Planning the vacation was fun. I ultimately decided on seeing two islands over the span of a week, and settled on Oahu and Maui. I knew for sure that I wanted Oahu (at least once in my life!) but had a hard time deciding between Maui and Kauai. I ultimately decided on Maui since it was more likely to have less rain and my brother had just gotten back from living there briefly so he was knowledgable about the island.
We drove to LA on a Tuesday and got the kids settled in with my parents, and then flew to Oahu early on Wednesday morning. Ugh - all the flights were NOT good to me. I don't usually do terribly on planes, but this pregnancy has been my hardest sick-wise and the flights were not pleasant. The last hour was the worst, but I managed to not throw up (woohoo!) and was SO excited when we landed. We took a shuttle to the place where we'd signed up to rent a car and then took it straight to a Target down the street for some simple food items. (A case of water bottles, a few apples and bananas, etc.) We were staying at an AirBnB so we wanted to make sure to have the essentials.
We then drove to Waikiki, which is where our condo was. It was great because it was so cheap and a very central location, but man - parking was horrendous! We got unbelievably lucky while we were there to find parking on a free street, but sometimes it would take a while of us driving around. We sure didn't want to pay $30 a night for parking though, so I'm so glad we had such good luck with that!
Anyway, we decided to go eat and check out a beach called Lanikai that I'd heard great things about. We ate at a cute cafe and then headed down to the beach. The sand was so soft and white and the water was absolutely gorgeous. We enjoyed walking along the shoreline and enjoying the view.
We then headed back to our condo - we were so tired and jetlagged and wanted to make sure that we got enough sleep before our next few (much busier) days on the island. Oh, but we also found this random hole-in-the-wall Hawaiian BBQ place down the street from our condo and grabbed some food there for a late-night dinner. (We weren't super starving but we kept a lot of it in the fridge to snack on later.)
Thursday morning we woke up early and went to a 24 hour diner that was attached to the Hilton down the street. It was SO GOOD. Michael got pancakes with strawberries and their homemade whipped cream and I got french toast. The place was also pretty much empty since we were definitely not adjusted to Hawaii time and it was about 5 am there in a party town. Haha. After breakfast we drove to the start of the Manoa Falls trail. I'd looked up a few hikes that I could do easily while pregnant and this was one that was short, simple, and beautiful.
It didn't disappoint at all. This hike was seriously insanely beautiful and I'd recommend it to anyone. It was only a couple miles each way and full of SO much lush greenery. Me and Michael were totally in awe the whole time. Pictures don't do it justice at all.
I was worried we would be rained on during our hike but other than some misty air, we pretty much avoided any type of rain. Yay! It would have been pretty muddy and gross if we'd had to do the hike in the rain.
We then headed to North Shore! We took the veeeery scenic route because for some reason the GPS on Michael's phone was set to "avoid highways," which we didn't notice until it was too late. Haha! That's okay though - the scenery in Hawaii is nothing to complain about. Well, other than that I was so easily carsick sick since I was pregnant. Totally worth it though! Such a pretty drive!
We drove by the temple and then headed to Pipeline. It was fun to watch the surfers there.
We hit up the famous Ted's Bakery for lunch and I liked it more than Michael. I got the garlic shrimp and was impressed. We then drove along the coast until we got to Matsumoto's Shave Ice, which is maybe the most famous shaved ice place in Oahu. We wanted to make sure we did the shaved ice thing right! It was located in a fun shopping area so I got to walk around for 20 minutes or so while Michael waited in the insane line for Matsumoto's. In Hawaii, (or at least at this place) they serve the shaved ice over vanilla ice cream. It makes it way better!
We went home along the west side of the island and happened to go right by the Dole Plantation. It wasn't necessarily in my plans to stop there since I wasn't planning on doing the tour, but since it was right there we figured we'd at least go take a look! Despite just having eaten shaved ice, we also had to get a Dole Whip because of course we did! It was super delicious. We took a short look around and then headed south.
As you can see, there was so much gray sky over us this day but miraculously we never got seriously rained on! It was kinda nice since we were out so much. Me and Michael both love the rain, but I definitely wasn't hoping for too much on our vacation!
Friday morning was our big excursion. I'd booked it weeks before and was pretty excited about it! We were going over to the west side of the island for a boat ride out to swim with dolphins and whale watching! We got up SUPER early that morning, grabbed a quick breakfast to eat in the car, and checked into our excursion by 6:30am. (The tour started promptly at 7.) They gave us wetsuits to wear (not necessary but I definitely didn't want to get cold and have that be a hinderance to the experience) and some instructions before we headed out. Our tour guide let us know that there was almost always at least one person who got seasick and I remember laughing and nudging Michael, totally sure it would be him. Little did I know.....
Anyway, we started out the tour looking for both whales and dolphins and got lucky pretty quickly when we saw a big humpback whale in the distance. Definitely cool.
And it wasn't long before we ran into a pod of dolphins! Our tour guide told us to hurry and get on all our snorkel stuff and we turned off the boat engine and waited for them to come closer. They did and we jumped in.
We were instructed to just kinda hang out and swim slowly and calmly and that the dolphins would get curious and swim around us. And that's exactly what they did. So cool!
After they swam away me and Michael took a quick picture together and then it was time to get back on the boat to look for more sea creatures.
Sadly, this is when it all kinda went downhill for me. :-( The second I got back on the boat I didn't feel so hot, (which is weird because I was FINE until this point) and really hoped that us speeding along would help. It didn't. :-(
Our boat driver then took us to an awesome snorkel spot that had sea turtles and all sorts of cool and bright fish. Michael was able to stomach getting off the boat again to snorkel but I felt like death and could do nothing but lay on the boat. It was pretty pathetic but motion sickness+pregnancy is definitely not good to me.
When we left that spot it wasn't long before I puked again. :-( I'm glad it at least happened right before we ran into three humpback whales, so that I could properly appreciate that experience!!! Our boat driver was really respectful of nature and never would have purposely gotten as close to the whales as she did on accident. And we were SO close! They went right under our boat! Michael even got it on the Go Pro which is awesome. We were all so excited to see that! This picture only shows two, but there were definitely three!
And then it was time to head back. I was pretty queasy until we got off the boat, and then I was better within about three minutes.
Despite getting super sick, it was such a cool experience and I'm so glad we did it! Our excursion included lunch at a place called Spinner's Cafe, which was right there by the water. We got kalua park sandwiches and then headed back to our condo.
My original plan was to change and then go see Pearl Harbor, but oh man, we were both feeling kinda sick and sleepy so we ended up taking a nap. By the time we were up and feeling better, it was time to head across the island to the Polynesian Cultural Center. I'd bought us tickets for dinner and the night snow.
All the driving was at least pretty!
The PCC was cool. We had a little time to walk around before dinner and our show so we checked out some of the different island exhibits and enjoyed the pretty scenery.
Dinner was okay, but the show was awesome. It was called Ha - Breath of Life and was everything you'd hope for in a really awesome Polynesian cultural show. We both loved it but were SO tired by the time it was done. Yes, even with the nap we'd taken that day. :-) We drove back and slept so good that night.
Saturday was another really awesome day. We woke up feeling refreshed which was good because I had another hike planned for that morning. This time we did Diamondhead. It's one of the most famous hikes and super popular. It gives a great view of the island and is relatively short as well. My only issue with it was that the trail was insanely crowded!!! There were about a million Japanese tour buses that did the hike at the same time as us. It really was such a beautiful hike with an amazing view, but sheesh. After we saw only a handful of people on our other hike, it was kind of annoying to be on such a crowded one. Still.... I am glad we did it.
These stairs were pretty killer at the end!
After our hike we ate some lunch and then got ready to head to Kualoa Ranch. This was the other major excursion I'd booked for us weeks in advance, and I was really excited about this too! They have all kinds of tours you can take, including a zipline tour and an ATV tour, but I stuck with the Movie Sites tour. I would've LOVED to do the zipline tour but everything I read and everyone I talked to said you're not supposed to zipline when pregnant. Darn! On the bright side, the Movie Sites tour was cheap and still SO GOOD. We got taken all over the ranch on a small open bus-type vehicle and our tour guide gave us a bigger and longer tour than we paid for. He showed us the sets for a TON of TV shows and movies that have been filmed there, including Lost, Jurassic Park, 50 First Dates, and the new Kong movie. We both thoroughly enjoyed the tour and agreed that it was one of the prettiest places we went in Oahu.
Our tour guide was hilarious and took this pic for us. :-)
We went to a nearby beach after our time at Kualoa and hung out and walked along the shoreline. Hawaii beaches are just so beautiful. We then went to dinner at Haleiwa Joe's at Haiku Gardens. It is another insanely popular place. We ate pretty early to avoid the crazy crowds.
Oh! And there were wild chickens eeeeverywhere! So funny.
We got back to Waikiki and actually decided to explore that area, which we hadn't even done yet. Haha! We walked around a few shops, got some Hawaiian cookies, and then headed back.
The next day was Sunday and for some reason I woke up feeling SO SICK!!!!! Ugh!!! Luckily the only real thing I had planned for that day was to fly to Maui. Still, I was not looking forward to that flight while already feeling so sick! Luckily I had done most of the packing the night before, so we ate breakfast (me just barely choking it down) and headed to the car rental place to drop off the car and take the shuttle to the airport. The flight was pretty awful and at one point I had the barf bag out and ready to go, but somehow I made it to the Maui without throwing up. Yay! And thank goodness for a short flight!! Ha!
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