Category: Travel

I know I always say this, but sometimes I think we should go somewhere else on vacation, but Hawaii never disappoints. My wife took a new job last year and my kids had a break before school started, so we made a last minute trip to Hawaii.

This time, we went to Oahu and stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and had such an amazing view for the week. We really didn’t do much other than go to the beach and eat at all of our favorite local places, but nobody had any complaints.

And on our last night there, they do a fireworks show that was right outside our balcony. I’ve never been that close to fireworks before and it was a much different experience with them close by and also almost eye level. It really capped off another wonderful trip to the island perfectly.

We thought this might become a yearly event for us, but unfortunately, COVID and 2020 happened. But we’re staying safe and hopefully we can make another trip to Hawaii next year.

We made it back to Kauai in March and had a great time as always.  This was the first trip with my second son, who was 19 months at the time.  I’m always worried with how the young ones will do with the travel, but he did great!

On our last trip to Kauai, we had a connecting flight in Oahu.  It’s not a big deal for adults, but it was pretty rough with my older son (2 at the time).  So this time around, I said I’d pay whatever more it cost to take a direct flight (which is a lot easier to say when you’re using miles).

We tried to make this trip easy as possible and stayed over the night before at LAX, which was a great decision.  Getting to LA is probably the most stressful part of the trip, especially if it’s on a weekday.

We had a direct flight to and from Lihue, which was great, except for the aircraft.  It turns out, United only seems to use the small 737s on the direct flights to Kauai.  That’s the small, crammed plane that you usually take on Southwest.  It’s fine for an hour, but 6 hours was way too much and there was no room to take crying babies to the back.  I’ll have to re-think the direct flights next time…

The theme of this trip is that everything was different with a family.  Last time, we only had one child and my mom and brother came along.  This time, we had two kids and it made a world of difference.  Instead of doing more adventurous things, we spent every day like this.  Go to a beach in the morning, find some place to eat lunch, go back to the hotel to take a nap, swim in the pool in the afternoon, find dinner at sleep by 8.  But honestly, it was great and I had no complaints.

Another difference is that we stayed part of the time at the Waipouli Beach Resort with this great pool.

It was so fun for the kids that they didn’t want to go anywhere else.

But we did and stayed in Princeville the second half of the trip.  This place was nice but we had to walk so far up and down hills to get from the car to the condo.  It was pretty challenging with two little ones and everything is a little less inconvenient on the north side.

When it was just the two of us, we would’ve liked the Princeville place better.  But with the kids, we’d definitely choose the other place.  It was fun and there was food and markets right across the street.  Lesson learned for the next trip!

My wife and I took a late honeymoon to Kauai in 2011, courtesy of my brother. It was just over a year after we got engaged and it seemed like so much happened since then.

It was another perfect trip to Hawaii. I hadn’t been to Kauai in over 15 years, but it was nice to see that some things were exactly like I remembered.

What made this trip special is that we met a lot of local people. One older couple was so nice and they brought us to their house and he (Jack) took us fishing. He ended up being the head agricultural guy for the island and we got a tour of the private farms, lakes and gardens. Not to mention, he had over 20 world records in fishing, so we learned from a master! It was really one of the nicest things anyone did for us and it’s probably one of my most memorable travel days ever.

On our second trip to Hawaii, we went back to the same place in Maui we visited a few years earlier.  It’s always nice, but it didn’t have the same feeling as when I hadn’t gone in almost 10 years.

This picture was taken in Lahiana, which I was pretty disappointed with.  I have such good memories of being a kid and playing around town and going the Lappert’s Ice Cream.  That’s still there, but everything else is so touristy there now and a lot of places were closed down.

Since we just went to Maui and did all the tourist things on the last trip, this trip we took it easy and did lots of fishing.  This became our thing to do until we had kids, but hopefully we’ll all be able to do that again one day.

The funny thing about Hawaii is that there’s nothing but fish in the water, but they’re pretty hard to catch.  We learned this again and again over the years.  We’d catch some things, but not what we wanted and it actually took a long time to hook something decent.

We also drove up to Honolua Bay but didn’t make it down to the beach.  I’m not sure why we didn’t make the short walk.  It’s one of those things that seem so easy after you have kids.  It was just us and we were younger so I’m not sure what stopped us.

Another good thing about this trip was that I got to see my Auntie Irene for the last time.  She was such a great woman and was always fun to be around.  I didn’t know her that well but I always looked forward to seeing her and I miss her.

When my wife and I started dating, we took a trip to Maui together in March 2007.  I grew up going to Hawaii just about every year and I have some relatives in Maui, but I hadn’t been in nearly 10 years.

Even though we live in south Orange County near some of the nicest beaches in the continental US, I still can remember how good it felt to be back in Hawaii and how nice it was.

We rented this condo that was right on top of the water near Kaanapali.  I didn’t get any good pictures of the place, but the view was spectacular.  I could sit out there all day eating Hawaiian chips and drinking POG, which I probably did.

We were only there for a short time, but since my wife hadn’t been before, we crammed in all of the major sightseeing things.  We went whale watching and saw a ton of whales and on the way back, we were escorted by a huge pod of dolphins. 

I didn’t play golf, but we ate at the Plantation House restaurant and enjoyed the views.

This was our first trip together and we ended up going back here once, Kauai 2 times and Oahu once.  We’re going to have to make another trip soon.