After a short stay in Mauritius, we island-hopped to Seychelles. There’s a nonstop flight from Mauritius to Seychelles on certain days of the week with Air Seychelles and it took only 2.5 hours. The short flight was expensive in terms of flight time at $260 per person; everything in Seychelles is a lot more expensive! The view of the capital, Mahe, as we were approaching the airport. I saw lots of luxury villas with private swimming pool, I wondered how much one of those mansions cost!
Mahe airport looked totally the opposite of what I had in my mind versus Mauritius’ airport. Seychelles, being more expensive and upscale, has a small and old airport. It reminded me of Tahiti’s airport in French Polynesia! On the other hand, Mauritius’ airport is newer, bigger, modern like a big city’s international airport.
The customs and immigration queue wasn’t too bad, our ETA (electronic travel authorization) was only checked at check-in to issue our boarding pass. We did get asked about our lodging and how many nights we are staying and heading to next. After that, we claimed our luggage and walked out to arrival where our driver was waiting for us. I booked the airport transfer with Viator for $44 one way, it was cheaper than other transfer companies that I contacted for quotes. Since we arrived in the late afternoon, we decided to stay a night in Mahe instead of heading to Praslin because we wouldn’t be able to catch the last boat to La Digue anyways and a hotel night in Praslin is more expensive. Jason has a Hilton free night certificate so it worked out to redeem at the world’s smallest Hilton resort – Hilton Seychelles Northolme.
The Hilton Seychelles Northolme is located on the cliff of a hill overlooking the bay. We were dropped off at the reception closest to the entrance of the hotel, I found out there are two reception offices. This one being a small bungalow was where we were greeted by a staff to take us down to the main reception on a buggy.
We were driven down a steep and narrow road where it only fit a buggy to the main reception office. We signed the paperwork, got our room keys, and received a booklet of coupons to redeem at the hotel’s restaurants and spa. Since I am a Hilton’s Diamond member, I was entitled for free breakfast. However, our flight the next morning was early so I asked I can get breakfast to go. The receptionist said she can arrange 🙂 The receptionist walked us to our room, which was across the street from the main reception and then a flight of stairs down to one of the wooden bungalows. Our room was spacious and clean, very wooden tropical look. It has a character than our room at the JW Marriott Mauritius!
The sitting area has more than enough room for 2 people.
The bathroom was big too, the shower area is very “open”.
Our deck was cozy, too bad we only stayed a night and it was almost night time so we didn’t get much time to spend on our deck.
The view of other villas and the bay.
Our welcome gift, too bad we don’t drink alcohol!
As I was taking photos of our room, I noticed the colors outside our deck! Even though it was super cloudy, I couldn’t believe that it ended up with a colorful sunset!
Once we walked down to the Italian restaurant and the bar, the sunset really glowed!!!
We had our dinner at the hotel’s Italian restaurant and they offered an Italian 3-course special. We got a huge plate of antipastas to share.
I redeemed one drink voucher for a virgin pina colada, it was refreshing and tasted good.
For the main course, I chose the seafood pasta. It was decent; I am not a huge fan of this type of noodle, I wish I had them substituted with linguine or spaghetti.
Jason chose the pasta with clams but the chef forgot to add salt, it was tasteless urg! But the portion was huge, it alone was enough for 2 people!
For dessert, we got a tiramisu, a penna cotta, and ice cream. The tiramisu was okay, it lacked the mascarpone creaminess, I liked the penna cotta and ice cream more.
Our overnight stay at the Hilton Seychelles Northolme was worth the free night certificate. The next morning, we got our breakfast bag filled with juice, yogurt, pastries, and eggs. We checked out, our driver was there waiting for us to drop us off at the airport. Our flight to Praslin was at 8:35 AM and we got there by 7 AM, still too early for check-in. We sat there waited and had our breakfast. Once we checked in our luggage, got our boarding passes, and walked next door to security, it was a quick scan and the boarding area is small with 2-3 “gates”. They started boarding 15 minutes before the flight and we were called by seat/row as there were only 13 seats; a very small aircraft. We watched the safety video at the boarding area and then lined up according to row number. We were escorted to our aircraft:
The flight time was less than 15 minutes to Praslin. Praslin airport is even smaller, once again, reminded me of French Polynesia’s Moorea airport. Our driver was at the entrance waiting for us, I booked the airport transfer via Klook for $37.45, I compared with Viator. The drive from the airport to our hotel, Le Duc De Praslin, took around 30 minutes, it was only one main road looping the island. and our hotel was on the other side of the island. The driver was super friendly, he showed us their famous coco de mer and surprisingly it has sex – female and male ones.
Le Duc De Praslin reception area, it was open air.
We got there early so our room wasn’t ready yet, the hotel stored our luggage and we walked down to check out the beach. Their beach is beautiful and surprisingly, no one there!!! They even have their own swing, it was postcard-perfect! We took so many photos on the swing!
Can you believe it such a beautiful beach with no one!! We had our own “private” beach!!!
We enjoyed every single moment of our alone time here!
We walked down more to the leaning coconut tree and finally saw another 2 couples there. We waited for our turn and the sun came out in full force so Jason hide under the palm leaves LOL!
We patiently waited for our turn and then we had the tree all to ourselves! The view was so pretty.
After checking out the beach, we walked back to the hotel and waited for our transfer to the ferry dock. I booked the transfer and the ferry ticket with seychellesbookings.com. The transfer was €14.00 per person per way and the ferry ticket to La Digue was €16.00 per person per way. There were a lot of people at the ferry station for the 11:30 AM ferry, mostly European families with young kids. The 15-minute ferry ride was very rough and I forgot to pack the seasick pills into my purse from my laptop tote bag 🙁 Thankfully, it was short enough that I didn’t get seasick, I can’t imagine taking the ferry all the way from Mahe in such sea conditions!
Once we arrived La Digue, we rented a bicycle and a tricycle because their bicycles were too high for me and I haven’t ride a bike in such a long time that a tricycle would be “safer” for me. There are lots of vendors and their prices are the same; around $10 for a bicycle and around $15 for a tricycle. Unfortunately, the tricycle ended up being more challenging; it was super hard to control to keep it straight on the road! Jason was laughing at me blah! I lost control one time and almost a house’s fence sigh!
We made it to Le Repaire – Boutique Hôtel & Restaurant for our lunch where we had a decent seafood pasta for $87.83 for two, very expensive!
After fueled up, I told Jason to try the tricycle, he couldn’t control it straight either so it wasn’t just me! I decided to park the tricycle at the restaurant and walked the remaining way (around 15 minutes) to L’Union Estate while Jason rode his bike. I walked past a church and a school:
We finally arrived L’Union Estate where Seychelles’ most famous beach – Anse Source d’Argent is located in. The entrance fee was around $10 per person and they do accept credit card for payments.
From the entrance, there are various points of interest along the way and the walk was another 10 minutes to the beach. We passed the vanilla plantation and stopped at the tortoise pen to take photos of the 100+ years old tortoise!
The granite monolith looked out of place from the surrounding.
Approaching the beach, we started to see vendors selling beachwears and snacks.
We arrived and it was high tide, I guess? The water level covered majority of the beach that we couldn’t get close to most of the infamous boulders. The sand was powdery soft and even though it was mostly overcast, the turquoise colors of the sea were very vivid.
My dress got wet when there was a sudden big wave came to shore.
There was a sign that point to “more beach” so we followed that to another stretch of the beach. We walked by gigantic boulders!
More snack vendors hidden behind this section of the beach. They decorated the place pretty colorful.
More of the world famous boulders in the backdrop. Bad timing that we didn’t get to see much of the beach due to the high tides. Nevertheless, it was picturesque and totally lived up to being one of the most beautiful beaches in the world!
On our way back, we stopped again at the tortise pen and I got to feed them 😀
I walked back to the restaurant to pick up my tricycle and painfully pushed it back to the pier to return to the vendor. They should provide scooters to rent!
There were a souvenir shops but the prices were outrageous, a magnet cost more than $7 USD for example. I never seen such high pricing except in Switzerland! We also checked out their post office and bought a few stamps to add to Jason’s collection, mission achieved! I booked the 5:00 PM ferry to return to Praslin but we were done early so we caught the earlier ferry back and they didn’t have issue with us taking an earlier one. Once we arrived Praslin, I located the staff that we got back from the earlier ferry so can we take an earlier transfer to get back to the hotel? After she checked the number of guests, there were seats left for us so we got in and back to our hotel.
Our room was ready by then, here are pics of our room where one night cost $506!!!
The price included half board (breakfast and dinner). Their dinner is buffet style and the choices were okay, not a huge spread.
I found Seychelles’ cuisine is similar to Mauritius’, the seafood curry was okay but paired with white rice was filling. The buffet did not include drink so I ordered virgin pina colada and it wasn’t as good as the one we had at the Hilton’s. The dessert selections were disappointed, none to rave about.
When we got back to our room, we had a surprise on our bed…..a color canvas gift from the hotel. That was a really nice touch from them!
The next morning, we had a quick breakfast before heading to the airport for our 9:40 AM flight back to Mahe at 10:00 AM to catch our 11 AM flight to the new Waldorf Astoria Seychelles Platte Island! The breakfast selection was interesting…..mix of western and eastern dishes. The flat noodles were salty….
I have never seen cup noodles offered in a buffet breakfast LOL!
It was a quick trip to Praslin to La Digue to Anse Source d’Argent. Was it worth the effort and hassle? Absolutely, even though we arrived at high tide so we couldn’t enjoy/see the beach as much as I would like to. If I choose again, I would plan an overnight stay at La Digue so have time to wait for lower tide at Anse Source d’Argent. I did plan it that way but the flight and ferry schedules didn’t line up and I didn’t want to risk on flight delays. Will I go back again…hum…that’s a hard question! It was definitely a long way to get there and the hotels are expensive for the quality unlike French Polynesia or the Maldives. Beach view-wise, I would rank French Polynesia –> Cook Islands –> Maldives –> Seychelles.
