Thursday, 1/23 – First of 3 do nothing days.  We walked the beach promenade in the morning, had iced cappuccino at Luhtu’s (not as cheap as the Jungle Tree café the other day – but still good), hit the beach market, meh.  Wandered through Icon to the grocery store there and finally picked up some jackfruit for me, octopus tako for Ed, then walked to the Arta Sedana, our main grocery store, for tuna filets (we’ve been trying to buy these every day, but you have to get here early!!!) – they only cost $1.26 each.  Seriously.  Ed also bought his Batik shirt, so we are now fully stocked!

Back at the villa, we hung out for the afternoon, hitting the beach promenade again after lunch.  Passing by these awesome Bedogol statues that are placed on either side of gates and doorways to act as guardians, warding off evil spirits. We just love these 2 “old” spirits – we want to meet the people who own the house – they must be quite the characters!

Then onto the beach walk, this time the other way, through all the high dollar hotel/resorts, past this line of shops and restaurants all in various stages of either being torn down or rehabbed.  It looks like the River Arts District, like maybe a tsunami hit them?  But there isn’t any sign of flooding, other than this short little area along the promenade.  Odd.  And we can’t find anything about it by searching the Internet.  Curiouser and curiouser!  We’ll probably never know, but it keeps us occupied making up stories about what is going on!

A little bit past the tsunami/renovations, we stopped at Tapha, a sweet little independent restaurant on the beach, for afternoon beverages.  While there, one of the “mamas” selling souvenir junk came up and decided to make us her new best friends.  Mama flower – who has a bad leg, 3 daughters and 6 grandchildren, the newest finally a boy baby who is 3 weeks old.  See – we are best friends now!  Anyhow, after 10 minutes of chatting we feel like we should buy something, so we end up with a cute little hairclip that looks like a lily.  25K – $1.50.  Didn’t even negotiate.  I mean, really? How could we with our new best friend who gave us the “Bali” price!

Back home, we hit the pool then hang out the rest of the afternoon until dinner.  Tonight it is El Comedor for seafood.  Great selections, a really good guitar player/singer – and if you can ignore the screaming brats at the table behind us – a lovely evening and meal.  Fried calamari to start – excellent and so tender – then Gindara (black cod or sablefish) and Mahi Mahi for Ed.  Perfectly grilled, perfectly seasoned.  Exactly what we wanted. As we are finishing our meal, the skies open up.  Oh well – that’s what our umbrellas are for!  We linger over the remnants of our drinks as, luckily, the intensity of the rain reduces, and we manage to wade our way home without too much problem – bringing the flashlight along helps immensely along our dark and puddled lane. 

The rest of the night is spent listening to the rain and watching tv.  Another lovely day in Bali.

Friday, 1/24 – It rained all night – as it has virtually every night – but also a little rain shower in the morning, delaying our morning walk.  Probably worked out better actually, as we don’t start walking until around 9 or so, which meant that there was so much more to see along the beach promenade.  Everything is opening up now – the massage places and bars on the beach, the shops and restaurants.  A totally different vibe than on our other morning walk.  We meander down past the Icon and almost to the Mayeur museum before turning back and hitting Luhtu’s for iced cappuccino and this morning, another banana muffin. 

Cooled off and caffeinated, we hit the grocery store for some more Kopiko candy – we love that stuff and it is so cheap here! – as well as cauliflower for our tuna dinner tonight and some more bread for our next 2 days breakfasts and snacks. 

Back at the villa, Kadek has finished cleaning and tells us she is off tomorrow, as Sunday is check out so she has to work then.  Works for us, today was towel day so we have clean towels, the villa is clean, we’ll be fine for our last 2 days.

The rest of the day is spent hanging out, watching TV, blogging and generally hiding from what is now a really hot and sunny day.

Around 3 we go out for our afternoon walk, hitting Tapha for an afternoon beverage, accompanied today with an appetizer of excellent Shumai.  Back home, we hit the pool, then chill for the rest of the night.  We have our tuna for dinner – excellent!!! – I skype with Natalie and then we spend the rest of the night watching our TV shows before heading to bed. 

Saturday, 1/25 – Last day in Sanur!  Same, same, no different!  Well, a little different. This morning we just take it easy and lounge around the Villa for the morning before taking a short mid-morning walk north on the promenade – far enough that we were able to see the Taman Festival ruins in the distance across the bay!

Then to Luhtu’s for iced cappuccino and that fabulous chocolate ball.  Yeah, definitely a routine.  Since it was so late, we headed straight from Luhtu’s to lunch at Teras – we were so hot and we knew they had A/C and a huge menu.  Definitely the right choice – I had a chicken avocado sandwich with cashews that was awesome, and Ed had the best Mahi Mahi – huge and an excellent cream sauce (and fresh from the grocery store!  It took forever to get our food – didn’t matter, we weren’t in a rush – but as we were sitting here, a delivery guy came in with a plastic grocery bag…and lo and behold, our food came out a bit later!  Had to have been the Mahi Mahi!).

Back to the villa and straight into the pool, OMG, we are melting!  Then I napped, Ed read and watched Everybody Loves Raymond.  Later we hit the beach walk again, this time heading to Tapha.  We were so stuffed from lunch, we just wanted snacks, and that place was great.  Well, let me tell you!  Saturday night in Sanur!  The beach walk was crazy busy, bikes, families, kids, Russians…..it was packed.  We luckily found a table at Tapha and hung out there for a couple of hours actually – just sipping our drinks and snacking on an awesome Soto Ayam (first one Ed has ordered – how can that be???) and salt and pepper calamari (excellent) and those amazing Shumai.  A perfect snack fo us. 

Back on the walk….oh lord, get us out of here!….and finally safely home to the sane section of town.  Packing all done…now a nice relaxing evening in front of the TV and tomorrow….The Celebrity Experience!