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A delightful lunch at our hotel with Lloyd and Fiona, Australian friends we met on our cruise to Antarctica

Every now and then a friend will tell us they checked our blog for ideas before planning a trip somewhere. That might be a good idea — advice we should have followed ourselves when planning this trip!

We decided to conclude this trip with a final stay in Nusa Dua, one of just a few spots in Bali with resorts that are truly beach-oriented. But nine years ago we did the same thing — ended a long stay in Bali with a beach stop in Nusa Dua — and then wrote a blog post that was pretty unflattering to the place.

Our complaint then was that dining options outside the fancy resorts were surprisingly poor. When we travel, we invest quite a bit of time researching restaurants. And the result is that we very rarely have a meal that isn’t pretty good. We love food, and a missed opportunity for a good meal while traveling feels like a tragic loss.

It turns out things had not changed here in Nusa Dua, and we find it very odd. There is a huge tourist population here, including a lot of people staying at pretty high-end resorts. Because we’re not the only people who tire of overly fussy resort food (and resort food prices), you can usually find good quality independent restaurants in places like this. But it’s strangely just not the case here.

That leaves us with three options:

1) Eat at nice resorts. This we did plenty of because our hotel had a truly excellent restaurant, just not the kind of place we want to eat every day. Plus a neighboring resort had a somewhat more casual poolside restaurant that worked well for lunch.

2) Take a car somewhere. We don’t always love the hassle of this, but the Grab ride-sharing system here is so good and inexpensive that we did this a few times. One night we even traveled 25 minutes each way to a pretty amazing place in Jimbaran called Cuca.

3) Give the local independent restaurants another chance. Many restaurants are clustered in a Nusa Dua development called Bali Collection. It’s a really bustling place with a ton of physically attractive restaurants with indoor/outdoor seating, good lighting, and a wide variety of cuisines. One night we went to an Indonesian place with decent reviews, but we left feeling like we’d had a decidedly mediocre dinner (i.e., a failure). A couple nights later we tried a nearby “French” place we’d liked the looks of. And the food was positively terrible.

Because we have good survival skills, we managed to have a lovely time here in Nusa Dua, despite these epicurean setbacks. We stayed at a St. Regis resort, where we had a beautiful room with a lovely deck with a heated private pool and direct access to a “salt-water lagoon.” The latter turned out to be a huge, sprawling, wonderfully warm salt-water pool surrounded by incredibly lush tropical gardens. And of course there is a big wide sandy beach.

Our living room at the St. Regis

In the “lagoon” looking back at our room, with the entrance to the left and our “bale” lounge space on the right

Lounging areas along the lagoon

There was also a big fresh-water pool

Our patio and pool, with the lagoon just behind it, after a morning rainstorm came out of nowhere. It poured fiercely for a few minutes, then cleared up like nothing had ever happened.

The resort grounds just after the rain came and went

But the highlight of our stay was a visit from our Australian friends Fiona and Lloyd. We met these fun people on our 18-day cruise to Antarctica last winter. We’d discovered back then that we had similar long trips planned to Bali, just barely overlapping. So we made a point to get together just after their arrival. It was so much fun to see them that we all marveled over the fact that we’d only just met earlier THIS year.

Lloyd and Fiona are travel maniacs who retired on the young side and are determined to make the most of their adventurous spirit while they can. While they still live on the Gold Coast in Queensland, they are on the road much more than at home. We don’t often meet people who travel more than we do (Looking at you, Aunt Debbie). Makes us long for our earlier days of full-time travel, when we never had to suffer that indignity.

Thus we wrapped up a fantastic five weeks on the magical island of Bali. I write this on the plane as we approach Singapore, where we will catch a quick 18-hour flight home. We look forward to being back in New York and taking a few more trips planned for this summer and fall. But I can’t help wondering when we’ll get back to Bali.

Jim and Fiona coordinated their outfits

Despite all those bad things I said about food in Nusa Dua, this was Jim’s stunning Tasmanian salmon dish at lunch with Lloyd & Fiona

One evening we trekked by car to a wonderful Japanese place

Walking along the sandy beach back from lunch at the resort next door

The scene of our “mediocre” dinner; we didn’t bother taking any pictures at the truly awful place later on

A frangipani blossom on the lagoon

You really should not dive into our pool. That guy looks like he is in some serious trouble.

Did I mention how amazing that lagoon was?