Millenium.....

David’s (Authorblog) question this week is

What was the best Christmas present you ever received?

If you would like to join in here’s what David would like you to do:
Please answer today's question on your own blog, any time until next weekend. Just link to this blog (or to this post) so I can follow the progress of the discussion.

Well this is an easy one to answer for me.

MWM and I celebrated our Silver Wedding Anniversary in December 1999 which coincided with the Millenium, so to celebrate in style we decided to combine Christmas presents and spend Christmas 1999 in Sri Lanka and New Year's Eve in the Maldives.

We arrived in Sri Lanka two days before Christmas so had time to get settled before the festivities started.

Click on photos to enlarge

photographs copyright 2007

We had a lovely room on the ground floor just a short walk from the bar. Here's MWM just on his way back with a drink for us as I take it easy on the patio!

Father Christmas did the rounds on Christmas Eve and on Christmas Day the staff staged a Nativity play close to the pool.

They even had a donkey!

It was a bit strange watching a Nativity play in the sunshine but we didn't complain!

We visited the elephant orphanage,

there was a new born there, you can just see it hiding underneath its mother.

And we followed them all down to the river for their daily bath.

I also got to ride an elephant on the beach but unfortunately I can't find the photograph. Here's one of the beach though!

Then it was time to fly to the Maldives. We stayed at a small island called Olivheli View. The islands are disappearing at a fast rate so it's probably not even there now!

Our bungalow was right on the beach, here's MWM sitting on the patio enjoying an afternoon drink.

Here's what he was looking at - me looking at the fish!

Here's me sitting on the bench you can see in the last picture. All the white in the bottom of the photograph is the sand! I've used a cut down version of this photograph for my blog banner.

And me sunbathing at the water's edge.

New Year's Eve was a big party night as you can imagine and close to midnight we were invited to follow the band down to the jetty where fireworks had been arranged

They had set up two messages in fireworkds saying Goodbye 1999 and Happy New Millenium.

Before we knew it the time had come for us to journey home. All the time we were in the Maldives I scoured the horizon looking for Dolphins, but for all the tropical fish we saw whilst we were there, I never saw one dolphin. Well, not until we were on the speedboat heading for the airport at Male, when a school of dolphins swam alongside our boat for the 30 minute journey! My dream came true! It was a truly memorable holiday, one fit for the Millenium.