Maui Honeymoon Report

   Maui Honeymoon Report

If anyone wants any additional info on anything referenced here, feel free to PM me!

Our
honeymoon was so amazing, romantic, relaxing, I could go on and on. We
flew to Maui for a week and stayed at a little inn just outside
Lahaina, on the west side of the island. When we first decided on Maui,
we spent many hours searching online for a place to stay. So many of
the resorts and hotels were either not in our budget or seemed a little
too dingy for our honeymoon. We didn't care if we were right on the
beach, but did want a kitchen so we could have food and cook (we have
our priorities!). I got on Trip Advisor and began searching for places
in Maui, reading review after review and I couldn't find anywhere that
didn't have a few bad reviews. Then I typed in "Lahaina," remembering
I'd enjoyed driving through there when I'd visited the island with my
family as a kid. It was really the only town I could remember! Up
popped many, many reviews about a place called Wai Ola — not a single
negative thing about this place. I couldn't stop reading about it and
then I couldn't stop daydreaming about our honeymoon.

Wai Ola
(www.waiola.com) was it for us! It's a great big house in a residential
neighborhood about half a mile from the beach and Lahaina. The house
has been remodeled and turned into an inn with five apartments in the
house and one separate honeymoon cottage on the property. I fell so in
love with that cottage! The place also has a pool, spa, outdoor
barbecues, private patios or lanais for each apartment, free parking,
free laundry facilities, a DVD library to borrow from (for free), and
free use of beach chairs, beach towels, umbrellas, coolers, and snorkel
equipment. The cottage itself had both a private balcony/lanai and a
private patio (more private the ones for the apartments), as well as a
giant shower, a huge Jacuzzi bathtub, and a kitchen! We were sold and
booked it immediately!

Our private patio (we spent a lot of time chilling out here and drinking our morning mimosas!).

I
was still a bit nervous when we were driving from the airport in to
Lahaina and up to the inn. So many places can look really good online
but can really disappoint in person. Then we got to Wai Ola and we were
so blown away. It was so much better than we could have imagined! They
had roses and champagne and freshly baked banana bread waiting for us,
as well as a welcome basket full of local snacks and goodies and a
fresh fruit basket. The place was so divine. We had the most relaxing,
romantic week there. It was hard to leave to go to the beach! We'd come
back to find the place tidied and yummy cookies or cut up pineapple
waiting for us. The couple that run the place are so sweet and gave us
great advice on which beaches and restaurants to go to. The wife also
loves to bake and we got treats four times while we were there! It's
small and quiet, which was so nice for our honeymoon. No outside guests
or children are allowed there and we practically had the place to
ourselves with only a few other couples there when we arrived. November
is a slow time, and the last few days of our stay we were the only
couple there! It was so blissful and exactly what we wanted for our
honeymoon.

HB grilling it up on the patio by the pool outside our cottage:

Clearly,
I can't say enough about this place. We'll definitely be going to back
and I highly recommend it for anyone looking to vacation on Maui. We
also saved so much money! This place was so inexpensive compared to
most resorts and really offers at least as much if not more, with many
more personal touches.

We stayed on the west side of the island
for the most part and went to a lot of beaches and walked through most
of the towns, window shopping, people watching, and enjoying the
beautiful Hawaiian weather (it didn't rain on us once!). We really
didn't do much touristy stuff, just relaxed a lot. For a trip, we did a
lot of nothing and it was wonderful! We also left the cell phones and
watches at home and didn't use computers or the TV (we watched one
movie one night). It was so nice to be together and away from reality
for a week!

We got a honeymoon package with our stay at the inn,
which included gift certificates to a couple of great local restaurants
and tickets to the Old Lahaina Luau. I was so glad we did this! We
saved a little more money than if we'd bought everything ourselves, and
it was so nice to have everything set up for us in advance. The luau
was so fun and one of our favorite nights. I definitely recommend it!

Our dinner! They literally dug up the pig and served it. It was sooo yummy!

Our
last day there, we finally became tourists and drove around most of the
rest of the island. We went to the 'Iao Valley State Park and enjoyed
hiking through the valley and across the bridges there to see the 'Iao
Needle. It was so beautiful and breathtaking, definitely one of our
favorite experiences.

We
also ate a LOT!! We're big foodies and wanted to take advantage of the
local flavor. Some of our friends got us a gift certificate to a local
restaurant near where we were staying and so we had several really nice
dinners out during the week.

Maui Tips

In case anyone is planning a trip, I thought I would list our favorite restaurants here:

Hula Grill, Kaanapali
— So pretty and right on one of the most romantic beaches ever; we took
a sunset walk down the beach first and it really set the mood. Our
favorites here were the lobster and scallop potstickers.

Sunset walk on Kaanapali Beach:

Mala Ocean Tavern, Lahaina — Really good fries and right on the harbor beach.

Maui Brewing Company, Kahana
— Oh, the beer! Coconut beer is so good. We did the sampler and got to
try all the locally brewed beer and it was so fun. The food was pretty
good here, too. By the way, they stock this beer at BevMo here in SD
and it's so yummy. Bikini Blonde was our favorite.

Beer!

Mama's Fish House, Paia
— Our favorite dinner, and definitely the most romantic. Set on a
private, quiet beach and the food is so incredible. Passion fruit crème
bruleé? YUM! They also brought me a lei because it was our honeymoon
and the sous chef sent us complimentary bisque soup of some kind. Not
sure what was in it, but it was so yummy!

So pretty at this beach! We loved it here.

The Gazebo Restaurant, Napili —
Such good breakfast! I had banana macadamia nut pancakes with coconut
syrup…mmm. And beautiful, right on Napili Bay with excellent views of
whale watching during the right season (not right now, unfortunately).

The view from our table! So gorgeous!

So,
all in all, an amazing week and especially because it was spent with my
new husband. We loved Maui and we can't wait to get back!