After the evening rain, this morning is fairly clear as we head out early in the morning for a walk along the beach promenade. Today, we walk in the other direction, down past all the expensive resorts (Intercontinental, Hyatt Regency, etc.) and back out into the main street where we find a nice little restaurant for some excellent iced cappuccino before calling for a Grab to take us into Denpasar proper.
It is at least a 30 minute drive – ugh, the traffic – but we arrive safe and sound at the Bali Museum, and the sweet driver asks how long we’ll be – wanting a round trip booking, obviously, but we want to meander a bit after visiting the museum. We pay our entrance fee and wander through the traditional buildings and gardens – really pretty – and into the few exhibitions there. There are some great artifacts, like a lamp in the shape of a floating ship, beautiful wood carvings, as well as figurines used in the Bhuta Yadnya ritual to neutralize evil spirits.
There were other figurines for fertility, a great magical coin collection.
Probably the best thing about the museum was the architecture of the gardens surrounding the buildings. It was beautiful, just wandering through the gates and gardens and little hidden ponds.
Done with the museum, we head out into the city. We had intended to visit the temple next door, but a guy outside was trying to tell us we needed sarongs, even though we were both in long pants, and we decided to ditch it and move on. Passing the Lapangan Puputan Badung square with the King I Gusti Ngurah Made Agung statue honoring the King and the heroic event that led to the defeat of the invading Dutch forces in 1906.
From there, we head down Gajah Mada, past the Brahma statue in the intersection, over the river to the Kumbasari market. This is supposedly the best place to buy clothing and souvenirs in Denpasar. It is a 3 story market, clothing on the first floor, souvenirs on the 2nd and art on the 3rd – but we really didn’t find anything of interest. We’re looking for a batik shirt for Ed and I wanted some more pants and maybe a dress, but nothing really appealed, plus there are these “guides” or what have you, that follow you around to “help” you. Annoying. We quickly gave up on the shopping, heading back over the river to the Badung market – the food market. Same thing here – totally annoying “guide” that attached herself to us, no food stalls – at least none we could see or none that were open – and well, it just wasn’t happening for us.
Abort. We came. We saw. We went back to Sanur! I mean, why not? We know we can get lunch there at any number of restaurants, so we ordered a Grab and headed back to our side of town. Our intention was to go to the Retro café, but ended up at Teras, their sister bar, which is right next door (we ended up there because the Retro sign was right above the entrance to Teras – we didn’t see the restaurant was next door. No harm, no foul! They have the same menu and Teras has an air conditioned area which was heavenly. We had an adorable waitress, good wine, good beer and a fabulous lunch of lumpia (yay), chicken satay with peanut sauce and crispy babek (duck) for Ed. Perfect choice.
Back at home, we hit the pool – heaven! – then later ventured out to Kuu Izakaya, a highly rated Japanese restaurant down the street. The ratings are well deserved! We had a fabulous meal that began with 2 for 1 drinks (happy hour), a free appetizer of beef croquette, pickled cucumber and some tofu-like thing with spicy greens. Wonderful way to start. We then shared chicken gyoza, octopus salad, tuna tataki and finally broccoli and snapper tempura. All excellent. A perfect meal to end our day.
The rest of our evening was spent watching 6 Feet Under while torrential rain poured down outside. Fingers crossed for tomorrow’s all day tour.
Andiamo 