Greetings from Ubud!

We safely arrived in paradise at about 2 AM. The flight was atrocious but our villa made up for it in a matter of seconds (during which we walked around with our mouths open, quite sure that he must be showing is several rooms at once). Kajane Mua is hands down the nicest place I’ve ever stayed… our villa has two full bathrooms, several ‘sitting areas,’ a king sized bed and our own private pool! They decorated it with flower petals and a nice note that said “Happy honeymoon Mr./s. Johanna Elsemore (only four names are used here, with the exception of nick names, and they are all unisex, so they weren’t sure which of us was Johanna… now I know how Courtney feels). Folks here couldn’t be nicer — in fact we have to be strategic about asking for room service because we end up having people bringing us things for hours. It’s been beautiful weather so far and everything, everywhere smells good. Everything is ridiculously cheap too (except wine).

The hotel provides bicycles, so we took a four hour bike ride (longer than we’ve slept, note) today up to the rice terraces and trekked around — truly magnificent. Then dinner and a little bit of dancing at a reggae bar. Tomorrow we’re doing a Balinese cooking 5 course cooking class, complete with a trip to the local produce market. We get to keep the recipes, so hopefully I can recreate!

Many pictures to come, but just wanted to let you all know we’ve arrived safely and may choose to move here permanently.

Johanna