Day 7: Statues and Strawberry Shakes

Today we planned another full day with Rai, our driver/tour guide/babysitter/generally wonderful person. He has really made this trip for us thus far. We have never travelled with a car and driver before, always preferring to take local transit.  But with kids, this is the way to do it.  Obviously, it’s more expensive, but it means we can go at our own pace, and can go whenever and wherever we want.  We are seeing so much more than we did last time.  Rai drives really safely, always thinks of the kids and what they need, and doesn’t push any agenda on us.  And the kids are happy and comfortable, and that’s what counts.

Our driver and new friend, Rai.  Check out the terraced rice fields in the background.

Our plan for the day was to head to the Bali Botanical Gardens, stopping along the mountain road at a strawberry farm to pick and eat yummy mountain grown strawberries.

The Strawberry Stop restaurant was a great place, with play equipment for the kids and yummy strawberry pancakes with vanilla ice cream.  They no longer allow people to pick berries (not sure why). But they had the freshest and most delicious strawberry milkshake I’ve ever tasted, which made up for it. Both kids agreed.

Little J checks out the strawberry plants.  Check out her new dress, scored for $4 at the local market!

Yummy!!

We then made our way to the Botanical Gardens, which are high up at the base of another volcano and are regal and ominous at the same time (see the pics of the statues below to see what I mean). We brought our soccer ball and kicked it around a bit, before heading back to Ubud.

I'll take a sadistic demon with my sweet family pic, please. 

Bali Botanical Gardens.  That's a hulking volcano, Batubau, in the background mist.  By the way, Big J didn't even notice the crazy statue, save for the fact that he wanted to climb it.

Tonight was supposed to be our last night in Ubud, but we are in no way ready to leave.  We thought this might happen.   There is just so much to do in this area, and it’s located centrally so we can easily do day trips without the hassle of moving to a different town.  We plan to do a cycling tour from here in two days. And then we still have more dance performances to see, more poolside relaxing to do, more massages to indulge in, and more shopping to do.  I also plan to do an art class in either silversmithing or batik. So we’re staying another 3 nights.  Then we’ve decided we’ll head to Amed, on the east coast of Bali. We know that once we’re there, our days will be much less action packed, so we’re enjoying the excitement here while we can.