Maui, Hawaii Day 1 & 2

The Hawaiian islands have been a popular vacation spot in my family since we first started going over a decade ago. It was so enjoyed, my youngest sister, Kellyne, decided to go to college in Oahu. After Kellyne graduated, she decided to stay in Oahu and become a teacher at a local middle school. Which just means, perfect vacation spot that also includes family! Autumn hadn’t ever been to a beach and this was just her second set of plane rides, so it was quite a trip to take on. Never the less, it was also the end of Autumn’s school semester, our anniversary, and her birthday, so there were a series of reasons to make this trip happen! So we did.

After our first two uneventful flights, we met Kellyne in the baggage claim and immediately turned around and went back through security and hopped on another plane to Maui. We had decided with a series of perfect circumstance, to also go to Maui for a few days and Kellyne joined us. Once we landed and picked up our rental car in Maui, it was fairly late, especially for us with the time difference and we were starving. Not too much is open late in Maui so we were relieved to find Maui Brewing Co. to be open. After a good meal, we were off to our resort to check in. We stayed at the Grand Wailea for 3 nights. Our first night we crashed and had planned a chill day at the pool for the next day to recover.

My Aunt Cindy is a flight attendant for American Airlines. Kellyne is very fortunate that Cindy is able to fly to Hawaii a couple times per month to visit. Cindy was also able to bid a flight to Maui while we were there and a second trip to Oahu when we were back on that island. We planned to meet Cindy the next morning, Sunday, as she said she knew of a great breakfast spot for us all to go to.

The next morning the three of us drove to Cindy’s hotel and picked her up and headed to our breakfast spot destination, Kihei Caffe. While we were at that breakfast location, we noticed the shops and businesses in that area. There happened to be a fudge making class that day at 2:00 pm and 5:30 pm. Being who we are, lovers of food and chocolate, and we had to bring Cindy back to her hotel so she could catch her flight home later that afternoon, we went and signed up for later that day. Next it was off to the pool!

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This resort had a bunch of pools that were connected via slides and even a water elevator. The elevator was a tube that filled with water and a seat that was the shape of a donut was raised with water until it reached the top, which allowed you to ride open slides to the next pool. The life guards told us this was created due to the original owner’s son was disabled and this design and elevator allowed him to move to different pools. It was super neat. They also had a grotto pool with swim up bar. Autumn is convinced we need this for our house now and wants the cave like enclosure with a swim up bar and grill like setting. It would be neat and convenient for our hot summers.

After we had our midday swim, we got ready and took Cindy back to her hotel so she could get ready and catch her flight. By the way, she was in a great neighborhood, Kihei, and we spent a good amount of time in this area due to all it had to offer. Next up… Shaved Ice. One of my all time favorite treats as we grew up and my mother, who was not too fond of allowing us to have sweets or desserts, was also so fond of them that she would always be up for shaved us on our Hawaii vacations. A quick search and we found a shaved ice location that many people raved about and we set off to introduce Autumn to her first exposure of shaved ice at Peace, Love, Shave Ice.

After the sweet afternoon snack, we happened to see across the street a popular sushi restaurant that I’d seen on Food Network in the past. It was early, we had a sweet class coming up, so we decided to have a quick happy hour snack that wasn’t quite so sweet. Off we went to Miso Phat Sushi. It was happy hour after all! The three of us shared a quick happy hour snack and were off to our fudge making class at F.U., Fudge University.

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Once we’d completed our class and graduation, yes, we had a full ceremonial graduation, we drove back to our resort to figure out what we would be doing for a late dinner. But first, we wanted to catch the sunset at a park that people were flocking to for the sunset visual. Sadly, it became too cloudy and the sunset wasn’t as pretty as we had hoped. Onto dinner. Our first stop was at Monkey Pod, which several people told us we needed to try. With a 1-2 hour wait, we decided that we’d rather grab something at one of the resorts cafes or restaurants on the property. Poor choice. We ended up at Bistro Molokini for a fairly disappointing meal.

Leaving the restaurant, we took the dimly lit path back to our room and tried to decided what other activities we wanted to do with our remaining 2 days on Maui. It was a long but very eventful day. Autumn declared that the pool life is for her and she was really enjoying Hawaii so far, minus the heat and humidity combination. We did agree that a few hours by the pool with cold drinks will fix any issues with any uncomfortableness real quick.