Aloha Once More

Hooray - on the Wednesday of our trip we awoke to blue skies and sunshine. Actually, that's not quite true. We awoke to darks skies since hubby had to be up and away at 6am to go on a deep-sea fishing trip. The blue skies and sunshine were there by the time I ventured out of our room for breakfast. 

Wednesday was also the day for choosing a gift from the Tiffany stand. It was sooooo hard - there were necklaces, bracelets, earrings, cufflinks for the men, and even a Tiffany tote bag. Finally, after much humming and hawing, I settled on this beauty, the 'Tiffany 1837 Interlocking Circles Pendant '. It's difficult to make out in my appalling photo, but two of the circles are silver while the other is a rose-gold colour (made from Tiffany's 'new metal' which they call Rubedo.)

After collecting my lovely gift, I walked up to the car hire place to drop off the keys. Here's a photo of the front of the hotel that I snapped as I was walking away.

And here's a photo taken across one of the many golf courses in Wailea.

A refreshment stop was called for since the sun was already beating down and the walking had made me rather warm.

Back at the hotel I decided to take a few photos of the building and grounds. 

This is part of the immense lobby area.

This is the entrance to our room - you can see the door bottom left.

And this is our little terrace.

This is one of the many, many pools in the hotel grounds, although this one wasn't for swimming. Aren't the colours just fabulous? So green, and so, so blue.

This is the chapel in the hotel grounds - very popular for weddings, apparently, although we didn't see any while we were there.

More views of the grounds, looking across to the beach and sea.

And this is the pool I decided to deposit myself by while waiting for hubby to return.

Hubby finally returned from his fishing trip at about 2.30pm, fish-less. The group he was with had caught just one fish, which was one better than the other boats that had also sailed out. What luck that we weren't relying on hubby to provide dinner that night. We spent the rest of the afternoon relaxing by the pool, until about 5pm when we had to head over to hear the Big Boss of hubby's company do a bit of a talk.

Still, not a bad setting...

...in the hotel grounds, right next to the beach.

And when the whooping and fist-bumping died down, hubby and I went for a little stroll along the shoreline.

Before heading back to the hotel

for a little drinkie (tropical style)

and the most amazing dinner in the hotel's wonderful Amasia restaurant that I forgot to take any photos of, except this one which shows hubby looking slightly worried (probably fearful that I might try and snatch some of his pudding.)

And the gift waiting in our room on Wednesday night? 

Anyone like to hazard a guess? 

A clue? 

It's something that made me very happy...

...several boxes of Nespresso coffee capsules  

and a note to say that a Nespresso coffee machine will be delivered to our home address soon (although it hasn't arrived yet...)

Aloha Again

I'm not sure if anyone is interested in more Maui posts but, bad luck, I'm writing some. Feel free to skip anything with the words 'Aloha', 'Hawaii', 'Maui', etc in the title if I'm boring you to the point that pulling out your own fingernails is a more enjoyable way to pass ten minutes.

Day Two dawned grey and drizzly. Thanks for that, weather gods. We were up early again as the time difference of GMT -10 hours was playing havoc with our body clocks; but at least it meant we were up and about in plenty of time to make the most of our day. We started with breakfast in the hotel's cafe-cum-grocery store, quite a neat idea as it was open all day and well into the evening and gave hotel guests a very relaxed option when it came to food and drink - you could eat in or take away a variety of items including Starbucks coffee (guess who was rather pleased?), croissants, muffins, cereal, fruit, bagels, pizzas, cold drinks (including alcohol), crisps, ice cream, and much more. Of course, it all came at a price ($6+ for a coffee) but luckily we had the money from hubby's company to cover it.

Then we collected our brand spanking new Oakley sunglasses

and headed off to get our hire car from the valet (doesn't that sound fancy? 'the valet'; as it happened there were no other parking options, so we were pleased to learn that hubby's company had secured a rate of $12 a night rather than the usual $30 [having never used valet parking before I've no idea if that's expensive or simply the going rate, but it seems a lot to me]); it was a nice touch to find that two ice-cold bottles of water had been put in the car for us. I was so impressed (sad, but true) that I even took a photo.

 We headed north towards Kahului again, with the intention of our first stop being the old sugar cane plantation town of Pa'ia, up on the coast. But then we drove past Old Navy and had to pull in and do some shopping. Yes, again.

After an hour or so (there may also have been a stop for coffee...) we finally got the show on the road and set off for Pa'ia. Once we'd managed to find a parking spot (not an easy task), we headed straight for the beach. It was nice to finally enjoy the coast, even if the weather was still a little on the grey side. We walked from mid point to the far end and back again, watching some of the surf dudes doing their thing.

We then took a walk around the town; hubby was intrigued by how Australian it all seemed - the architecture of wooden buildings, the 'sidewalks' plus the general feel and layout of the place is reminiscent of small town/old time Oz. I think this is what we were hoping/expecting Lahaina to be like, lots of speciality shops, interesting restaurants and cafes and a general laid-back feel. This is the only photo I took of the town, and it's not a very good one, but you might be able to get an idea of what it's like.

We had a lovely lunch in The Flatbread Company which serves some very interesting takes on pizza, all cooked in a massive wood-fired oven right in the middle of the dining area. Luckily we weren't sitting too close as I can imagine it might get a tad toasty.

Once our (not-so little) tummies were full we set off on the next part of our journey - The Road to Hana (a.k.a The Hana Highway.) It's possible that Chris Rea had this particular route in mind when he penned his famous little ditty, The Road to Hell. The Hana Highway connects Kahului with Hana, which is 52 miles away in east Maui, passing through lush forests and past numerous waterfalls. Luckily, since we were in Pa'ia, we'd already put a few miles on the clock without even realising it when we decided to set off on this trip which the guide books rave about. It takes 2.5 hours to drive the 52 miles, without making any stops, due to the road being VERY bendy (approximately 620 curves in total) and rather narrow. It passes over 59 bridges, 46 of which are only one lane wide. The other issue is that when you get to Hana the road sort of peters out into a dirt track (and some rental car companies don't allow their cars to be taken on this stretch) so you can't really make a round trip, you have to double back. So that would mean 1240 bends in the road, 118 bridges, 92 of which are one line wide.

We set off with such great intentions, looking forward to a road trip along the coast. However, what we didn't realise is that mostly the road is inland and, to be perfect frank, once you've seen a few tall trees and been round more than a few bends, it all starts to feel and look pretty same-y. Not to mention a bit annoying.

Oh, and the locals who know the road like to drive quite fast, so there was a constant feeling of getting in the way as we crawled around sharp bends and over one-lane bridges with a 4x4 bearing down on us. It didn't take long for us to decide that we would get to the halfway point and then turn back. I have to say I'm glad we made it as far as we did, as Ke'anae (the halfway point) was rather a nice spot to stop for a while, very dramatic with the waves crashing on the craggy lava rocks.

And then we turned round and did it all again. Poor hubby was VERY pleased when we reached the unbendy road back near Pa'ia.

We pulled in at the Ho'okipa Beach Park just before reaching Pa'ia, to admire the views and watch even more craaaazy surf dudes doing their thing out in the waves. Apparently this spot boasts some of the best waves on the Maui coastline and is the "home of contemporary surfing" (whatever that is.)

You can't see from my photos, but there were actually a lot of people out catching the waves. And just as many watching them from a safe distance.

After all of this we were feeling rather weary so, after dropping off the rental car and having a quick bite to eat in a restaurant near the hotel (the class-ily named Chesseburger Island Style, where I went for the Hot Dog, of course)

we headed back to our room, ready to drop.

But before we could, look what we found on the bed...

Day Two, Gift Number Two. An invitation to stop by the Tiffany stand being set up in the lobby the next morning. Oh, go on then, twist my arm.

Aloha!

Can you guess where hubby and I were last week?

Hawaii! 

The island of Maui to be precise. An all expenses paid trip courtesy of hubby's employers. Please don't hate me. It's a big old shindig that they organise every year and the top performers (mostly sales people, and some others [hubby is part of the 'others']) are invited, along with a guest. Talk about lucky. This was the trip of a lifetime, and the company are super-generous so not only were flights and accommodation paid for, we were also given nearly $500 to pay for food and drinks at the hotel, $300 in travellers cheques to spend as we liked, $750 to pay for 'experiences' organised by the company - we chose helicopter flights and deep-sea fishing, two dinner and drinks receptions, a concert by Train on the final evening, and various gifts throughout our stay. Yep, it's fair to say our jaws dropped and dropped again; and again.

As you probably know, Hawaii is a fair old distance from the UK (over 7,000 miles) and it took us pretty much a whole day to get there for a five-night trip (this was one of the reasons we decided not to take DC - he stayed with Grandma and Grandad.) Suffice to say we were a little shell-shocked when we first arrived (6pm on the Sunday Hawaii-time, which was 4am Monday in the UK - 24.5 hours after we'd left the house), but a good night's sleep helped get us back on track and Monday morning we were raring to go off on a road trip in our hire car. We headed along the coast to Lahaina, an old whaling town which contains many buildings of historic interest. Unfortunately, the buildings have all been filled with shops and 'galleries' selling all manner of tourist tat and a quick drive along the main street was enough for us to decide we didn't really have any desire to get out of the car and explore (aka trudge round various places selling key rings, t-shirts and fake hula skirts). Instead we headed for the outlet mall. Yes, we're classy like that - reject the historic whaling town in favour of a discount GAP. I'm going to do a separate post on the things I bought while we were on Maui, so if you're not interested in that sort of thing you can always skip that post.

After we had shopped we then dropped, and had lunch. This is pretty much the only photo I took in Lahaina (unless you count the one of hubby eating lunch and I'm sure you don't want to see that). This is the view from our table in the restaurant - not a bad one, eh? As you can probably tell, the weather wasn't great - warm but overcast and a little drizzly - not exactly what we had travelled all that way for!

Still, we were happy to be there because, let's face it, it's not everyday you get to go to Hawaii.

After lunch we hopped back in the car and drove out of Lahaina and towards Kahului; but on the way we saw a rather interesting place at the side of the road called Leoda's Kitchen and Pie Shop; it sounded too good to resist so we pulled in to investigate. And I'm so glad we did.

The peanut butter pie was DEEEEE-licious; a crisp crumb base, gooey chocolate and peanut butter filling and a sweet caramel sauce plus chocolate curls and peanuts on top. We (well, I...) got it to take away, but the food they were serving inside looked fantastic too, making us wish we'd had our lunch there. I'd definitely recommend a visit if you ever find yourself on Maui.

After a brief visit to Kahului (there's not masses to see, although I did find a secondhand bookshop where I scored five cosy crime books for $8; gawd, it sounds like all we did was shop, but honestly we did do some exploring too!), we headed back to the hotel for an evening dinner reception and traditional Hawaiian luau (hula dancing, conch shell blowing [mmm-hmmm], etc.) Hubby and I had to cry off early though as jetlag caught up with us around 9pm and our bed was calling. Upon returning to our room we found some lovely gifts awaiting us courtesy of hubby's company - a huge Lands End tote bag, two Under Armour sun visors (here I am modelling the bag plus one of the visors, and a shell necklace that we were given at dinner)

and a voucher for each of us to exchange for a pair of Oakley sunglasses at a stand that was to be set up in the hotel lobby the next morning. We were being truly spoilt, and it was only Day One.

Corners of Our Home: Downstairs

Continuing the very short series on random corners in our house; as with the upstairs shots, I snapped all these photos in one go, and didn't move anything for the camera - these are 'as is' shots, the good, the bad and the ugly.

GOOD

This lovely old phone in the hallway; mind you, it takes ages to dial a number so it's best used just for answering calls rather than making them (although round these parts we still have five-digit phone numbers so it's not so bad if you're only making a local call.)

GOOD

A corner of the windowsill in the hallway featuring (from left) a small wooden bowl which I bought in New York, a postcard depicting part of our village 'in the olden days', and a lovely wooden house complete with map of the area that my dear friend Rachel (of Lazyhill Gallery fame) made for us.

BAD

A pile of books on a chair in the corner of the snug which have nowhere to live since we sold the bookcase at the weekend.

GOOD

The corner of the snug where the bureau and bookcase used to live, looking much lighter and brighter these days.

INDIFFERENT

A lovely bookcase but it's looking rather untidy with that great big photocopy of an aerial photo of our village balanced on top and an unsightly pile of DC's books and comics on the second shelf.

UGLY

I know it's all part of the joys of having a small child, but the 'pirate ship' cardboard box is hardly a thing of beauty. Not to mention the garish letter and number foam floor tiles stacked by the sofa. Admittedly, I'm to blame for the latter as I got them out of the cupboard and haven't found anywhere else for them to live, yet.

UGLY

As above - part of the joys of having a small boy child is the basket of swords, shields, bow, arrows and other assorted weaponry; oh, how my OCD nerves jangle when I look at this. Luckily, in real life I don't tend to notice it too much as it's tucked behind the dining table so it's not in my line of vision.

There you have it, some random downstairs corners that you might never otherwise see on here.