Maui: Day 3

Day 3 - We got up early again (not forced - no alarms allowed on vacation), headed to our spot on the beach. We kept laughing at how we are such creatures of habit. We find something we like and we want it again and again :)

Early in the am - there were very few people out. It was nice, quiet and peaceful. 
 

Tripp would leave the room as soon as he was ready to go down to the beach and I'd follow about 30 minutes later. He's already laying on the chair in the pic below.

We loved our spot - it was on the corner so not a ton of foot traffic in front of us and it had a great view of the rocks, palm trees and water.

We ate this delicious acai smoothie bowl on the beach for breakfast. If we wanted breakfast on the trip, we went to the cafe on the hotel grounds. It had smoothies, pastries, cereal, etc. 

After we had been sitting a while, we would get up and walk down the beach for exercise ;) 

This view was looking to the left of the opposite end of the beach where we sat. 

I love him.

We were beach people in Hawaii - which is total opposite of what we typically are on vacation. We usually love to look at the beach, but not sit by it or get in it. Here, we loved the beach because it wasn't hot. At the pool, there wasn't as much of a breeze so you had to get in and out of the water often. At the beach, there was a fabulous breeze, comfy chair and umbrella whenever we wanted to put it up.

I read this book and LOVED it.

And because we are creatures of habit, here we are again at our bench. This time, we had some neighbors - cute old couple.

Creepin' on our future - we hope and pray.

As we were walking back to the room, we saw the nightly torch lighting man run by. He lights all of the torches on the hotel grounds and blows into a seashell at certain stops. The kids chase him around the entire time.
 

Beautiful at night too :)

We ordered room service and watched the Bachelor in our hotel room - it was perfection!

Maui: Day 2

On our first full day, we woke up fully rested around 5:30am Hawaii time ha!

I made coffee for us (complimentary Keurig in the room - YES) and we watched an episode of Fuller House in bed.

  

We started our day at the beach (before 8am), then went to the pool that afternoon. I got a "Long Paddle In" drink and it was AMAZING - the drink I got every day after this.

My view poolside :) 

Looking back at the hotel from the beach. The villas are the short white buildings closer and then the hotel rooms are in the taller part of the building.

By about 3pm, we were ready to go inside after enough sun on our first full day. We walked around the waterfront path to the other hotels we had looked it which were right next door to the Fairmont. 

This picture was right after we saw a humpback whale showing off and splashing with his tail for about 10 minutes! It was awesome.

The island in the background is another HI island.

That night, we took the Fairmont complimentary shuttle to the Grand Wailea (another resort close by) for dinner. Some pics by the sunset before dinner - we made a pact that we wanted to relax and watch the sunset every night here.

Vacation Time! Maui, Hawaii

As soon as Tripp moved back home, we immediately made plans for a trip for the 2 of us to Mexico. Well, Mexico fell through given the Zika virus taking over the carribean. I'm not pregnant, but it was too risky and just not worth it. So - 3 weeks before we were planning to leave for Mexico... we changed our flights and booked a trip to Maui (no Zika virus there!).

We typically travel in the fall around Labor day, but decided we wanted to take a vacation early in the year. We left on Saturday, Feb 26th and planned to stay through Tripp's 30th birthday... coming home Friday night on March 4th.

We LOVED traveling this at this time and think we may prefer it moving forward! I got a spray tan at Premiere Dermatology on Friday afternoon - my official start of vacation :)

We left early in the am and took the direct from XNA to SFO on United (we had never taken the direct since it started after Tripp moved home). It was about 4 hours. We had a short layover in SFO and then headed to Maui! 

Leaving the CA coast.

It was a 5.5 hour flight... it was long, but not horrible. We watched movies, read books and I took a nap. First look at the HI islands!

We stayed at the Fairmont Kea Lani in Maui. They had a taxi waiting for us when we landed - it took almost an hour to get our bags and then we were off!

We got to the hotel around 4:30, I got a lei and Tripp got a necklace... and we headed to the water to watch the sunset. It was beautiful, perfect weather. We found a bench with an awesome view and sat and talked about how we couldn't believe we were here.

Sun is setting...

Down by the water on the tan sand of Maui!

 
The view walking back up to the hotel looking at the water.

We had a drink + appetizers at the hotel bar and grille... and headed back to the room for bed. Hawaii is 4 hours behind AR time, so we were tired but so glad to be there!