Thursday 14th April 2022

We had planned to celebrate our twentieth wedding anniversary in Antigua where we had enjoyed our honeymoon, but the Covid pandemic put paid to that idea.  With travel starting to open up a little and us never going to live closer to the Maldives than we currently do, Steve suggested that we celebrate two years late by getting away from it all and going to the fabulous Raffles Maldives Meradhoo resort.

A romantic holiday is not going to happen with trailing teenagers, so we went alone leaving Misa and Emilka at home.  It was actually a family decision, with two understanding teenagers delighted for Mummy and Daddy on one hand but clearly looking forwards to being trusted on the other. We felt that they could and should be trusted, so win-win.

We consequently booked for five days to strike a balance between being away long enough to unwind but no so long that the children would be a burden on the friends who kindly offered to keep an eye on them and take them out for treats. 

14th April saw Steve and myself getting up at 3:30am for a 4:00am pickup and a 07:20am flight to Male on UL101.  What Steve hadn’t told me was that we were flying Business Class, so instead of the melee navigating all the usual airport formalities we had a separate entrance to the terminal called the Silk Route and then everything taken care of in peace and quiet in one place before heading straight to the lounge.  Lovely!  The only disappointment was that despite being with an Airbus A330 widebody jet, the flight was barely more than an hour in duration but we did enjoy a Champagne cooked breakfast on board.

Once at Male we were met in the international arrivals hall by a Raffles representative who escorted us to the domestic terminal, ensured we were checked in without issue, and then took us to the quiet lounge where we whiled away the time to our flight a couple of hours later.  This was on a Dash 8 Q300 turboprop where we and 33 other passengers flew to the landing strip at Kaadedhdhoo Airport from where each of us went to our respective resorts.

It was here where we were met by our personal butler Aleaf, a lovely man who worked hard to ensure everything happened as if by magic, starting with a stretched golf buggy to the powerboat that would whisk us across the flat and deep blue sea to Raffles Meradhoo.  Arriving fifteen minutes later to Maldivian music and King Coconut, we knew we were in paradise.  

Rennie