Best of the Maldives: Dining Times – Palm Beach

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Palm Beach sushi

Also considering dubbing this distinction ‘Best for Grazing’.

Lots of top resorts offer all sorts of custom services, but even there the meals are most often confined to specific serving times. When we are plotting our holiday days, we do often pivot around meal times. Getting up early enough for breakfast before an excursion, fitting in a bite for lunch, leaving the bar before the buffet closes.

If such dining schedule constraints weigh on you, then Palm Beach is the resort to consider. They have the longest standard serving times of any resort I have come across.

  • Breakfast 8:00 – 1:00 (!)
  • Lunch 1:00 – 2:30
  • Tea 4:30 – 7:00 (crepes, cookies, cakes)
  • Appetizers 7:45 – 8:40 (Italian antipasti, sushi – see photo above at sushi station)
  • Dinner 8:30 – 10:00

Only 2 hours and 45 minutes when food not available during the day. Inclusive that is. You can always order a la carte from a number of places throughout the day. The generosity of serving times reminded me of cruise boats who have mastered this approach for year offering food pretty much non-stop throughout the day.

Fancy a bite? No problem.

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Best of the Maldives: Custom Breakfast – W Retreat

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W Retreat breakfast 2

The ultra-5-stars will do anything for you at the drop of a hat and W Retreat is certainly right up there with obsessive service. But usually, breakfast is a fairly self-service situation at most resorts with a smorgasbord of morning delights on offer to provide more than enough choice for most people to craft their own well suited breakfast. Some things are prepared to order especially the ubiquitous ‘Egg Station’ and often a ‘Pancake Station’ (which will do waffles too).

But the W Retreat has taken the preparation stations to a whole new level at their breakfasts where everything is made to order custom to your requirements. I certainly pushed the Egg Station to limits I hadn’t yet experienced at a resort getting myself fresh Egg Benedict (with freshly made, not pre-prepared, Hollandaise Sauce). For beverages, I had a custom made Fruit Smoothie with fruits I hand picked from their literal cornucopia. For the Japanese visitors, the popular breakfast item of Miso soup was custom prepared (not sitting simmering in a big vat) and you can choose your own spices and added ingredients to include (see photo above).

But the quintessence of personalisation is their coffee mugs. They offer a vast assortment of unique, colourful mugs (see below). When you choose one, that mug becomes YOUR mug for the entire stay. They keep track of whose mugs is whose and serve you in your OWN personal mug.

W Retreat mugs

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Best of the Maldives: Traditional Floating Breakfast: Kanuhura

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Kanuhura traditional floating breakfast

The iconic Maldivian dhoni inspires many features at Maldive resorts beyond the arrival lounge. In fact, you can even go to the eponymous Dhoni Island (well, used to be able to…now it is shut down). If you want to start your day with such a maritime cultural inspiration, then go to Kanuhura for their ‘Dhoni Breakfast’. The elegant morning meal is served by a personal waiter on a Kuda Dhoni (a small Maldivian traditional boat) while you enjoy the sun rise over the water.

When we visited Conrad Rangali with my parents, we took the Goma (which was still in active service) for a breakfast cruise and found it a refreshing experience which evokes one of his favourite blessings is from Winslow Homer…

“The sun will not rise or set without my notice and thanks.”

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Best of the Maldives: Therapeutic Arrival – Anantara Dhigu

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Anantara Dhigu welcome massage

“I don’t even know half these people!”– 12 pains of Christmas, Twisted Christmas

As delightful as holiday greetings are to receive, sending them can be an exhausting tasks. If hours hunched over the kitchen table scrawling out notes can brings on sore shoulders and writers cramp, then the greeting you need is Anantara’s. After a traditional Thai greeting of a discrete bow with clasped hands, an Anantara spa therapist offers a 5 minute head and neck massage while you are sitting in reception and registering. Not only one of the best first impressions ever, but also smart marketing of free samples to promote the spa (it didn’t take my wife much thinking or delay to sign up for the full treatment at Anantara Spa).

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Best of the Maldives: Personalised Greeting – W Retreat

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W Retreat gift

Happy Advent!

The official T-minus countdown to the big Christmas celebration. Typically marked by the daily ritual of opening an Advent Calendar window which builds the anticipation and exercises the ‘opening’ muscles so you don’t hurt yourself from over exertion on Christmas morning.

The other big Advent tradition is Christmas greetings. The mail will start to swell with colourful messages from friends and family near and far. In the USA, there is a prominent school of yuletide greetings, which my wife Lori prescribe, which provides a personal touch by making their own cards, typically including a family photo as well as a brief update of the year gone by. Our 2011 creation (see photo below of inside at bottom) features a snapshot of our July trip to the Maldives as well as a reference to my Dad’s seaside-centric book, Shorelines, that I mentioned last week.

As it happens, ‘Greetings’ are a big part of the Maldives resort experience. With every resort on its own island, there is always a build of anticipation as you cross the ocean by speedboat or by seaplane and suddenly ‘your island’ emerges in the distance. Most resorts cap this grand arrival with their own special touches. The cooling, scented cloth and refreshing tropical drink are de rigeur. But on top of those, they add even more special welcomes. I’ve already written Komandoo’s A Cappella Greeting.

In honour of this resort ‘Greeting’ tradition in this very Season of Greetings, this entire week I will be featuring various distinctive greetings from the Maldives resorts. I’ve also broken out a special ‘Greeting’ tag/category on the Best of Maldives page. The first to feature is one that speaks to the personal touch and photographic approach of American Xmas cards – W Retreat.

W Retreat starts its greeting at the seaplane terminal with its own, top flight (pun intended) transfer lounge. As you approach the lounge, a staff member comes out to greet you and takes your picture next to the hotel crest. Its ‘Welcome Mat’ at the entrance says ‘Good Morning’ (and changes 3 times a day to ‘Good Afternoon’ and ‘Good Evening’). Instead of starting your stay with paperwork, that is an underwhelming formality at most resorts, the W welcomes you by sitting down with you to take your details and get to know you. Below I have a picture of my welcome by Mohamed Nirumal.

But the real treat, so simple yet so effective, is that when you take your seaplane ride and get ushered to your room, on your table is a frame photo of you taken back at the lounge (see above). Not only is it one of the most personal welcome gifts you will ever get at a resort, but all the staff at the resort use the photo on file to know who you are so they can give completely individualised service including calling you by name (one of the questions they ask in the personal interview is how you liked to be addressed).

WoW!

W Retreat registration

Lynn-holiday-greeting-small

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Best of the Maldives: Sizzling Food – Meeru

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Meeru Hot Rocks Restaurant

 

If you’re looking for hot foods instead of hot drinks, then Meeru’s Hot Rock Restaurant’s delicacies sizzle all the way to your table and then some…

“Featuring seafood, steak, chicken or exotic game cooked at your table on volcanic “hot rocks”.  Located on the Pavilion Bar Pool deck.”

For a full, detailed review check out this comprehensive write up complete with plenty of pictures by ‘Humble Jim’s Pam’ on the Meeru forum…

“By day you can get the impression the Hot Rock is 'just’ a snack bar. But that would be so very misleading. We were bowled over by the service, quality (and quantity for that matter) of the food. We had a beautifully laid out table and were positioned just by the infinity pool with another couple nearby at another table… There was Kangaroo as well as Ostrich on the main menu but we both had decided to go for the Brazilian beef fillet…Even though we were new to the whole Hot Rock thing we soon got going with it…I can honestly say it was the best beef I have tasted anywhere and as a Yorkshire girl I can tell you that's saying something really profound. Before too long it was 'Mission Accomplished' on the lava front!”

 

Meeru - Hot Rocks restaurant

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Best of the Maldives: Hot Drinks Cafe – Kandooma

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Kandooma Bokkuraa Cofffee Club

 

At first glance, one would expect that refreshing pina coladas and tropical coolers would be more the order of the day than a steaming mug of brew. Coffee and tea is more the craving for those colder, cloudier climes (like today which saw our first frost of the year at our home in England).

But for those visitors like myself who hail from those areas, our caffeine and other pet addictions don’t necessarily disappear despite the sunshine. I still love a satisfying latte in the morning or a cappuccino to top off a lovely meal. I find that one of the find things I have when I get back home is a fresh cup of home brewed coffee as one of the things that I miss during my trips to the Maldives. Relatively few resorts get this important beverage just right by the standards of the European and American cafe and Starbucks culture (though the rise and popularity of Nespresso machines have become de rigeur accessories for a 5-star room these days). Those that do don’t have anywhere near the decadent array of choice that we are also spoiled by. But Kandooma has introduced its Bokkuraa Coffee Club with a broad range of specialty coffees and teas served in an stylish outdoor cafe. It even has soy milk.

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Best of the Maldives: Dive Centre Shirts – Palm Beach

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Palm Beach dive shirts 2

 

Today is the biggest shopping day of the year in the world It is the biggest shopping day in the biggest consumer economy in the world. ‘Black Friday’ as in dubbed. ‘Black’ as in both ‘in the black’ (like the stores P&L’s expect to be at the end, and ‘black’ as in horrendously frenetic.

My wife has a ritual of buying a t-shirt from every dive centre that she has dived from. Some are basic and some are better. As I have previously written, one of my pet peeves is when resorts don’t have nice t-shirts for sale. The pedestrian white shirts with dodgy appliqué graphics of fish just don’t do it for me. Get some decent cotton, a subtle colour and do some subtle styling.

That is what the Palm Beach Dive Centre has done. Not surprising with the Italian characteristic flair for style. They had the most extensive array of tops we have ever come upon in the Maldives. All with appealing colours. All of the decoration is embroidered tastefully.

You may not think of the Maldives for holiday shopping any more than you would think of Target for romance, but this MSNBC report dispels that myth as well.

Happy Shopping!

 

Palm Beach dive shirts

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