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| Hello |
It’s been over 6 months since we had our most special vacation in Hawaii. Indeed, it feels like we just got back from the fabulous place. It's really impossible to erase the stunning experience. The magnificent memory of those days encouraged me to write this article.
I must say, I spent days in researching about this place before we actually booked our package. We wanted to have a romantic and adventurous vacation in all possible ways. As we were going to celebrate our 10 years of togetherness, we thought that Hawaii is the place where you could feel great comfort under the beautiful sky, could go for adventures in all shades of green and blue water, you could also give yourself a good workout by going on a long hike and of course Hawaii is a great place for shopping!!!! I think those were the best days of my life so far.
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| Up from the Air |
I never thought Hawaii was such a beautiful and spectacular place until we landed there.I could still portrait every single minute from my trip but I don’t wanna hold you for days just to read about how beautiful this place is, rather I would like you all to visit it once in your lifetime ;)
Okay, so here is our week long vacation/A Journey to the heaven/A walk in the clouds/ The best-est time ever spent in the presence of someone I really love :)
We visited 3 major islands in Hawaii :
1) Hawaii’s Big Island (as the name suggests, it's one of the biggest islands in Hawaii)
2) Oahu (Most popular island in the state of Hawaii)
3) Maui (A very calm, quiet and romantic island with beautiful landscape)
We could not visit "Kauai" because of the shortage of time (Heard it has nice botanical gardens, forests and nice hiking trails)
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| @ Atlanta Airport |
Day 1 (December 5, 2010) – We had a flight at 9:30 in the morning! So we had left our apt at 6:30AM. Well, I couldn’t sleep that night thinking about all the fun we had planned on!!! We drove to friends place to park our car and from there took the train to get to the airport. It was a 45 minutes ride on train and we reached airport around 8:00ish and took our boarding passes. Looked at the time and thought we were bit early for the flight. I had taken out our brand new camera and as always started clicking pictures at the airport.
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| Lei Greeting! |
Finally there was a call to get on the aircraft. I was so excited but was bit gloomy about 10 hours long flight + we had 2 hours layover at Dallas. We reached Honolulu airport around 8PM. We already had a booking with the transportation company to take us to the hotel. On our way out, we received a Hawaiian Lei Greeting which certainly had made our arrival so special! :)
It was 20-25 mins drive to our hotel - Aston Waikiki Joy and we reached there around 9PM. Since we had to leave for a one day trip to Big Island very next day, Chirag arranged the ride back to the airport as soon as we got in the hotel room. We were so exhausted from the day long flight, we had our dinner in the room itself and were soon ready to hit the bed. Nighty Night!!!!
Day 2 (December 6, 2010) - We woke up at 4:00AM to catch the 8AM flight to the BIG ISLAND. Got ready and as the clock struck to 6:30AM, we received a call from the reception to let us know that cab had been arrived to take us to the airport. We clicked some pics in my new dress and headed downstairs in no time. The cab driver was a really nice person. Because of his talkative nature, we were lucky to get more information about Hawaiian people, their way of living, their culture and much more in half an hour than in entire trip.
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| Ride of the day - Mustang Convertible! |
We reached the airport, took boarding passes and headed to the sitting area. On our way we took our breakfast, though I did not enjoy it much but was enough for few hours.We had a booking at Hawaiian Airlines and I could very well see the runway from my sitting area. I really didn't know why but I was so excited about flying Hawaiian airlines. As I had expected, when we got on the flight, a beautiful hawaiian lady greeted us Morning! She had a beautiful flower placed in her hair just behind the left ear. I had seen Chirag’s questionable expression after looking at the flower’s position!!! (In Hawaiian culture, flower on left side meaning being taken or Married and Right side meaning you are single)
Anyways, it was only 45 minutes flight and we landed at Big Island. Quickly we headed out to grab our ride of the day. Hubby rented Mustang convertible for the day and that added more excitement to our adventure on the land well known for having active volcano.
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| Smoke coming out of the crater created by volcano! |
Finally we reached at the Volcano National Park: main attraction on the map of Big Island. We went to the visitors center and collected some info on where to start our adventure. Unfortunately, we couldn't see active volcano at that time but I am glad, we have got another reason to visit Hawaii again :)
We did roam around for few minutes and then started our long hike down to see the BIG crater created by volcano. I must say, I had never seen such a beautiful and scenic hike before. To my surprise we finished 4 hours long hike without any difficulty and made it to the top by early evening.
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| Black Sand Beach! |
As we wanted to explore as much as we could, we headed to the Black Sand Beach in the evening. Oh my God, I was so amazed to see BLACK SAND. It looked so beautiful and unique. The beach was so calm and felt like It was extending its arms and telling us to sit and relax for hours and hours. We really enjoyed the calmness of that place and headed back to the airport to catch 6:30 flight back to Honolulu. On our way back, we quickly had few slices of pizza from the Pizza Hut to satisfy our stomach :) We got back to our hotel in honolulu around 9:30PM. It was a very long day and we decided to go to bed early to charge ourselves to explore Honolulu next day. Nighty Night!!!
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| Waikiki Beach, Ohau |
Day 3 (December 7, 2010)- Okay, Lets explore the beach today. The good as well as the bad thing about beaches in Hawaii is that all the beaches are public. Waikiki beach is a well known beach in Ohau(Honolulu). We decided to spend a day at the beach and then Polynesian dinner show at the Sheraton hotel at night. The beach had such a beautiful view of a blue water. Any one could spend hours and hours gazing at that silent monster. After an hour or so we fixed ourselves to one place and looked around to have some fun in the water!!
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| Aqua Cycle |
Aqua Cycle was the best water vehicle I had ever seen. It was a tricycle that could easily float on a water when you paddle it.
I had also tried standing board(I did it on my knees though!). I never thought I could ever enjoy any water sports that could risk my life! I enjoyed it like anythng and left Chirag with a suspicious feeling of me being in a deep water all by myself :)
Noon was almost over and we were starving for food. Apart from sea food, Subway was the only restaurant we could see from where we were, so we had sub for our lunch. Just after we ate our food, we headed to the hotel to get ready for our evening show.. Later!
It was 6:00 in the evening and I was all set to enjoy Polynesian dinner show. Since the place was only couple of blocks from our hotel, we set the map on my phone and started walking. Without any hassle we reached at Sheraton hotel a half hour early. As we already had a reservation, just confirmed our tickets and entered the hallway.
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| MAI TAI :) |
As we sat on the table, waiter came by, greeted us and asked us for a choice of drink. Since we had landed in the hawaii, I had been hearing a lot about famous Hawaiian drink “Mai Tai”. I asked waiter about its contents and made my mind to have it. Pineapple juice with rum made me high that night but I could manage to control myself though ;) After I had finished the drink, We got up to decorate our plate with delicious food but unfortunately I couldnt find anything vegetarian except for the salad :( However I enjoyed my salad followed by some water melon considering the fact that average only 15% of the world’s population are vegetarian! lol )
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| @ Polynesian Curtural Show |
As performances started, we had been asked not to click any pictures and enjoy the show. It was so much fun witnessing the Hawaiian culture in their own style. There was an after show photo session with all the performers who performed that night. We were not exception in that and had few memorable clicks with them.. On our way back to the hotel, we had to take few stops to complete my shopping for the day! We found that Ohau looked totally different in its black shades!!! End of the day. Nighty night!!!
Day 4 (December 8, 2010) - Today was the day to explore Polynesian cultural center where you could see the culture of 7 different islands and performance from all these islands. We spent all day there exploring each and every islands. Had some sushi for lunch and as we were coming to an end to get off the Polynesian center, we took our canoe ride to get to the front door. That was an awesome ride!
We took the circle island tour while heading back to the hotel. It was a scenic ride and saw few beautiful beaches, celebrity bungalows, pineapple fields, amazing mountain range, few movie locations and much more. In addition, we were also able to see some international surfers performing their stunts for the on going competition. Then we also stopped by a place where they sold famous macadamia nuts in all different flavors. We grabbed some too :)
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| Polynesian Cultural Center! |
At the night, we again decided to take a walk on the street and explore night life. We were so lucky to enjoy xmas decoration in the Ohau city. It was like a sky full of starts came down to earth just to celebrate our presence in the hawaii!!! lol We stopped by at California Pizza Kitchen for dinner. It felt just too good to sit in the patio and having a piece of your fav pizza and at the same time enjoying stunning view of the street. We got back to the hotel after dinner and had some last minute shopping in ohau as we were leaving for maui next morning!!! Night!
Day 5 (December 9, 2010) - .And it was a time to leave Ohau :( We had really enjoyed our stay in Ohau and also we were more excited about our next destination- Maui :) We had finished our breakfast quickly and headed to the airport. Again for no reason, Hawaiian Airlines added some more excitement to my journey. We reached Maui 10:30is in the morning. We were scheduled to take a helicopter flight at 12:30 in the noon. So very quickly we got out the airport, rented our ride to explore Maui (as we fell in love with mustang, we couldn't resist our self to ignore it and rented the same beauty for next 4 days :)).
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| Posing after safe landing of our helicopter flight! |
Okay, I knew that I had never experienced a helicopter ride before in my whole life and being scared was obvious but when the lady handed some paper to sign on it, I realised how much did I love my life, but with the brave heart I had signed the disclaimer stating that they would not be responsible if anything had happend to us while we were on a flight.. lol
I really enjoyed my first helicopter ride and glad I am in one piece to write this article :)
While going to our resort after the helicopter flight, we discovered the real beauty of Maui. Beautiful mountain range took our breath away and after looking at our Marriott resort, I couldnt speak a single world. I just whispered to Chirag: “WOW!!! Thank you so much”! We didnt do much that day after we got settled in the resort, Just took a walk by the resort’s private shoreline and enjoyed the nature at its best! We had to go to bed early as next day was planned for the “Sun Rise Tour”.
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| Among the clouds! |
Day 6 (December 10, 2010) - Our tour guide took us from the resort at 4:00 in the morning to see the 6:00AM sun rise. The day didnt start so well as when we got on the bus for sun rise tour, our tour guide had informed us about the bad weather and tstorms on the way up to the sun rise tour.We got there on time but because of the heavy storms we couldnt see the sun rise. I still remember It was freezing up there and I was wearing a single jacket which was really not helping me to stay warm.
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| Scenic circle island tour |
We got back to the resort around 9:30AM and were bit upset because of the weather. We were supposed to go out for a Zip Line adventure that afternoon but rain had spoiled all our plans. We then went to the shopping mall as it was the only indoor place worth going on that horrible day :( But as they say everything happens for a reason! As we couldn't go to zip line adventure, we thought to explore an island and to my surprise that day became the most memorable day during our stay in Maui :) Sky turned out so nice with all shades of gray and under the sky there was a shiny blue water and when rain was falling, it felt really really great. Oh my goodness.. that was more like a fantasy!
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| Cabana! |
By the time we had reached our resort in the evening, rain got quiet and we got some time to explore our resort. I had put on my bathing suit and we headed out to rent a cabana. Since it was a bad weather, sun already set in the sky and there were no more ppl out to rent a cabana, we got it for free and that made me more happy :) We set by our cabana and just recollected our memory from past. That was the most romantic part of our entire vacation!
Day 7 (December 11, 2010) - Chirag had woke me up this morning by these lovely words : “Happy Anniversary baby!!!” I was so excited to celebrate our 3 years wedding anniversary in a different way. We had planned to go on a scenic drive to Hana. Hana is 52 miles long scenic drive and you will see wonders as you explore every mile. I really cant explain our experience in words. I set my camera to the sports mode and clicked one after the other :) There were also places on our way where Jurassic park was shot.
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| Hana scenic drive, Maui |
Now comes the most beautiful romantic place I have ever been till now. Everything was at one place - water fall, small swimming pool like pond with black sand and deep blue ocean. It was a little hike down the hill where on the one end you could see the fall and swim in the pond beneath it, and on the other end, there was huge mighty ocean. It was a place where you could sit for hours and days looking at the ocean and still you would think that you were not satisfied!!! I just didn't want to leave that place but we were running out of time so left the spectacular place in an hour or so an headed back to the resort.
We got back to the room in the evening and got ready for the anniversary dinner. We had our dinner in our resort restaurant .That was the best anniversary celebration so far :)
Day 8 (December 12, 2010) - Last day in Hawaii :(
Today we were leaving for Atlanta in the 6:30PM flight but before that we had to do one BIG adventure - Snorkeling :) We had never done it before so we were very much excited about it.
Chirag is scared of water but he still wanted to try it. We got on the boat and he convinced all his senses that he could do it but when the time had arrived to really jump in to the 40 ft ocean, he chickened out, but I could easily snorkel :) I was amazed to see under water world with my naked eyes. That was just great! No words. Period.
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| Snorkeling :) |
We had also tried SNUBA where you go deep in the water with the oxygen mask. We could not finish the adventure though. We came out half way as It was so freighting to go deep in the water with oxygen mask.. I am not that brave yet :) May be on our next trip.. lol
Snorkeling Adventure was the high light of our (or should I say my :)) trip as we had never did it before. We got back to the resort around 1:00PM. We had to leave the resort as we already past the 12:00PM check-out time. With our special request they extended our stay for 1 more hour and gave us some time to pack our bags. We left the room at 2:00PM, had lunch and headed to the airport to catch the flight back to ATL.
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| @ Maui Airport - returning back to atlanta |
We arrived atlanta on Monday, December 13, 2010 at 9:45 AM. I was so exhausted again with the 10 hours flight but had to go back to the work same day. I directly went to the office from the airport and jumped to the work!!!
...and here is the end of our vacation!!!
Hope you have enjoyed Hawaii :)
The most important sex organ is the brain.
