Hawaii - 3 islands
I spent 3 nights in Waikiki staying at the Hyatt Regency Waikiki which is an amazing property right on Waikiki Beach with an amazing breakfast and a waterfall in the middle of the huge property. Visiting the famous Pearl Harbour Memorial is a must do, you can either do this by a guided tour from your hotel or you can rent a car to drive around the island, personally I don’t believe you need a car unless you are planning on exploring the other parts of Oahu island as well.
There are plenty of restaurants in walking distance such as the Hula Grill – which gives you a fantastic sunset view. The International Market Place is very vibrant and a good place to have a stroll around during the day or in the evening.
After that we flew with a small plane to Kona on the big island and stayed at the Sheraton Kona Resort. This island is perfect for a jeep rental to explore the volcano and other part of this amazing island such as the Thurston Lava tubes. You can swim with Rays at this resort if you wish. Exploring this island on our own gave us the flexibility of spending extra time on some spots. The resort has a great pool but I believe you don’t need a super exciting room on this island as you are out exploring most of the day. Most likely early start and late finish.
Next stop Maui – this is one of the island where you can relax and still explore the island and its beauty and should probably stay the longest. A car rental is a must here as well to explore all of the island if you wish. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency Maui, which is a mazing property and has penguins, which I could have watched all day. Their beach is amazing and so is their pool area. Here I feel it is absolutely worth it spending the extra money on an Oceanview room.
The resort does its own Luau that you can take part of however I feel the best Luau is the Old Lahaina Luau and an absolute must do. There are plenty of amazing restaurants and bars on Maui such as the Kimo`s Maui in Lahaina – fantastic cocktails and incredible food. You can do many different excursions you can do from here. If you like snorkelling I would highly recommend to do a catamaran cruise to Molokini crater – amazing wildlife, sea lions and turtles to see. The other excursion I would do is a day trip to Lanai – know as the pineapple island – it is very small and has only a small number of inhabitants but a fantastic history and pineapple museum.
The Road to Hana is another must do. You can do that with an excursion or if you more of the adventures kind you can drive it by yourself which gives you more flexibility but the roads are very very narrow on parts of this drive. My husband swore at me for parts of this but it was well worth it in my opinion. Amazing views, trails, gardens, lava Tube, black sand beach and waterfalls along the way . It will be a long day, early start and late finish or you can stay a night at the Travaasa resort.
For the adventures ones a great activity is the sunrise bike ride down Hawaii's Haleakala volcano or day tours are an option too.
I feel Hawaii is one of those once in a lifetime destinations yet, ideally you need to visit multiple times to see all the islands or have 2 months to visit.
