It probably goes without saying that we have sat down to our share of romantic dinners on our honeymoon. Of course the most memorable (also our favorites) have been punctuated by what could have been ruinous flaws were we not accustomed to things not always going according to plan when traveling (especially in the developing world).
Our first dinner of note was the last night of our walking safari in Kenya. Our guides put together a beautiful archway of local greenery over our table and wrote congratulations in stones on the ground next to it. The dinner itself was lovely and we really wanted to savor it but the weather was not being very cooperative. Ominous clouds hung over us and thunder rolled in the distance but getting closer and closer with each flash of lightning. We ended rushing to finish our meal and got ready for bed and into our tent just moments before the rain started falling.
Our second night to remember was when we were in Stonetown. A friend told us we had to have a romantic dinner at the Serena Inn and in fact gave us this dinner for a wedding gift. We were happy to give such a highly recomended restaurant a try. We arrived in time for sunset coctails on the patio while a local band played fusion taraab music. As darkness fell we moved to the indoor dining room which unfortunately was not air conditioned. On the bright side the restaurant was right on the water and we had reserved a table right next to the huge windows they threw open to let in the cool sea breeze. The windows also let in hundreds of flying ants that had come out of hiding becaue of the rain earlier that day. Initially our table was covered with them but where other guests left in disgust we thought, at least they aren't mosquitos or cockroaches. We perservered and it was well worth it. Sure we had to swat quite a few ants with our menus but by the time the soup course arrived they had gotten the message and left us alone. At one point an ant managed to fly down Erik's shirt and in a charming honeymoon moment he lifted his shirt bearing his manly chest to the entire restaurant to flick it out. at the end of the day the food was great the service fantastic and thanks to the ants we had almost the entire place to ourselves.
Our most recent romantic dinner antics came on Chumbe island where the staff set our table right on the beach, surrounded us with candle lanterns, and wrote "Liz and Erik forever in love" in the sand. As always the dinner was great but instead of the usual curries, they served us a half chicken, bones and all. The problem here was that in order to eat this dinner politely we needed to use our knife and fork to cut the meat off the bones. Sadly the romantic glow from the lanterns did not shed enough clarity on our dinner to distinguish meat from bone. The situation was not helped by the bottle of champagne that came with the meal. Finally after a few too many misses with our utensils we gave up and pulled out our head lamps so we could see our food. In the process we obliterated the candle lit ambiance and made ourselves look riddiculous to boot. At lease there were no bones in the pineapple upsidedown cake we had for dessert and with the head lamps off there wasn't even enough candle light to see that our hair was all messed up.
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