HAPPY ST. PADDY’S DAY!

What a memorable St. Paddy’s Day we had in Ubud today!  No corn beef and hash.  No green beer.  No Irish pub filled with people partying.  But we lucked into a wonderful taxi driver who spoke great English (and overfilled our poor brains with information on all the Balinese Hinduism traditions) and who drove us to three outstanding places!  

1. TEGALALANG RICE TERRACE:  Oh my goodness, even after everything we read and all the pictures we had seen online of these rice terraces, NOTHING prepared us for how magnificent they really were!

 

2. TEGENUNGAN WATERFALL:  This waterfall wasn’t far from Ubud and our driver told us it was one of the favorites.  It was beautiful, and although we chose not to make the trek all the way down to the base (we didn’t want to trek all the way back up again), we think what we saw was pretty darn spectacular!

3. TEBA SARI:  This was a nearby coffee “plantation” and our last destination with this driver.  It really wasn’t so much a plantation as a demonstration on how coffee is made and flavored!  It was a beautiful setting and we learned a LOT about Luwak coffee, oh my! 😳

John enjoyed a flight of flavored coffees and teas while I enjoyed my very first Luwak black coffee!

After our tour ended, we were pooped and HOT!  Nothing that a dip in our “private” pool couldn’t cure!  Our hotel offered a free tour to see white herons that we had signed up for yesterday.  We had no idea what to expect.  A driver picked us up (just John and I) and drove for about twenty minutes through an area we had never seen.  That drive alone was pretty awesome!  But then we stopped, got out of the car, and he pointed to the trees! SAY WHAAAAT?

                                   

We had never seen anything like it.  Our driver said no one really knows why they choose to stay in those trees in a village in the middle of a jungle with temples everywhere!

And, finally, we enjoyed a very quiet dinner (we were the only ones there) in a very popular vegetarian restaurant!  No corn beef and cabbage for us.  No green beer either.  But we came back to our room, FaceTimed Jan and Joe, and shared a Guinness/Bintang/coffee toast!

Happy St. Paddy’s Day, everyone!