4 years ago

This a fantastic resort and was a great first trip...

This a fantastic resort and was a great first trip to Maldives which has left us craving for more. The entire island is the Conrad resort and there's nothing else around. There are two islands, one is the quite side only for adults and the other one is the main island with kids. We stayed at the island for 5 days which was a good amount for us (we probably would get bored if we had stayed longer). The staff there is really nice for the most part (some do need extra training) and we met some wonderful staff members. We decided to stay only on the island and experience everything around the island rather than doing multiple excursions which we felt was a good decision. There are multiple things to do around the island and we were fully occupied over the 5 days. We stayed at the Water Villa (317) on the quite island facing the west where the waves were calmer. The Beach Villas were also very nice and each beach villa leads to the beach directly so this would have been just as good. The regular water villas does not have a glass floor but the premium water villas do have the glass floors. Everything on the island comes at a premium which was something people were commenting on and were not too thrilled about but this is an exclusive island and if you're paying such a high nightly rate then the rest of the expenses should be a surprise.
We started off our trip by exploring the island and going for the 2 hour spa massage at Mandoo which was needed after our long flights. We didn't get reservations for the over water spa but in all honesty we were so relaxed that it wouldn't have mattered. It was my wife's birthday and I arranged a Private Dinner which takes place at the tip of the island which is cordoned off for the dinner. It's a really nice, romantic experience as a couple and the service was great. Plan for this dinner in advance including the meal, wine, any special requests as everything is expensive and you want this event to be flawless. The personal concierge can help with all the preparations but ensure that you confirm everything just before the trip as there were a couple of mistakes for our bookings. It was not communicated to the Private Dinner staff that it was my wife's birthday and hence they had not arranged a cake/candles but our waiter was able to make last minute arrangements after we got there for dinner. Also, they got one of our dinner reservations wrong and the agent at the desk initially refused the mistake as it was in the system until I showed them an email confirmation. This was a bit annoying as if I didn't have the email it would have been an unnecessary argument as there is a fine in case you don't make it for your dinner reservations. I was surprised that our first concierge made so many mistakes. It may have been because he was heading for vacation after our second day and we were assigned a new concierge (Noako) who was great. She arranged a bottle of wine for our anniversary and got it delivered to the room and was very helpful through the rest of our stay.
We had breakfast in the room on the first morning (which is delivered for an additional fee). Our breakfast was included and we had an option to go to Atoll Market on the main island or Vilu. We wanted to try both restaurants but Atoll Market was so good that we didn't feel like changing restaurants. The staff and the food options were great. There were some really exotic fruits and the juice bar was phenomenal.
For dinner, we had planned for the Koko grill and Private Dinner, for the rest of the nights we ended up at Rangali Bar. The Rangali Bar was better than we had expected, the staff was so great and we met Chef Binu at the restaurant who made some outstanding dishes for us. He made our trip extra special as he used to come around and ask us about our favorite dishes and then made them for us the next day. A big thanks to CHEF BINU for making our stay extra special and the Rangali staff!! The restaurant has a great setting in the evening and we usually ended up staying there all evening.

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