Birthday bliss in Bali

Years ago Justin started an epic tradition of incredible trips to celebrate my birthday. Covid put quite a halt on those plans for the last two years so this year, as I got ready to celebrate my 40th, I was hoping we could do something epic.

After some very generous childcare coverage sorted out, we did it…the most epic 40th birthday trip ever…to BALI!

Here are all the ingredients for what was my perfect birthday trip.

No kids 🙂

This was our first time leaving the girls for more than one night. Even being at the airport felt luxurious. And every moment of the trip was so freeing. This would have been a tough place to bring little ones (no sidewalks to push prams, tricky to get around with little ones…) so it was the perfect place to come on our own.

Incredible accommodations

Justin outdid himself with searching for an amazing place and found 111 Resorts, a property with nine private villas, each with their own pool, massage pagoda and kitchen.

Of course, Justin also found an amazing deal off of the room (and all food+spa treatments) so we also had breakfast cooked for us every morning. We even opted for a floating breakfast in the pool one morning!

We had daily massages and spa treatments as we listened to the birds and the bubbling sound of the pool. It was incredible.

It was hard to tear ourselves away from our place (and why should we when it is that great) but there were a few other incredible highlights

Our home base — Seminyak

There is so much to do in Bali and so many different areas of the island. I knew I wanted to spend most of this trip relaxing and not driving for hours to see different parts of the island (although there are some gorgeous areas and next time I’ll want to see Ubud and Pantai Nunggalan). Rather than explore a bunch this time we picked one, Seminyak, and made that our home. We loved being in an area with more action, lots of restaurants and shops . And it is so nice that everything is super walkable. We wanted to be near the beach to see the epic sunsets, which we saw almost every night.

One night we were strolling on the beach at sunset and came across a great beach bar with bean bags, house music and a very cool vibe — so we stopped and got a drink.

Then we strolled back to go to dinner and came across another beach restaurant with really good live music, so we rocked up to their bean bags and enjoyed some dinner and music.

Our nights were filled with leisurely walks home, a stop into different shops or stalls, grabbing some dessert or trying on a dress, enjoying the buzz in the streets and coming home to our villa in paradise.

Diving

The one thing I really wanted to do on this trip was to go diving. Due to Covid, and being pregnant, it had been three years since I last went diving and diving here was EXCELLENT!

We found Nico Dives Cool, an amazing dive shop and we were so lucky to have Toto as our master diver. Not only has he done almost 17k dives, he is also a photographer, so these shots are all thanks to him!

We went diving around the island of Nusa Penida. The first, and most epic spot was Manta Point. We saw black and white manta rays that were over 4 meters wide. It was unlike anything I’ve ever seen.

We then went to Crystal Bay and saw beautiful coral and a seahorse.

And our last dive was a drift dive among the most colorful coral, anemones and some really huge turtles (over 1 meter wide). It was amazing!

The food

We didn’t fall in love with Balinese food, but we sure tried…every night! We often found a good mie goreng or chicken satay. We definitely got some great pics!