Like many other people I'm sure, I have been dreaming about the day where we can travel again, so I figured this was the perfect way to relive the best trip of my life so far - by writing a blog post about our Hawaii honeymoon!
Even though my husband and I had talked about going to Hawaii one day, we never made any concrete plans in the near future, so you can imagine I was absolutely caught off guard when I opened a big box on Christmas Day with our flight itinerary in it! We were heading to Maui at the beginning of March for ten days - I couldn't contain my excitement!! I was super overwhelmed with where to even start with planning places to go, things to see, places to eat, etc.
I figured I would write about the highlights of our trip, the must-do's and the places you gotta eat at so that if you ever find yourself travelling to Paradise (when we can again!) this may help you feel less overwhelmed with all there is to do!
Where we stayed
We decided to stay in the town of Kihei, as it is fairly central to the island of Maui and we heard it was a great little town with some of the best beaches. We are so glad we chose it! We ended up renting a condo on VRBO. The condo was in a good location, with a beautiful beach that we could see from our balcony. Every morning we would walk over to Akamai Coffee for probably thee most delicious iced coffee I've ever tasted! lol



Things to do
Drive the Road to Hana
This was on the top of our list because we have heard it was a once in a lifetime drive with some amazing scenery. It definitely was once in a lifetime! The drive has over 600 hairpin turns and a lot of the road is single lane. a couple things to know:
- This is not the drive for you if you get carsick easily!
- Plan for all day with this trip, overall I would say we spent about 4 hours each way. You cannot drive fast, and there are plenty of neat stops along the way, so you will want to take your time. Also leave EARLY in the AM because you don't want to be driving that road late at night, and it gets dark around 6PM in Hawaii.
- There are all sorts of apps you can download that will tell you about all the stops you can make along the road, we didn't end up using one and just explored on our own. More than likely we missed some neat spots, so I would recommend researching what app to use before you go if you don't want to miss anything! Snorkelling at the Molokini Crater
Doing this snorkelling trip was the top highlight of the trip I would have to say! We saw so many beautifully coloured fish and SO many turtles.. if you're lucky, you may also get a bit of a whale watching tour out of it as well! We booked with the Calypso snorkelling group. The staff on this boat were seriously amazing.. so friendly, skilled, and helpful; so helpful that they actually DOVE down to the bottom of the coral in the crater and managed to find our lost GoPro cam (whoops!!).



Places to Eat
MonkeyPod Kitchen
There are two MonkeyPod restaurants on the island, one in Ka'anapali & one in Wailea. We went to the one in Wailea because it was closer to where we were staying. The menu was fantastic, I ordered the Ahi tuna steak (drool) and Doug ordered fish and chips which he said were the best he's ever had (not surprised!). This place is always very busy, and we made the mistake of not making a reservation for supper, so definitely plan ahead of time if you don't want to be waiting a long time!
I am obsessed with sushi and would eat it everyday if I could.. so this was top of our choices to eat out (it was also on Diners, Drive ins, and Dives which made me want to try it even more!). It's the cutest little place with limited seating which ensures you get great service. The sushi was to die for, everything tastes unbelievably fresh. We almost went back to eat there a twice during our stay!
We didn't eat dinner here (they do have a full menu!), but we came to try some local beer at this place and I must say it is the best place to be at in the evening for a laid back cocktail! The grounds are beautifully lit up, they have a huge open air patio, and a huge selection of local beer and cocktails!
Honourable Mention: Local Boys Shave Ice is a MUST! They are NOT snow cones, they are the most delicious cold treat to help you cool off in the afternoon. The only way to understand the difference is to try one for yourself!



The best thing about Hawaii is there is no shortage of things to do, if you want to explore all the different drives and hiking trails, you can easily spend a whole 10 day trip doing that! If you want to just kick back and enjoy being a beach bum all day, you can choose a different beach everyday and completely relax! I could go on forever about everything else we did, but these are the large highlights that I enjoyed the most! I hope that if you ever find yourself on beautiful Maui, these suggestions will help you have the best time. We cannot wait to return someday (hopefully sooner than later)!

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