Weekend Retreat

A weekend retreat at Bayview, one of the island's famous beach hotels. The room itself exceeded my expectation. It is spacious and spotless. Except that there was a stain in the bathtub. What tempted me to choose bayview was its location which is far away from the town. The last time I visited the hotel was during the 8th Penang Jazz Festival. Needless to say, I immediately fell in love with its cool surroundings.
The hotel stay was a truly great bang for my buck as the hillview room which originally costs nearly RM400 ++ is running at the special price of RM239+ via online booking (Asian Web Direct).

As I had intended to let myself loose completely during the weekend, I stayed in bed most of the time except at mealtimes.
Right after, we checked in the hotel, we had our lunch in The Ship. Yes, The Ship is now open for lunch too! We had a small bowl of Tomyam Soup, a plate of Yong Chow fried rice and a plate of spaghetti. Verdict: the soup tasted a tad too sweet; the fried rice turned out to be better than I expected; the spaghetti, I think I can cook it better than The Ship's! As for the dinner, we walked to Hard Rock Café, an in-house restaurant of Hard Rock Hotel which located just right beside Bayview. At first, I refused to have dinner at the café as I was pretty skeptical on how the food would taste. I, myself is a discerning consumer, as I always play safe, especially when it comes to movies and foods by doing tons of research about the particular subject prior spending money. Nobody wants to waste bucks on something worthless, aye?

Nonetheless, I gave up in the end as he kept on pestering me to give it a try since we were already there. The Hard Rock Café is in fact a 2-level combination of fine-dining and bar, as one can enjoy boozes upstairs or savour good foods downstairs. Its quirky interior design and concept well suited to urbanites with dazzling costumes of popular rock stars decorating the walls; cool drums decking the cashier counter etc. Our orders - grilled salmon steak, grilled chicken steak and a glass of lemonade. The grilled salmon steak was simply awesome with its rich-flavoured gravy while its grilled chicken steak was just normal. Nando's could outdo it effortlessly. The lemonade?! Marvelous! I was quite taken aback when we were served yet another glass of lemonade as we only placed order for only one. It turned out that for each beverage ordered, the guest will get another one for FOC! Wasn't that great?! And, we were so lucky enough to get 10% off the bill as he is a CIMB cc holder! So, the dinner costs ONLY RM82+, cheaper than I expected! Conclusion, I would definitely make a return guest to HR café!

I managed to crawl out of bed early next morning to take a fresh breath of air. The cool breeze, freezing fog and greenery of mountains and trees totally swept me off my feet as I could hardly enjoy such a relaxed atmosphere in town area. Without wasting any more time, I quickly snapped photos of it then indulged myself in the moment.

We checked out the hotel at around 11 something as our stomachs started to rumble. The only drawback of holidaying in such a secluded area is that it is difficult to look for breakfast, unless you are willing fork out extra money to enjoy the buffet breakfast, which I reckon is a waste.

Where did we have our breakfast? KDU dimsum shop! Heee. So, there goes my weekend!