maui

Oh my goodness, we were in Maui TWO months ago! Where, oh dear, where does the time go?!? We had a fantastic time and truthfully, I've spent the last two month in denial that our paradise vacation is over.  I loved it there.  Absolutely loved it.  I hate to admit it but part of me thought before our trip that I wasn't sure how much I was going to like Hawaii.  

Oh, how wrong I was.  

Seriously.  I was worried that I'd be bored.  Totally not the case.  I have to admit I perfected the art of "doing nothing".  We had high hopes of getting up early to see the sunrise at the top of the volcano and then mountain bike down.  We also thought that we would zip line through the jungle. Neither of which we actually did because: you had to wake up at 2:00 am. I'm sorry but Rule #1 for my vacations are no alarm clocks.  Maybe in future trips to Maui we will do adventurous things but this vacation called for a lot of book reading and relaxation. (Both of which were accomplished daily.) We did however go to a Luau, which was really cool.

The flight was a breeze - Oakland to Maui direct flight  (less time than flying to Milwaukee!) and we were there.  We stayed at the Westin (not the villas, the other one) in Kaanapali. I cannot say enough fantastic things about the Westin. First of all, they gave Mike food poisoning on his birthday (not a good thing) but the chef in charge of all the Westin restaurants contacted Mike himself to apologize. I love awesome customer service.  You may have taken an entire day away from my husband's vacation but your customer service is the bomb dignity.  I'm sold and a devoted customer for life. 

Ok moving on, the Westin was great. Awesome beach, that was perfect for snorkeling (which I will talk about in a bit), and directly next door to an outdoor mall (we like malls) but more importantly, the mall had an ice cream shop and 3 great restaurants, which means we didn't get into our car for 5 full days. (This in and of itself was a vacation for my dear husband who typically spends 4-5 hours a day in rush hour traffic. For reals, I'm not exaggerating. He has highway barnacles* growing on him by the end of the work week.)

*there's no such thing as highway barnacles.

anyway, the Westin was an awesome location and it had a fantastic pool area -- Four pools in fact meant that you didn't have to be sitting next to the pool listening to kids playing Marco Polo (Well you could, if you wanted but one of the pools was for adults only. We hung out by that pool all week.)  

Now let's discuss my panic attacks while snorkeling.  I have panic attacks while snorkeling. 

Yep.  The end.  

Really there isn't much to discuss but the older and older I get, the more I realize that any body of water that I swim in, must be highly chlorinated (you know, as in, no currents or rogue waves, no animals with fins, gills, teeth, with pretty tiled walls, clean and clear water and nothing evident on the floor, etc.) As it turns out, a girl that grew up in a swimming pool will only swim in a swimming pool.  I'm evidence of that.  It's all good though, I was a lifeguard while in college, so I could, if I wanted, swim in any sort of water. But I've decided, that nope, I don't really want to.  The good thing is that I was still able to see some really colorful fish during my short time in the water and Mike really really liked it.  He went out multiple times since it was so easy to see sea turtles and fish directly out from our hotel.  It was a good thing for him to do while I was soaking in the sunshine. 

 {westin pool #1 with water slide} Ok, since I labeled this one pool #1, you might be thinking that I'm going to show you pictures of pools 2, 3 and 4...let's just pretend I took pictures of those pools.  They were pretty too, just take my word for it. 

{view from our room} 

 {i call this one, "Sunset and a boat"}
original, I know!

{the best of both worlds- just down the beach from our hotel was an area that got pretty nice size waves.  I thought about taking a surfing lesson, but it got in the way of napping, reading and having nothing on the agenda. next time, watch out. I'm going to do some activities...unless the "nothing on the agenda" is available because that was really, really nice. You also might say to yourself, "but AnnE, the ocean doesn't have chlorine", to which I would reply, "sometimes there are loopholes to my rules."} 

{this is my view when I looked up from reading my book by the pool. it's a wonder how I read 4 books while I was there.}