This week’s small pleasures #141 or a week in New Caledonia part 1

Coming to you a day late instead of a day early this week, as we arrived back from our trip to New Caledonia almost 2 hours later than we should have done. Anyway, the flight from Auckland to Wellington was the only blip over the whole week, which was a time of rest and relaxation, of reading and eating, of having a proper holiday.

I thought for my first post about our trip I would just highlight a few of the small pleasures of the trip. It is impossible to pick the top six highlights, so I’ll pick a few things that might give an indication of the holiday. Wordless Wednesday posts for the next couple of weeks will also feature our trip, and show off some other aspects of out holiday other than lounging around. This is our second trip to New Caledonia, the first having been in January 2015. It is a lovely place to go, and as it is a French Overseas Territory, French is spoken, so it feels like you have actually gone abroad (if that makes sense!). This time, we visited off-season, so at times we had beaches and the swimming pool to ourselves.

First up, this is the view while we ate breakfast each day…whether it was scrambled eggs or passion fruit or a pain au raisin, this was the view to start the day.

On a couple of days, we headed for the hotel pool, with books and towels and the intention of relaxing. If you look carefully, you can see a little black and white cat that popped by to visit (I strongly believe he ate well in the hotel kitchen).

We stayed in the Anse Vata area of Nouméa, the capital of New Caledonia. It is an area with lots of hotels, cafes and of course, access to the beaches.

Just along from where we were staying are the beaches at the Baie des Citrons.  Situated within the bays, Îlot Maître and Îlot Canard are both accessible for day trips by boat. We didn’t go over this holiday, but there are frequent water taxis running frequently.

We ate well, everything from croque monsieur to a massive warm goat cheese salad and lots of fish and seafood. I had moules frites for lunch on Sunday which was a real treat. On the last evening we went to Le Roof, a rather pricey but nice restaurant out on the water, where you can watch the fish swim below as you eat.

At the weekend, we saw lots of people out wind surfing, and quite a few kite surfers as well. The conditions must have been just right, with sun and wind.

Our week came to and end quickly, but we returned rested and recharged, just as we had wanted.

And that’s it for this week. What were your small pleasures of the past week?

Thanks to Mani over at A New Life Wandering for the original idea.

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