Pyramids in Polynesia: Some Logistics

Who's ready for some honeymoon recaps?

In order to be the most helpful to you, my dear readers, I'll be breaking the posts out into different topics, starting with some details on travel, hotels, and overall setup of our trip.

First up - getting there and getting back.  After looking at flight times and prices from NOLA, I decided that the best option would be to break up the flights a bit.

The day after the wedding, Sunday, we flew from New Orleans to Los Angeles on Southwest Airlines.  Our flight arrived at LAX at 8:00 PM, and we took the shuttle over to the nearby Hilton.  The hotel was super sweet - they upgraded our room to a higher level and included chocolate covered strawberries with our room service order!

New husband, four cheese macaroni, strawberries, and Game of Thrones.

In the morning, we took the shuttle back to LAX and caught our Hawaiian Airlines 8:30 AM flight to Honolulu.


This was such a great setup for us, because we were able to land in Hawaii at 11:30 AM local time, with a whole day ahead of us.  Leaving Monday morning from NOLA would have pushed back our arrival pretty far, and made for an even longer day of flying.  And since we flew Southwest to the west coast, I was able to use my SW credit card points to get free flights!  I also used points to get our Hilton room for free, so our L.A. detour didn't cost us anything extra.  And after the whirlwind weekend and me coming down with a cold, I was very happy to use the night to get some rest.

Yay for free rum punches on Hawiian Airlines flights!  Note the strategic showing-off of those new rings.

We took a similar approach for the flight home: we left Hawaii at night and took an overnight flight to Las Vegas on Hawaiian Airlines, followed by Las Vegas to NOLA on Southwest. The return trip also included a free Southwest flight, and it was the most direct route that we could find, but this plan wasn't as smooth.  We had to collect our luggage from the Hawaiian flight and then take a shuttle to another terminal because the Southwest gates are practically on the other side of the city (or at least it feels like that when you only have an hour and a half between flights!).  Talk about stressing out on the last day of the honeymoon.  I certainly could have planned that better, but we made it in time and were back to reality the next morning.

As for our time in paradise, we split our nine days equally between the islands of Oahu and Maui.

Vintagey Hawaii map for reference./Photo from Poetic Home

In Oahu, we stayed in Honolulu at the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel.  I really enjoyed our stay here. There was no pool, and the rooms are not fancy, but not much in Hawaii is really that luxurious.  The room had an incredible view because we went for the penthouse room with the wraparound balcony.  I liked this hotel's location, because we were close to the action on the main strip (one night we walked down for dinner and drinks), but it was quiet and secluded.

View of Diamondhead from the back of our room.

View of Waikiki and the Pacific Ocean from the side of the balcony.

In Maui, we stayed at the Honua Kai resort on the western side of the island in the Kaanapali area.  I booked our studio room through a listing on VRBO.  This resort was more geared toward families, and it was on the beach and had three swimming pools and several hot tubs.  The original thinking for our honeymoon was to do all of our activities and sightseeing in Oahu, and then use Maui for relaxing by the pool and beach.  Maybe it's because the hotel didn't allow alcohol around the pool (what?!), or because the aforementioned cold had now been passed on to my new spouse, but we only went to the pool and hot tub for some quick dips.

The view from our room in Maui. No filter, that's just how vibrant everything was.

So Maui was more recuperation time, rather than relaxing in the sun.  We did have some great experiences on the Valley Isle, which I'll go over in another post, but overall I enjoyed our time in Oahu more.  Plenty of reviews online said that people could basically skip Oahu and never go back to it except for the airport, which worried me because we were spending half of our time there. Maybe I like cities more than other travelers or I'm just fine with things being a bit touristy, but I fell in love with the island.  It's pretty compact, compared to Maui, and we easily drove from the hotel on the south side of the island to the North Shore in about an hour.  That's another thing - you'll probably need to rent a car when you're there (and bring your GPS if you have a portable one.  We meant to bring ours, but forgot.  It would have made life a lot easier to not have to use cell phones for directions).

How I spent my Hawiian honeymoon. 

Take my opinion of Maui with a grain of salt, because we were exhausted and sick by the time we got there and that affected what we did and how we felt about it.  I will comment on staying in this area in Maui - if you're a family with kids and want to stay at a resort and do all the water activities this would be great.  If you're looking to experience the culture or are planning to take in all the island has to offer - like the sunrise bike ride on Haleakala - you might want to consider staying somewhere else.  This area is secluded and we had to drive pretty far to do nearly everything.

So that's it for now, but posts on what we did and what we ate (which might have to be a two-parter) are coming up!  If you're planning a Hawaiian trip and have any specific questions, let me know in the comments so I can make sure to answer them in an upcoming post.