Due to the uncertainty from the employee strike, the majority of people had their reservations for dinner and excursions cancelled. Most rebooked for the following day after the strike. My wife decided to rebook them the second day in case the situation was not resolved. This meant that the day prior was overbooked, but when we went, we had the whole restaurant to ourselves!

The Ithaa Underwater Restaurant is available for a cocktail hour, lunch and dinner. We chose the cheapest of the three options, cocktail hour for $85 a person. Cocktail hour includes a drink and canapes. Dinner can cost $300 per person without any alcohol.

Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 1
Trip to the Maldives – the flights part 2
Conrad Lounge in Mali and Seaplane to Rangali Island
Beach Villa at the Conrad Maldives
Euro swimsuits and Turtles
The main pool and snorkeling
Our luggage arrives, Vilu, and the Quiet Zone
The employee strike
The strike ends
Ithaa underwater restaurant, Water Villa, and sunset cruise

We showed up at our scheduled time and were asked to have a seat in the reception area. The host told us a little about the construction and some facts about the restaurant, and then went to prepare our drinks.

Our host came up after a while and asked for us to walk down the stairs with him to the restaurant.

We walked into the restaurant and noticed how comfortable the temperature was.

We sat down at our table and our host brought us our cocktails. Since we were the only ones in the entire place, we walked around and took a ton of pictures.

Part of traveling to these exotic places is to create lasting and unique memories. Dining in a restaurant surrounded by fish certainly qualifies as a unique experience.

The view from outside

I would recommend going to the cocktail hour rather than the meals depending on your budget. I can now cross off my bucket list dining in an underwater restaurant.

Due to the inconvenience of the strike, we decided to call the front desk and see if there was a possibility to get a complimentary room upgrade. If you don’t ask, the answer will always be no. We were happy to learn that there was indeed some complimentary room upgrades available. They offered an Overwater Villa for our last two remaining nights or we could stay in our beach villa and then spend the last night in a superior water villa. It was a tough decision-two nights in a pretty good room(Overwater Villa) or one night in an amazing room. Even though it would be a little more inconvenient to move our stuff over and over, my wife asked if we could have the Overwater Villa for the first night and then the Superior Water Villa the next as it was only available one night. They said that would be just fine. We were able to experience the Beach Villa, Overwater Villa and the Superior Water Villa at the property.

The front desk said they would have someone come and move all of our stuff to our new room.

We went to the second island to get our room key.

The room is visually stunning. Remember, we were extremely pleased with our “regular” beach villa but could quickly see why people pay for the upgrade.

The bathroom includes a full size jetted tub.

There was also a mounted TV up on the wall with a DVD player and stereo system hooked up.

Outside there is a stairway leading down to the water along with several lounge chairs.

Here is a video I took of the room tour:

We headed out to our excursion, the sunset cruise. Normally the sunset cruise and the dolphin watching are two separate excursions. However, tonight, the boat used for the dolphin excursion was broken and therefore they combined both excursions into one.

As we arrived to go on the boat, it was just my wife and I and a couple from Germany. It appears everyone else had either cancelled or rescheduled for another day. We spoke to the couple from Germany who had been traveling all over the world and this was at least their third time to return to the Maldives. After the Maldives, they were going to Oman. Like us they had also been to Bora Bora-we all agreed we had seen probably seen the best beach destinations in the world.

We boarded a gigantic ship and took off. They had a foam pad with an attached pillow for each us on the deck. It was very relaxing as they brought out drinks for us and different appetizers. Three employees to the four excursion guests.

On dolphin cruises, there is never any guarantee of seeing anything, however our ship’s crew was magnificent in that we saw three different sets of dolphins.

The sun was slowly setting as we took some magnificent pictures of the sunset.

I would highly recommend this excursion for a relaxing, romantic, and unique experience.

Overall it was another fantastic, exciting day in paradise doing extraordinary excursions that one only has a chance to do every once in a while. How many people get to watch a Maldivian sunset in the Indian Ocean from sailboat with dolphins swimming