Honemoon Recap Part I: Where We Stayed

Happy Monday, everyone! I'm back at work today for the first time in nearly 3 weeks. I'm expecting the next week to be extremely busy as I get caught up. But I'm going to try to hold onto those peaceful, easy-living vibes from Maui as long as I can!

And what better way to hold onto vacation vibes than to share your vacation experience with others!  I'm going to break up my recap into 3 posts:  this post about where we stayed, a post about where/what we ate and a post about our favorite things we did in Maui. If you ever plan to go to Maui, let me refer you to my good friend Amber's posts about Maui (found here, here, and here). I love planning trips but I have to say that I was pretty overwhelmed between a busy season at work (the busiest season I've had in years!) and planning a wedding. Amber and I are so much alike, have the same interests and value the same things when it comes to vacations. So I figured - why reinvent the wheel when I can utilize all the planning she did!  So, thanks Amber!  I am sure we would have found the same things to do and places to eat, but we wouldn't have stayed where we did if it wasn't for you, so I'm incredibly grateful for all the advice/recommendations she made!

Our honeymoon was so incredible. I am so glad that we went to Maui because our vacation was the perfect combination of relaxing/swimming/snorkeling and adventure/exploration. I would go back in a heart beat (although I wish the flight wasn't so dang long!).  

Where we stayed:

Phil and I prefer to have a kitchen while traveling and prefer the feel of staying in a condo over staying in a resort, so we opted to rent a condo through VRBO. We stayed in this unit in the Napili Bay area, which is on the north side of the west part of Maui. No where in Maui is cheap, so the cost to stay there for 9 days added up, but it was far less expensive than staying in a resort and we made at least one meal a day there, sometimes 2. Plus we used my airline miles for our flights so that cut down on the cost for this vacation.

We could not have been more happy with the location. I think Napili Bay is an undiscovered area of Maui, probably because there aren't any big resorts there - it's all smaller privately-owned condos (as far as we could tell). Further north in the Kapalua area, there are some resorts, like a Ritz Carlton, but they are tasteful resorts and not huge high rises (this is personal preference but we are not a big fan of HUGE resorts.  We prefer smaller developments as they tend to be less busy and a bit more low key, which is our vacation style). Our condo was a small studio but you don't need much room since the whole point of being in Maui is to be outdoors!

The reason we were drawn to Napili Bay (besides Amber's glowing recommendation of the area) was because it has fabulous snorkeling. Since it's on a bay, it's a bit protected from the wind so has excellent snorkeling. We don't have an underwater camera so I don't have photos to share from our snorkeling, but it was AMAZING!  We saw many sea turtles - 2 different kinds actually - and so many different tropical fish.  It was awesome to walk out the door and walk into the ocean and snorkel. Plus there was a snorkel shop that was a 5 minute walk away, so it was easy to get snorkeling equipment.  So if snorkeling is your thing, this is the place to stay! Also, Kapalua Bay is another bay that is about a 10 minute walk from Napili Bay. We walked over there to snorkel one day and the conditions there were also amazing.

Our unit was on the ocean so we had a gorgeous view from our lanai.

I get up earlier than Phil, so each morning I would brew some coffee and head outside to read until he woke up.  There isn't a better way to start the day in my opinion!

We also had drinks on our lanai each day. I always had white wine; Phil drank local beer. We rarely bought drinks while eating out since we could head back to our room for a post-dinner cocktail (ok, and we had pre-dinner drinks - we were on vacation after all!)

This is what Napili Bay looks like standing on the north side of the beach. Our condo was towards the south side. The beach was never overly busy.  You do have to get there early to get a spot in the shade, though.

 

Proof that I was actually on this vacation/on this beach. :)

We saw a lot of Maui, with the exception of the south part of the east part of Maui and we both agreed that Napili Bay is the place to stay.  I feel confident that we'll go back some day and we will definitely stay in the same area. The combination of the beautiful beach + great snorkeling + the quiet scene are just too hard to beat. A couple of downsides to this area is that you aren't walking distance to restaurants and since you are pretty far north, it makes for a longer drive to places like Haleakala and the Road to Hana. But that longer drive is on a road that goes alongside the ocean. So really, it wasn't that bad. And the longer drives were more than offset by how beautiful the location was.

Have you been to Hawaii?  Do you enjoy tropical vacations? This was the best tropical vacation I've ever been on and I hope we can come back for a future anniversary celebration!!