Our dream honeymoon to the Maldives!

I’ve always had a dream that when I get married I would have a honeymoon in an overwater bungalow in some ridiculously beautiful, romantic gorgeous place in the world. And, well, I am the luckiest, not only because I got to marry the amazing Damian, but because I got to see my honeymoon dreams come true – we spent 9 days in an overwater bungalow at the fabulous St. Regis Vommuli in the Maldives!

I understand how ridiculous this sounds but we called this our “mini-moon” since it was a separate trip from our 8-month around-the-world adventure. To be totally honest, we didn’t do much research as to where to go in the Maldives – a friend alerted us to an amazing deal on using points at this new resort (opened in fall of 2016) and we jumped at the bit. We actually booked the honeymoon before we had even locked down a date for the wedding!

The hardest part of this trip was the travel to get there – overall the journey took us over 30 hours! And for this motion-sickness-prone girl it was definitely a challenge (but worth it!). The Maldives are a set of islands located southwest of the tip of India. It is a super-remote country of less than 500,000 people. To get there we flew from Newark straight to Delhi, stayed in the airport hotel overnight in Delhi, then got on a flight that stopped in South India before landing in Male (the capital of the Maldives), had a two hour wait at the Male airport and then took an hour-long seaplane ride to Vommuli island. Luckily I was able to sleep on most of the flights and arrived relatively fresh, but man it was a doozy!

It’s hard to put into words how amazing this trip and this resort were. I would definitely say it’s the perfect place for a honeymoon or an anniversary trip (Damian, we’ll be there in 5 years right?). The overwater bungalow was private, luxurious and amazingly well-attended (we had our own butler, etc. etc.). The island itself was tiny (we could bike around it in about 5 minutes max), but with amazing food, drinks and atmosphere at the different restaurants and bar on site. And the sea life WOW. Words can’t really do it justice so I made the below video to share with friends and family (that turtle at the end swam with us for 40 minutes or so, it was one of the most amazing experiences of my life!).

In fact, we enjoyed our time so much (and we had traveled so far) that we ended up extending our original 7-day trip to 9-days and it was definitely worth it. For those who can’t see / watch the video above here is the link to it in YouTube and below are some pictures from the trip as well.

The deck of our bungalow was amazing. Very simple and modern, but with it’s own pool, a sofa, lounge chairs and a dining set, hammocks to relax over the ocean and stairs down to go right into the ocean and snorkel. One of the sad things about the Maldives is that about 95% of the coral is dead because of coral bleaching (a result of global warming). It was hard to see and not feel sad, but other plants have started to grow on the coral and there was still an abundance of sea life.

We had our daily routine down pat. We would wake up at 7am (right around sunrise), bike over to breakfast and then eat the most amazing breakfast buffet for about an hour and a half. Then we would go to the beach, apply sunblock (SPF50 at minimum!) and sit under the umbrellas doing the New York Times crossword puzzle while letting our sunblock soak in. Then we’d head off and snorkel for an hour or two, eat a snack and do another activity (stand up paddleboarding, etc.). In the early afternoon we’d head back to our deck and relax, read books, swim in our pool, do some snorkeling around our bungalow and relax until the sun set around 6:30pm. Then it would already be time for a shower, dinner and in bed and asleep by 9pm. Island life definitely agreed with us!

We had so much fun being silly and just enjoying the days together. And, we learned that the Apple Watch makes for an AMAZING remote for the iPhone. You can even see the picture the remote is going to take in the watch itself before it takes it!

But, one of the biggest highlights (if not THE biggest highlight) of the trip was all the snorkeling we did. We loved swimming around hand-in-hand observing so much amazing sealife up close. We saw so many different types of fishes and then turtles and sharks and squids and eels and octopi and so much more amazingness. It’s such a jaw-dropping world out there that I wish we had every minute of every day to explore it.

I could write about this trip for days but that’s all for now.  And, we’re getting close to lift off for the big kahuna of a trip, can’t believe it is almost here!