Shabbos (Saturday)Shabbos was a really relaxing day on the island. Thankfully it wasn’t scorching hot (was still high 70s / low 80s though – perfect Shabbos weather) and there was a nice breeze so being outside and not being able to go swimming was bearable. After waking up and davening, we went to The Dining Room to have some fruit for breakfast again and then just took it easy. We walked around the island, sat out on the jetty for a while and then eventually went back to our room to eat lunch. We brought along some deli and made sandwiches. We considered ordering POM meals and having the hotel heat it up for us before Shabbos and then keeping it in the fridge but we decided that we’d rather have deli sandwiches than cold POM meals.
Ameez told us about the Back of House tour that was taking place on Shabbos afternoon so we went on that a little after lunch and it was actually pretty interesting. They showed us where the staff sleeps and how the whole island is run (everything from HR to garbage disposal). They also explained how they make the water for the island (all the water on the island comes from rain and sea water) and how often shipments of food etc. come in to the island. From the looks of it, it seems like the staff has pretty nice accommodations and are treated very well so that was nice to see.
After the tour, we relaxed in our villa for a bit and then about an hour before Shabbos was over, we went to sit by the beach and watch the sunset as Shabbos came to a close. I obviously don’t have any pictures of it, but you’ll just have to take my word for it that it was beautiful (I’ll include some sunset pictures later in the TR). We bumped into Ameez on the way back to our room so we asked him if he could call the chef to heat up our meal and that if possible, we’d like to eat at The Dining Room. He said of course, so we went back to the room, made Havdallah and then eventually made our way to The Dining Room for dinner. As I mentioned before, the dining room overlooks the main hotel pool so it was really nice to have dinner outside, overlooking the pool, while hearing the (small) ocean waves crash against the shores. We went on the light side for dinner, splitting an Eggplant Rollatini, which we both enjoyed.
View of the pool from The Dining Room at night:
It was a perfectly clear night so after dinner we went back out on to the beach and sat on the lounge chairs under the thousands of stars (as per JJ’s suggestion) – another one of the amazing views that we were privileged to see while in MLE. We eventually made our way back to the villa, went for a short swim in our private pool and went to sleep.
Sorry about the lack of pictures in this part, but I'll go back to posting a lot of pics in the remaining parts!
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