Tales from Maui…

Ahhhhhhh, smell that Hawaiian air! All is well here in Maui. I’m sitting poolside looking up at the palm trees as I type this…

Day 1 (Wednesday) –

Got up at the crack of dawn and caught a shuttle service to the airport [thank you N.B my A.C. for hooking us up with that!!] We flew all dang day, then sat in the Honolulu airport for 3 hours, then flew some more. We got into Maui around 4:15pm (6:15pm Seattle time).

We had a "fresh lei greeting" as part of our package:

We rented the car and got to the hotel around 5pm. So tired. We were quite concerned about what the hotel would be like since this was a rockin’ cheap deal at a 1 star hotel – add to the fact that the reviews on it were "less than shining". But lo and behold – the hotel is fine. It’s OLD, but it’s fine – it’s got that "I-was-built-in-the-60’s-and-I’ll-never-actually-look-clean-no-matter-how-hard-you-scrub-me" feel to it. But for the price – I can live with that. We went out to "Maui Taco" for dinner that night and came back to the hotel around 9pm. Hubby says I passed out around 9:30pm. I was SO tired. I don’t remember the last time I was that tired.

Unfortunately, my cell phone rang at 6:38am and we were unable to go back to sleep. Nice. I didn’t answer it and the number didn’t look familiar. But come on people – it was only 8:38am Seattle time. I don’t know about you – but I don’t call people’s cell phones at 8:38am unless they are a CLOSE friend whom I KNOW will be awake. *shakes head*

Day 2 (Thursday) –

I started out the day with a venti non-fat iced caramel macchiato (as everyone should) and then we drove around the west side of the island. We stopped at the most romantic restaurant I’ve ever been to. It is a large open-air gazebo that is an oceanside restaurant. Beautiful. We sat and ate our brunch while we watched the waves crash and the palm trees sway. WOW! Here is a photo of us at our table:

We spent the rest of te afternoon at Napili Beach (just a couple of hundred yards north of the restaurant). I laid on the beach for 3 hours. *insert contented sigh* We ended up driving up to Kahului (the central north part of the island) to find dinner and found a mall. "What?! For me?!?!" We decided to go cheap and just find a place to eat at the mall. *bad choice* I liked the sound of chinese so we grabbed some food at Panda Express. Have you ever eaten there…….and not puked afterwards?? It was bad. All I could stomach was the orange chicken. I threw the rest in the garbage. The fried rice was SO foul!

 I did score so super cute Converse tennis shoes for $9.99! The are white lowtops with purple hibiscus flowers all over them. We were going to catch a movie – but were too tired. We just came back to the hotel and crashed.

Day 3 (Friday) –

Wow – are we lazy. We sauntered out of bed at 10:something. (That would be noon:something Seattle time!) We drove to a local Starbucks and then we spent most of the day (well, what was left of it) driving around and looking at stores. I got some great new sunglasses (my Dollar store ones were not cutting it for me) that (I think) make me look like a movie star. We decided we would drive down to the far south end of the island (Wailea) to check out this burger joint we had read about. We stopped at a beach to watch the sunset:

We drove around and around for about 45 minutes looking for this burger place and FINALLY I relented and let Hubby ask someone for directions and we were told "Oh that went out of business about a month ago." By that time, I really wanted a cheeseburger so we went to this place called Cheeseburgerland. The burgers were the standard overpriced $10.95-$12.95 each – but the upselling was OB-NOX-IOUS!!! "Would you like a Mai Tai?!" "No, I’ll have a Diet Coke." "Would you like that in a souvineer cup that has unlimited free refills?" "Do your regular cups ave free refills?" "Yes." "Then NO – I don’t want a souvineer cup for an additional $6.95!" Each burger description on the menu would end with "This would be great with a beer!" or "Pair this with a Mai Tai!" or "This burger goes great with a t-shirt!!" Then the kicker came when we ordered our burgers:

"Would you like to order fries with those?"

"THE BURGERS DON’T COME WITH FRIES?!?!?!"

"Nope. Would you like to order a side of fries?"

Gee, $4.95 later we got to have fries with our burgers!

"Would you like the extended warranty with your burger…??!!"

I had already stepped WAY out of my normal cheapness and ordered appetizers (coconut shrimp) because I had been craving it all week). So, $41 later…dinner is served. And sadly – it wasn’t great. It was extremely sub-par.

Well, I would write more – but my laptop batery says I have 5 minutes of battery left. ACK!! No time for spell check! And I think this retarded MAC is going to post this without paragraphs. So sorry! I can’t make it divide my text into paragraphs – even with html.

Ok well, ALOHA!!