Honeymoon Part One: Fiji!

Hello friends. Happy 2015! A new year is here and it's gonna be great :)

We have been back from our honeymoon for about two weeks now and I'm in serious withdrawals. We had the BEST time. Seriously, it was probably the best trip I've ever been on. We were away for two full weeks and we really did it up while we were gone. We relaxed and we did fun activities and we went sightseeing and acted like tourists and ate amazing food and just really enjoyed each other's company... it was the best. 

I am going to break up these recaps into three different posts because otherwise, you'll be here reading into 2016! We took like 500 photos and I will try to refrain from posting 499 of them :)

So first... FIJI!!!

We flew to Nadi, Fiji on Air Fiji on Saturday, December 20th on the redeye (with a TON of luggage in tow... oops). The flight was 10.5 hours and it passed super quickly - we sat in business class and they fed us constantly and had a million movies so Ram was in heaven :) Because of the time difference, we didn't arrive until very early in the morning on Monday, December 22nd. We waited a few hours for the town to wake up and then took a ferry to our resort on Malolo Island. 

We stayed at Likuliku Lagoon Resort and it was amazing. I don't really know how to describe it without it sounding like a cliche? It was SO beautiful - crystal clear turquoise water, white powdery sand, unbelievable rainbow sunsets, huge palm trees, the bluest sky with zero clouds, green rainforest-y areas... it is one of the prettiest places I have ever seen!

There are only 45 rooms at the resort - they call them "bures" and each one is a little different. Likuliku is known for being the only resort in Fiji that has the over-water bungalows you see in movies all the time - I had thought about staying in the over-water bures, but our travel agent recommended the Deluxe Beachfront Bures, and I am SO GLAD she did. We had our own little pool on our patio, with a huge comfy daybed and chaise lounges, and we were TEN FEET from the ocean. It was unreal. We could watch the tide go in and out just a few feet away and at night we could hear the waves crashing... so relaxing. Here are some pictures of the room and the patio!

Since this was our first stop, we had just come from work and running around and a million errands and we were in dire need of just plain old time to relax... and that's exactly what we did. We spent our days tanning and walking around the resort and laying on our patio and dipping into our own little pool to cool off.

Likuliku is an all-inclusive resort - usually I am a bit skeptical of all-inclusives because I feel like sometimes the quality can suffer, but everything here was wonderful. All the staff was SO GENUINELY KIND - the Fijian people are truly lovely. Within a few hours of us being there, the staff all knew our names and what room number we were in and said hello ("Bula!" in Fijian) everywhere we went. The food was amazing - you all know I am a major foodie - and the Liku restaurant had an amazing chef who changes the menu for every single meal! We loved everything we ate (and the drinks were so good I even had a couple)!

Other highlights: one day we took a kayak out (I got scared and so Rami had to return me to shore and then strike out on his own). He also went snorkeling (I waited until the Great Barrier Reef... more on that later) and saw a stingray! We saw Fiji mudcrabs and frogs everywhere - they run away from people so I wasn't too scared of them :) We each read four books and slept ten hours every night and had a great couples massage (Rami even fell asleep). We took silly photos in our little pool with our underwater camera. It was just so relaxing. It FELT like a honeymoon - does that make sense? Literally the only downside of the entire week was the mosquitos... they were out of control (they bit me EVERYWHERE including my FACE)!

We were there over Christmas Eve and Christmas and it was so nice to see how the Fiji people celebrated it! On Christmas Eve, the restaurant put on a gorgeous eight course meal and the staff wore hats and sang Christmas carols. The next day, we were treated to an amazing Fiji BBQ complete with a giant meat platter and little gingerbread houses, and when we went back to our room after dinner, we found Christmas gifts from the staff - amazing little lotions and soaps and a framed photo of us from the day we arrived!

More pictures of the island... seriously ridiculously gorgeous:

 If you are thinking of going to Fiji for your honeymoon... I highly recommend it! It is seriously the most beautiful place and it was so, so relaxing. We loved Likuliku and would go back again in a heartbeat. We were there for four and a half days and I was so sad to leave... but little did I know, the best was yet to come! :)