Our Wedding - The Wedding Deck on top of Aspen Mountain
14th September
2008
written by bob

Thursday, September 11

Today we got up early (7am) despite the hotel not remembering to give our requested wake-up call. We have scheduled a morning whale & dolphin watching boat tour with Dr. Michael Poole. The boat picked us up at 8:30 and we headed for the openings in the reefs. Dolphins and whales use these as protection from predators like sharks and killer (orca) whales. At the first stop, we were fortunate enough to see a large group of spinner dolphins. The spinner dolphin gets it name from the acrobatics it performs when jumping out of the water; it spins in the air. I snapped several pictures of the little guys and their spinning performances. We moved on further once the spinners decided to head out to sea a bit. We went across the northern shore to the west end without any success in spotting any whales. However, there was this annoying elderly couple (mid-60’s) that ended up splitting seats on either side of the boat. Unfortunately for Katherine and I, we were seated in the row in front of chatty Kathy. We would come to realize we regretted our choice of seats later in the tour. Ever since the first minute we left he dock, this woman would not shut up. It was impossible not to overhear her conversation with everyone in her vicinity and I amazed that she was truly an “expert” in all facets of everything! Damn, she must be a millionaire! She actually engaged us in a brief (thank god) conversation about where we were from. Our savior, the woman seated behind chatty Kathy asked her a question and ultimately rescued us from any further ear vandalism. By the end of the tour I think the other woman’s 2 ears had fallen off from listening to Kathy for 4 hours! We must have over-heard the same story 3 times from this woman and to top it off she kept calling over to her husband on the other side of the boat – about what it is that he was seeing from his vantage point. Man, no wonder he volunteered to sit on the other side of the boat to balance it out; he probably just wanted to get away from her on the tour since he knew what he was going to be subjected to! Poor man! Seriously, I would pay a doctor to diagnose me as clinically deaf if I was married to her!! It would be worth every penny. Unfortunately for us on this tour we did not get to see any whales despite it being whale season here. Kathy kept moaning and groaning about not getting to see any whales either, that at one point I was about to tie her up like a pretzel and throw her overboard! I’m sure she would have looked like a whale flopping around trying to untie herself! Hahaha!! You know when you are on vacation and you always hear the loud obnoxious people, you can pretty much guess they are Americans! I can’t count how many times here we have run into that. Even my wife, who’s American, was the first to point it out every time! Do they ALWAYS have to be the loudest in every situation? No wonder Americans have a bad name when they travel! I won’t even start with the quartet of American tourists that we encountered at Le Sud Restaurant on Moorea. Let’s just say it’s a good thing the waitress cleared all our utensils from the table because by the end of dinner I was looking for 2 forks to gauge my eyes and ears out with!

We gathered our stuff and were shuttled to the Moorea Airport. I have been to some small airports before but this airport is SMALL! And, it seems, there are 3 resident cats that live and roam about. The ticket counter is one booth, the weigh scales are manual scales that you could stand on and watch the needle point out your weight, and the x-ray machine – is 2 Tahitian guys that would much rather play guitar as they load your bags onto the cart. The flight to Bora Bora was a short 45 minutes but just long enough that I was able to catch a quick nap prior to landing. Ok, so I thought the Moorea Airport was small, the Bora Bora (BOB) airport was even smaller, if you can believe that! Once we found our bags, Katherine and I boarded a large shuttle boat to take us to the Resort. Here, we were staying at the Bora Bora Lagoon Resort & Spa. I have to say, it is a very beautiful place! We have a great view of Mount Otemana as our resort is located on one of the outlying crater rims. Overall, French Polynesia (Tahiti, Moorea, and Bora Bora) is a VERY beautiful place and I couldn’t think of a better place to spend time with my new wife, Katherine!! We are definitely enjoying ourselves.

We figured that we would just cruise over to the “city” and walk to someplace to eat. We knew that we had to take the hotel’s water ferry across but figured we could just walk to a small place for something simple. Thankfully I asked the reception desk about any suggestions for eating once we got across and he asked if we had anything booked as this was required…nope, didn’t know that! So he suggested the St. James and we went down to the dock to wait for the boat. Holy crap was it windy, I honestly thought I’d get blown into the water and here Bob is standing on the very edge to look at the myriad fishies hanging out in the spotlight under the dock. The ferry arrived actually a little early as I think it was carrying the Polynesian dancers and band to the hotel for that night’s performance. We got to the other side in the highly choppy and very fast little boat and were picked up for dinner.

When we got there I was a little surprised at the quaint and very romantic little restaurant. It is actually on the water but because of the wind we decided to eat inside. The staff spoke excellent English and the gent that seated us I assume is the owner and/or manager. He came over to the table shortly after we were seated and asked about my last name…turns out he is from LaRochelle in France! Such a small world…honestly it’s trips like this that make we want to hold onto my last name…everyone here is VERY comfortable with it and most everyone even knows the town and its history, location, etc. so it’s kind of fun for me. In the states everyone is a lot more comfortable with Bob’s name and mine usually ends up getting butchered.

The menu is so good that I really struggle with what I want to eat. Once Bob says that he is for sure heading for the fish I turn to the land selections. It’s a toss up between the beef filet with a mushroom cream sauce and potatoes au gratin or a roasted duck breast with blueberry sauce and vegetables. I make a game-time decision and go for the beef…obviously not really local, but I figure it is probably pretty good. Bob gets the Parrot fish stuffed with crab and sautéed vegetables (on my list for the fish side). We opt to skip the appetizer as we have not been left hungry anywhere on this trip, quite the opposite and we want to try a dessert if we have room. We choose a bottle of wine…they are out of nearly all the regular sized bottles of anything for less than $80 so we go to one of our last choices a Loire valley choice that turns out to be great…just like all the French wines we have had here so far (honestly, what a treat to be able to walk into the supermarket that has barely any food or drink that we are used to and the selection is akin to what we would get at the 7-11 yet be able to pick from between 50-100 different French wines at quite a reasonable price.)

OMG the rolls…seriously…I thought I had died and gone to bread heaven. I didn’t think that Bob liked the doughy, “almost not done” bread, but it turns out that he actually does. So…these things kicked some serious butt from both our perspectives…I was good and only ate half of mine, Bob ate the other half, of course. Main courses arrive, wow, wonderful. I don’t like mushrooms and this filet was covered in a morel mushroom sauce, but I actually don’t mind mushroom cream sauces…I just removed the actual mushroom from the top of the steak and dug in. Perfect…really, really good. The au gratin potatoes were damn good as well. Bob got to share quite a bit of these along with a good chunk of steak. I tried his parrot fish and was pleasantly surprised at its buttery texture and non-fish taste. We ate everything…even the decorative vegetables around the plate.

We received from our very perceptive waitress the menu again for the desert choice and selected a crème brule with local vanilla. It came with a scoop of vanilla ice cream and seriously, this was the BEST crème brule I have ever had and I consider myself somewhat of a connoisseur of this particular desert. Wow…Bob doesn’t even really like this very much usually (in the context of Bob not caring for anything sweet…) but I was fighting him for the last of it!
We took a walk around the rest of the restaurant at the point and saw the very lovely over-water seating areas…quite a nice place. I made a point to go over to the gent who had seated us and the chef happened to be there with him. I raved about our food and paid them our compliments. I will include the restaurant’s URL in this blog as well…truly a very nice place and I thank the young fella at reception for suggesting it, wonderful.

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