After my wedding in May, I had a super short, but firm checklist for where we’d have our mini-moon, or our quick, three-night getaway before our longer honeymoon, a safari in Tanzania in October. I wanted someplace close—within a four-hour flight from New York City—and a place where we could do absolutely nothing.
Kamalame Cay, a ridiculously romantic private island resort in the Bahamas, delivered on both. We stayed in one of their beach bungalows, which meant most days, we didn’t even see another guest until dinnertime. We had our own golf cart, which gave us a sense of freedom and let us pretend we were shuttling around our own private island. And Wi-Fi is limited to the resort’s reception area, so we were blissfully disconnected.
But the absolute best amenity at Kamalame Cay was the breakfast basket: A simple wicker basket filled with a thermos of coffee, orange juice, yogurt, fresh fruit like cantaloupe or honeydew, and warm pastries that would magically appear at our door every morning by 8 a.m. We didn’t have to ask for it ahead of time or order it the night before. It would just be there (it’s included in the room rate for every guest of the hotel, whether you’re dining a la carte or on the all-inclusive plan).
We’d wake up in our plush king-sized bed to the sun streaming in through our delicate white curtains—then I’d dash outside to fetch the breakfast basket. Each morning I’d carefully unwrap our haul like a Christmas gift, laying out every perfect little item. I felt downright gleeful when I’d discover something new (a hard-boiled egg! How thoughtful!) that hadn’t been there the day before. This simple ritual set the tone for the day. We could take our time in the mornings. Most days, we didn’t get dressed until noon. We didn’t talk to anyone but each other. Heck, we didn’t even sit at a table to eat. We embraced being lazy, something we rarely do at home, not even on weekends.
“It feels like someone is looking after you,” says co-owner Michael King Hew. Of course you can always head to the dining room for a second breakfast—lionfish and grits, avocado toast—but there’s really no need. “At 4:30 a.m the baking team starts making banana muffins, zucchini bread or poundcake,” he says, describing some of the goodies we found in our own basket as we talked through our day (would we hit the pool first or the beach?) and caught each other up on the chapters we’ve finished the night before (no Wi-Fi, remember?). It was such a pleasant, easy way to start the day, we even talked about replicating the breakfast basket back home in New York. We haven’t quite pulled the trigger on purchasing a picnic basket of our own, but a lazy breakfast in bed sounds like an excellent anniversary tradition.
