. The breakfast buffet is $25 per person. Other examples: burger for lunch is $18 and dinner entrees run $25-50. Not bad given that they could charge us a lot more given that we have no choice but to each here since the resort is on a private island about 20 miles to anywhere else. To top it off, there are stations all over the island with free drinks and ice cream (Ben and Jerry's).

Sounds like an advertisement I know, but we love it here. Simply paradise.

p.s. Krissy, Josh and Jake - thanks for the flowers! These are flowers on our balcony.