Happy Wednesday! 

I hope your week is going well so far :) The weather has been beautiful in Melbourne this week. It's hard being back at work when it's so nice out. I am excited because our friends have been travelling around Australia but they will be back with us this weekend and I can't wait to show them around our city.  

Tj and I are missing our Bali trip. We are already trying to figure out when we can go back again. After our first few days in Seminyak (read about it here), we went to Ubud! 

To get there, we hired a driver for the full day (10 hours for about 70$). Our driver's name was Putu and he was awesome. Putu picked us up at our villa and then we were off on our next adventure!

Driving around in Bali is not like driving in Canada or Australia. It’s so crazy! The lanes felt like suggestions. The roads are narrow and there were always cars parked on both sides and scooters flying by everywhere. I would definitely only trust a local to get us around. On top of that, there was a Balinese festival that day so everything was extra busy. 

We stopped at Garuda Wisnu Kencana Cultural Park, which was really pretty, but it was very busy because of the festival. We had to wait in a line to get a bus from the parking lot to get in, and then a line for tickets, and then a line for a golf cart to take us to the top, and then a line to get back down. And it was HOT. I’m definitely glad we stopped there, it I just wish it hadn’t been so busy so we would've had more time to enjoy it. 

Next, we went to Sunday’s Beach Club in Uluwatu. It is in the opposite direction to Ubud, but we really wanted to spend some time at the beach. The cover charge was about $35 but $20 of that goes towards your food and drinks. The beach is down a cliff, so you walk down a bunch of stairs and then take a gondola and then walk down some more stairs. We had a lovely lunch (in the shade!) and then snagged some beanbags on the sand and went swimming. The water was warm and clear and the waves weren’t too big. We hung out for a bit and then hiked back up and went swimming in the pool.

Our drive to Ubud was only 50 km from Sunday's but it took over two hours to drive there. It was a long day but we definitely made the most of it and got to see some new things.

Check back next week to read more about our Bali trip!