Our Experience with Flytographer on our Honeymoon

As I mentioned in my last honeymoon recap, we decided to get some professional photos taken while we were in Kauai staying at the St. Regis! And when I say “we” decided, I mean me. Grace took some convincing. But I’m so glad we ended up doing it, because I really love how the pictures turned out. I think there are at least a few compelling reasons to get professional honeymoon photos taken:

• You spend a lot on wedding pictures—and your wedding is 1000% more important than your honeymoon—but wouldn’t you want at least SOME nice quality photos of arguably the most special vacation ever? I definitely did!

• Knowing we were getting professional photos taken later on the trip kept me from stressing about not having many pictures of the two of us earlier in the trip.

• Our honeymoon is something I will hold near to my heart for the rest of my life. Photos are a love language for me, and a way I crystallize memories and tangibly cherish them. So having nice pictures from this time in my life was a no-brainer for me.

• I love the idea of our kids looking back at honeymoon pictures of their parents! Maybe they won’t care at all, but I know I’d love to have beautiful pictures like this of my parents on their honeymoon.

Also, the cost wasn’t too bad! To be candid, we spent about $350 on our honeymoon photos. That’s a lot of money for some things, but for anyone who’s paid for professional pics, you know that’s very reasonable. We used a company called Flytographer, which matches you with a professional photographer in the area where you’re going on vacation. I looked through a few galleries of Kauai photographers and selected Brigitte, who had great pics and had taken portraits of some gay couples before (my fellow LGBT travelers, you can probably relate that it gives peace of mind to know someone you’ll be working with is a friend to the community). Here’s a link to Brigitte’s profile if you’re interested in booking her. She was so great!

I’m not sure if there are other services out there like Flytographer, but we were really happy with the experience and I would totally recommend them. Of course, every photographer would be different, but our experience was great.

By the way, if anyone wants to use Flytographer, I have a $25 off referral code for you! Use this: CODE9385 :)

Anyway, our pics! We met up with Brigitte at our hotel and headed out to the beach. She lives nearby and has experience shooting at the St. Regis, and she actually showed us to a beautiful hidden cove we hadn’t seen yet! No one else was around and we got some great photos.

Next, we walked around the Hanalei Bay cove and got pictures in some more locations. One of Grace’s hesitations in doing these photos was that she didn’t want everyone to be staring at us if we were getting pics taken in a busy location. So I was thankful that Brigitte knew exactly where to go—even on the grounds of a popular resort like the St. Regis, she managed to find gorgeous hideaway spots that served as amazing backdrops for our pictures.

I also appreciated how much direction we got—Brigitte took plenty of more traditional portraits (like the one above), but she also did a good job getting action shots and would give us ideas of what to do since I definitely tend to get kind of stiff in front of the camera.

And of course, some classic prom shot pics :)

All in all, Brigitte took photos of us for about an hour, and we got 60 pictures back. Not bad if you think about it as a picture a minute! And those are 60 pictures that she culled and edited down—in reality she took many more than 60. Another one of the best things about the service was that it only took 1 week to get our pictures back, and they even sent us a couple of “teaser” shots after a day or two.

If you are considering getting professional pictures taken on your honeymoon or any special vacation, I say GO for it!! I didn’t realize how easy it would be, but I’m so glad we did it. Thanks for reading!

Honeymoon Recap #4: Princeville (Kauai)

Today I am bringing you my fourth and FINAL honeymoon recap! I think I am going to do a couple of additional Hawaii/honeymoon-related posts, but this will be my last recap post, and after this one I will have covered the whole two weeks of our vacation. This last recap covers the last few days of our honeymoon, which we spent in the northern part of Kauai in Princeville.

But before I get there, I have to cover the rest of our drive from Waimea, where I last left off. After checking out the gorgeous Waimea canyon, we circled around the island, stopping in the town of Kilauea. Kilauea had been recommended to me by a couple of people as a fun place to get lunch, and it was SUCH a good rec! We did some shopping, including at an adorable store called Hunter Gatherer.

The drive from Waimea to Princeville was easy and beautiful.

We also shopped at a vintage pop-up called Lolo’s and each got some fun things—I got the rainbow sweater and Grace got the seersucker overalls that we’re both wearing in the first picture in this post :) It was awesome hearing the shop owner tell us the stories of these vintage finds!

While we were in Kilaueau we also got some lunch. And although I hadn’t heard of this place prior, by sheer luck and blessings we got THE BEST poke bowls we have ever had. I still dream of these. They were served out of a tiny little shop (kind of like a tiny house had a baby with a food truck) called Sushi Girl.

The crisp pieces of sea asparagus might have been what made it over-the-top perfection, and of course the fish was out of this world. YUM! If you love poke like we do, you have to try it in Hawaii.

We also stopped by a beautiful lighthouse that was so captivating to me—I hadn’t seen any other lighthouses in Hawaii. It strikes me as more of an East Coast thing, I don’t know why.

After the lighthouse, we drove on to Princeville. Princeville has a planned-community feel to it, and basically the entire thing is made up of hotels and condos. Once we turned into the Princeville area in our Jeep, we drove to the veerryyyy end of the two-mile main road to get to the beautiful St. Regis Princeville Resort, our final stop of the trip. We checked in and beautiful kikui nut leis were placed around our heads as soon as they took our car. The hotel was palatial. Very different from anywhere else we’d stayed—the St. Regis almost felt like a college campus with how big it was and how much there was to do.

These are kikui nut leis—little hollow nut shells made into a traditional necklace/garland.

As gorgeous as the hotel was overall, I think the moment my jaw really dropped was when we got to our room. I knew we’d booked an oceanfront room but the view still took my breath away! Although Grace and I probably preferred the vibes of some of our other hotels better than the St. Regis, it indisputably had the best location/views of anywhere we stayed.

Bathroom selfie :)

And it didn’t hurt that a bottle of rosé and chocolate truffles were delivered to our room with a “happy honeymoon” note a few minutes after we got there :)

We just soaked it all in and rested until dinner! We had a 7:30pm reservation on the Makana Terrace, which we both agreed was good but not our favorite meal of the whole trip. We shared the beet and goat cheese salad, soy-cured salmon, a Kauai crab cake with a seared scallop on top, and the mac n cheese. The mac n cheese was honestly my favorite part! We also tried their drinks—a macadamia martini, a Thai basil mojito, and a Hawaiian old fashioned. We do not drink often (in our real life—our honeymoon is a different story) and were not even buzzed from three drinks. But they were yummy. We later learned about a tucked-away bar elsewhere in the hotel, which is THE place to go. . . but I’m glad we tried Makana Terrace (it ended up being incredible for brunch, which I will write about below).

Unlike the exploring we did in other portions of the trip, as the next couple of days rolled by, we really just did nothing but enjoy each other and the beautiful hotel. We spent a whole 6 hours in the St. Regis’s pristine section of beach in Hanalei Bay, which was divine. We started the day by going to the little hotel store and grabbing pre-made pb&js, extra sunscreen, and coffee, and we claimed some front-row chairs (they are first come, first served for hotel guests). We just hung out and read our books and splashed in the water and periodically ordered food. It was perfect.

Our little piece of sand.

Continuing the weak drink trend, this coco-jito freeze (like a coconut mojito, but frozen and blended like a daiquiri) was literally a smoothie and probably would be safe for a child to drink, haha. Yummy though.

At lunch I switched to wine, which is the way to go here if you want to get your vacation buzz on :)

After a perfect day of reapplying sunscreen every hour and taking in the view, which truly cannot be beat, we went back up to our room. We had to get changed and ready because we were getting some professional photos taken. A few months prior, I had booked a photographer in Kauai to get some lifestyle/honeymoon pictures. Given as much as we focus on wedding pictures, I find it weird that no one seems to have good photos of BOTH newlyweds on their honeymoon, so I wanted some professional pics! I have a post coming out soon about that experience and sharing the pics—they turned out great. Here’s one of my favorites:

After our photos, we sat down at the bar that we ended up falling in love with. Tucked around the corner from the lobby, near where they do the nightly champagne saberings, there is an awesome little bar that was one of my favorite things about the St. Regis. They serve a to-die-for sushi menu and REAL drinks (as opposed to watered-down resort drinks). The people working there are so nice, and we just loved it. We ended up going back the next night for dinner, as I’ll get to.

Now, I need to back up for a sec. One of the reasons I wanted to stop at this bar was to try this St. Regis location’s bloody mary. If you’ve read this post, then you know that’s my favorite drink. The St. Regis claims to have invented the bloody mary at its New York location (a claim which I understand is disputed, but that aside). And because the bloody mary is such a celebrated St. Regis tradition, each and every St. Regis location has its own spin on the drink. The Princeville St. Regis’s drink is called the Aloha Mary. And one of the things I LOVED about this little bar is that it has on the menu several of the OTHER locations’ bloodies—they had the Mexico City one, the Bora Bora one, and so on. HOW FUN!

The Aloha Mary was pretty similar to a classic bloody, but the vodka was Ocean Vodka (a Hawaiian vodka made with deep ocean mineral water—they have it at our local Whole Foods in West Hollywood, so you might be able to find it), with guava smoked sea salt around the rim. It was also supposed to be garnished with sea asparagus (an ingredient in that best-ever poke bowl from Kilauea), but they had run out.

Our room also had a copy of the St. Regis’s bloody mary book, which of course I pored over.

After our drinks, we headed back to the room and got room service dinner. Even with great restaurants in Hawaii, room service is something we consistently got on this trip because we just always love it and it feels like such a luxury to us. We also wanted to watch Bachelor in Paradise with our dinner, if we’re being honest.

We also got treated to the most amazing sunset view right from our room!

Purple Hour—that fleeting dusk time that follows Golden Hour—has always been my favorite. This night felt so special.

The next day we woke up and decided to try out the Makana Terrace’s brunch. Although our dinner there from a couple of nights before had been just-okay, I am happy to say that the brunch was a highlight of the whole trip! I have never in my life seen a brunch buffet like that. There were Hawaiian BBQ pork eggs benedicts, taro waffles, stir fries, every type of meat you could want (none of which I wanted, but I was still impressed), eggs, several different “stations”: hot cereals, cold cereals, a charcuterie spread, omletts, a whole station of different hot sauces, spreads, and salsas, breakfast pastries, a juice and fruit bar (rows and rows of cute little jars of every type of freshly made juice you could want, green smoothies, and fruit smoothies), and even a drinking vinegar station (for digestion). Just SO good. We sat at a gorgeous table and enjoyed the feast.

Just a small selection from ONE of my many trips to the buffet. This one was from the charcuterie station.

Our view.

After brunch we decided to drive into Hanalei town. I’m so glad we did because it was adorable—I would have loved to have spent more time there had we known how cool it was. Out of everywhere in town, our absolute favorite was the Spinning Dolphin. It’s a t-shirt store but also so much more than that. The owners are true animal lovers, and what we noticed first was the signs on the door:

The store will make custom Kauai t-shirts screenprinted for you, and they also sell handmade jewelry and promote pet adoptions (they had several cats in the store, but mostly they link to other humane organizations). They will even help you bring a pet back to the continental US. Our favorite part was that they sold dog leis! They are not made of real flowers, so they last, and all the proceeds go to help homeless dogs. Of course we had to get one for each of our boys. They look precious in them.

Before we left we also had to test out the St. Regis’s spa. It was amazing, and such a relaxing thing to do before facing the real world again. We spent a whole afternoon getting a hot stone couple’s massage followed by ocean facials (using seaweed extracts). They were SO good—we were both glowing! After our treatments we lounged in the spa for a while and the staff brought us champagne because it was our honeymoon. It was bliss.

As I mentioned earlier, we ended up going back to our favorite little bar, and we decided to eat dinner there too from their sushi menu.

Headed to dinner on our last night of the honeymoon!

Of course I had to try one more bloody mary variation, so I got the Mexico City one. It was made with tequila and had an avocado garnish. I think it was my fav over the Aloha Mary.

We decided to start out dinner with a cheeseboard and then got some sushi, and it was all amazing. Such a good last dinner of the trip!

After dinner, we went back to the room and ordered a bottle of champagne to celebrate. Also, Grace caught up on her Korean soap opera which she had become obsessed with at this point and is only available in Korea and Hawaii, as far as we can tell. I realize how ridiculous this sentence is, hahaha.

The next day it was time to fly home, but we had a later flight so we decided to go for a morning dip in the pool! We woke up to a foggy, beautiful day and did not want to leave.

It was hard to believe our perfect honeymoon had come to a close . . . but it also felt like we were gone a LONG time, and we were so excited to get home to the doggies. These faces made leaving paradise more than worth it:

Willie was sooooo relieved and happy when we got home. He doesn’t normally sleep at the foot of the bed like this (if anything, he only jumps up in the morning), but he was just so exhausted with happiness, he couldn’t even move!

And then the next day we picked up Bean from boarding.

That’s it for honeymoon recaps! Thanks for following along! Next up—our professional honeymoon pictures, some overall thoughts and recommendations on honeymooning in Hawaii, and WEDDING blog posts! If you have any requests or suggestions, I’d love to hear them.

Honeymoon Recap #3: Waimea (Kauai) and the Na Pali Coast

Today I’m recapping the first part of our incredible time in KAUAI! When I left off with my last recap, we were getting ready to island hop from Maui to Kauai. We had a quick 45-minute flight west and got our rental car (another Jeep—you just have to have a Jeep in Hawaii!) and drove to the darling Waimea Plantation Cottages for our first stop on Kauai. Out of everywhere we stayed, the cottages might be the most “home-away-from-home” feeling place. We loved it and felt so restful there. Here’s some photos of where we stayed:

The way Waimea Plantation Cottages works is that it’s a hotel, with a traditional front desk and all the amenities, but each “room” is its own cottage. They are all historic plantation cottages from the sugar plantations on the island, and they were relocated to the resort. We stayed in Cottage #69, which is one of the two-bedroom oceanfront cottages. We had a beautiful sweeping front porch with rocking chairs, a sweet little living room, full kitchen, two bedrooms and bathrooms (not that we needed two bedrooms to ourselves obviously, but the location was prime), and it was just so relaxing and homey. All the reviews ahead of time said that the Waimea Plantation Cottages is real “old Hawaii”, and at least from an outsider’s perspective, it really felt that way. The pace of life is slow and the emphasis is just on enjoying the company and the views of the ocean. The whole resort was so peaceful and the setting was idyllic.

At check in, we noticed that they have a huge selection of complementary DVD rentals (and tvs with DVD players in the cottages… we don’t even have one of those at home anymore!) and board game rentals. We picked up some scrabble, chess, and a couple of movies and watched one of them the first night. We were exhausted from the travel and passed out.

The next morning, we woke up to our beautiful view and feasted on our leftover pineapple-banana bread that I mentioned in my last recap and we brought all the way from Maui.

At this point, to give a real recap of our time, I have to switch gears and tell you about a certain someone who played a big part in our time in Waimea. Her name is Lila. She’s a cat, and Grace fell in love.

On our first night in Waimea, we were eating dinner on the porch of the hotel restaurant, and we had this little tabby cat come up to our table. We fed her a little bit of our scraps (best idea? no, but she was so sweet and clearly a stray and hungry) and Grace was instantly enamored. We started to walk back to our cottage from the restaurant and Lila followed us part of the way, and then we didn’t see her again. Flash forward to the next morning. She’s waiting for us on the porch our cottage, and Grace is IN LOVE at this point. She’s petting her, asking me if we have any food for her, etc. We did not. I’m not really a cat person, but Grace asked what we should call her and I said Lila. From that point, she was our cat for the rest of the vacation. She was pretty beat up-missing some teeth and really skinny-but even I have to admit she was a sweetheart.

That night we got her some cat food from the grocery store in town and fed her a couple more meals before we switched sides of the island. She was like having a pet on our vacation. Grace was really blue when we had to leave her. But we found some information from a local cat rescue that told us she probably belongs to a colony and has been spayed, so we were happy to learn that. Anyway, I couldn't write this post without sharing a little bit about Lila. She was adorable. And if you’re ever in Hawaii and meet a stray pet you love, you can actually take them home-the Hawaii humane society will help with getting it on the plane and all that! Thank goodness we didn’t know this until AFTER we had to leave Lila!! (sorry Grace).

Getting back to our time in Waimea, we took our first morning slow, ate breakfast outside, played some chess on our porch, and walked on the beach just outside our cottage.

We had a 1pm reservation to go on a boat tour of the Na Pali coast, so our day centered around that, and we decided to drive into town early to get lunch. Waimea town is tiny and so cute-it’s colorful, easy to walk, and has amazing food options. We chose the Shrimp Station for lunch and it was the tastiest island-fast-food imaginable. Everything is shrimp-based (imagine that?) and we ordered the shrimp burger and the coconut shrimp.

We walked off our lunch with a little bit of shopping and then we had room for dessert-SHAVE ICE! I’d been wanting to get shave ice the whole trip but we just hadn't made it happen yet. I’m glad we waited because JoJo’s shave ice is the best I’ve ever had. For the uninitiated, shave ice is a Hawaiian delicacy. And there’s no typo-it’s SHAVE ice, not shaved ice. I had to keep reminding Grace. It’s similar to a snow cone, but a zillion times better. The ice is carefully shaved, not crushed, and often nestled on a bed of ice cream. Then syrups are drizzled over top based on whatever flavor you order. It’s seriously so good.

I ordered a #1 (rainbow) and Grace ordered a #15 (pineapple, coconut, and macadamia cream). Both were incredible but I think Grace ordered best. JoJ’s does their shave ice on top of macadamia nut ice cream, and it’s so fresh and simple. Just delicious. If you’re in Kauai, GO. They have a location in Princeville too.

After shave ice, it was time to drive to the marina to hop on our boat!

The Na Pali Coast is something I’d been wanting to see for years. You have probably seen images of it as it’s in a lot of movies, most famously Jurassic Park and Pirates of the Caribbean. It looks very Jurassic Park to me (the originals), and those are some of my favorite movies. So it was really fun seeing the iconic coastline in person.

We used the tour company Na Pali Experience. I would highly recommend it. Our captain was Captain T, and he was AWESOME! I want to go back just to take his tour again.

It was about a 5-hour trip, which sounds kind of long, but it flew by. We toured the coast by boat, explored sea caves, snorkeled right off the boat, and jumped in a couple of other times just to cool off and swim. We saw dolphins, sea turtles, and tons of fish. It was one of my favorite days of the honeymoon.

Here are some of my favorite pics of the day:

Some of my favorite parts of the day were going in the sea caves and snorkeling. We were on a tiny boat (highly recommended-more expensive but you can go in narrower spaces) and would zoom into these crevices in the rock. Grace was TERRIFIED at first but once we realized what a pro our guide was, we relaxed and had so much fun.

Snorkeling was awesome. We probably saw at least 10 sea turtles, and tons of coral and fish. Grace was a little uncertain snorkeling since she hadn’t been since she was a kid. So we held hands the whole time and although she was kind of an anchor dragging me backwards against the current, it was one of the sweetest memories from the honeymoon :)

After the boat tour we stopped by the local grocery store on our way back to our cottage and got some frozen pizza and microwave popcorn (and the aforementioned cat food). Not the most glamorous meal on our honeymoon, but actually one of my favorites, because we got to have it at “home” and watch a movie we checked out from the hotel lobby. It was just cozy and perfect after a long day in the sun.

The next morning it was time to switch sides of the island and go to Princeville! On our way out of Waimea, we got some awesome smoothies and Hawaiian snacks and decided to drive up and see Waimea Canyon.

Waimea Canyon is known as the “Grand Canyon of the Pacific”. It’s a beautiful canyon in the inland part of the island, but it doesn’t take long to drive up from the beach in Waimea. The drive was super pretty.

And that’s it for Waimea! Princeville, our last stop of the honeymoon, was gorgeous and I can’t wait to share that recap. Thanks for following along-it’s so much fun revising all these places!

Honeymoon Recap #2: The Road to Hana (Maui)

I'm back with my second recap of our honeymoon! If you missed the first one, find it here. I am giddy to start writing this post because it means I get to relive such a fun leg of our trip! After leaving Wailea, we set out to drive the Road to Hana.

If you haven't driven it or heard of it, the Road to Hana is known as one of the most beautiful drives in the world. It is a 52-mile road connecting the main populated area of Maui with a remote town called Hana. It has about 500 hairpin turns and 59 bridges, the majority of which are one-way. If you make no stops, the drive takes about 2.5 hours, but it's almost impossible not to stop along the way to get a better view of some of the sights or to get some delicious food from the roadside stands. 

A lot of people do the Road to Hana and turn around at the end and drive back. But we decided that to really enjoy it, we wanted to stay a couple of nights in Hana. It's the tiniest town, but there is one amazing resort there, called the Travaasa Hana. More on that later--first, a little bit about our experience driving the Road to Hana.

We used the app I screenshotted above, the Road to Hana Gypsy Guide. I definitely recommend it. It uses GPS to talk to you as you drive past certain landmarks, and in between, it tells you about Hawaiian history. The history parts were REALLY interesting--it was so cool hearing about all the different kings and queens of Hawaii in the past. With the jungle all around us and the little voiceover telling us what was coming up ahead, it seriously felt like we were on an Indiana Jones theme park ride. It was so fun and otherworldly beautiful.

But it was also rainy. While we were honeymooning, Hurricane Hector brushed by the islands, and the day we drove the Road to Hana was definitely the worst of it. To us, it was cozy and romantic and beautiful (thankfully, the rain and weather was not dangerous at all), but it also meant that a lot of the roadside stands were closed, and it was honestly just too wet to really enjoy stopping to see the sights. After a few stops that left us drenched, we eventually decided that we would press on to Hana without any more stops, and then see more stuff when we drove the same route back a couple of days later.

Here are a few highlights from our rainy day on the Road to Hana:

A glimpse of the jungle in the rain.

We bought ponchos at a roadside stand.

We stopped at the Garden of Eden, a garden and arboretum on the Road to Hana. We made some bird friends and took in the views.

We also stopped at an area with a collection of roadside food stands and got THE BEST coconut shrimp ever. It was made with fresh grated coconut and no other breading--you'll see in the pic, but it just puts any other coconut shrimp to shame. I also got a yummy smoothie.

Once we decided it was too rainy to make any more stops, we got to the Travaasa Hana pretty quickly. We pulled up to our gorgeous resort and were greeted in the lobby with cool lemongrass towels to wash our hands and a delicious passionfruit nectar to sip on while we checked in. One thing that's really nice about Travaasa is that everything is truly complementary, including the valet parking, and the whole resort has a no tipping policy. While I definitely do not mind tipping at hotels or anywhere else, it definitely contributes to the relaxed vibe of the resort that you know gratuities for the staff are already built into what you're paying. 

Once we checked in, one of the staff members took us on a golf cart down to our ocean bungalow. It was a long drive because the lobby is at street level, and then our bungalow was allllll the way down right by the shore. We were pinching ourselves in disbelief at the view and the cozy, idyllic setting in the rain. The loaf of banana bread and welcome card waiting for us didn't hurt, either!

The resort was incredibly dreamy and romantic in the rain.

And this was our little bungalow!

I didn't get the best photos of the inside (kind of a running theme for whatever reason), but here are a couple of pics that give you an idea:

And our amazing lanai:

That night, we were pretty exhausted from the drive, so we ordered in food from one of the two restaurants at the resort. I got a sea vegetables salad and Mac and cheese, and Grace got a caprese salad and arancini (fried risotto balls). We also tried two desserts: lilikoi cheesecake and a buttery tropical bread with ice cream. We were also happy that the restaurant delivered bottles of wine :) 

The next day we woke up and it was our one full day in Hana. It was such a good one! We had a slow morning drinking coffee and tea on our lanai and enjoying the banana bread the resort left for us.

They had their own brand of Maui coffee in the room for us.

Just a non-sponsored plug for my favorite brand of PJs... get thyself a pair of Lake Pajamas. I lived in mine during our honeymoon when I wanted to be covered up but comfy during mornings on our lanais.

Next we went to the hotel's Wellness pool to hang out before we had spa treatments later in the day. It was so stunning--our favorite pool of the trip by far.

My "I miss my dogs" hat was very accurate at this point in the trip--I REALLY started missing them right around this point!

And at one point we had to wait out a passing shower, which was quite funny.

For the rest of the day, I don't have any photos because we left our phones in the room while we went to lunch and the spa. But it was one of the best days of the whole trip. We went to The Preserve for lunch, which is one of the hotels on the grounds, and OMG! One of the best meals we had in Hawaii for sure. We shared the bread pudding and each got a "Da Fish Moco" bowl. This was like a combo between a rice bowl and an Eggs Benedict. My mouth is watering typing this. It was a bed of jasmine rice, topped with grilled local fish with a poached egg on top. Everything was covered in Hollandaise sauce and surrounded by a halo of perfectly crispy tater tots. SO GOOD! It was a very Hawaiian meal, as Hawaii is all about fusion. 

Next we went to the spa, where we had booked the Hana Couples Escape. It was a 90-minute couple's massage followed by a honey foot treatment and a essential oil scalp treatment. The massage included dry brushing, which is where the masseuses take a bristle brush and brush your skin all over your body, brushing up toward the heart throughout. It was a little uncomfortable at moments because the bristles are coarse, but my skin has NEVER felt softer afterward. They sent us home with two of the brushes and I want to keep doing dry brushing because of how good it is for your skin and circulation! 

The whole spa experience was exceptional. It was 2 hours of bliss. Afterward, we did a hot/cold regimen for thyroid and general health, which the spa recommends.  The way it works is you do 5 minutes in the steam room, followed by a 1 minute cold plunge (in a freezing but beautiful black lava plunge pool with flowers floating on the surface), 2 minutes of resting and drinking water, 5 minutes more of steam, 1 minute cold plunge, 5 minutes steam, finished off by a cold shower in the beautiful outdoor shower. It was so invigorating and yet restful and restorative at the same time. After we did the hot/cold regimen, we hung out in the spa jacuzzi overlooking the ocean. We were the only other guests we saw during all of this--it was so special and felt like we had the whole spa to ourselves (which I guess we did!). 

After our spa time, we went to the Wellness pool again and got mai tais and mojitos from the pool bar. Then we went back to our room and rested (from our clearly difficult day... haha), read our novels, and drank wine. Heaven on earth!!

We finished off the day with dinner at the Hana Ranch Restaurant. We sat outside on the patio overlooking the ocean, with twinkle lights overhead, and I just remember feeling so incredibly lucky. The restaurant was sooo yummy--we shared poke to start, and then Grace tried some Hawaiian BBQ and fries, and I got a Caesar salad with furiake fish on top. There was also great live Hawaiian music that night. The restaurant was walking distance from our bungalow, so we walked everywhere and just soaked in our relaxing day.

The next day it was time to fly to Kauai! The airport on Maui is back near where we started our road trip, so we drove the whole Road to Hana again going in the opposite direction. We stopped a few more times than we did on the rainy drive up, but I have a word of caution here: if you are driving the Road to Hana with someone else, make sure to discuss with them in advance what your goals are for stopping versus just doing the drive. One of the only tense moments of the honeymoon was when I wanted to pull over at turnouts to see pretty views and Grace didn't think it was safe. I think Grace was right, but at the time I definitely voiced my disagreement with her choice :) 

But we did do a few fun stops. One of our first stops of the day was at a roadside stand called Hana Farms. We got delicious coffee and iced ginger tea, and THE BEST pineapple banana bread! It had slices of candied pineapple on top. We ate 1/3 of it there and then took the rest all the way to Kauai and had it for breakfast the next day!

Grace also indulged me and pulled over at beautiful turnout to see these views:

Later, once we were back closer to where the airport is, we stopped at a gorgeous surfing beach called Ho'okipa Beach and watched the surfers for a while. We also got the yummiest coconut water--the guy at the roadside stand chopped the tops off for us and stuck straws right in them! Best coconut water I have ever had.

Our last stop on Maui before the airport was Paia town. It's a super hippie town, apparently a favorite spot of Willie Nelson's (which of course we loved), and has kind of an artists' community feel. We did a little shopping and then got traditional Hawaiian lunch plates for lunch: poke, rice, and mac salad at Tobi's shave ice and poke. YUM!!

Looking at this picture makes me crave this meal again--so so good! To me, this is such a classic Hawaiian taste.

And then we had to say goodbye to Maui :( We went to the airport, returned our rental car, and boarded our plane to Kauai.

More next time! Thanks for following along.

Honeymoon Recap #1: Wailea (Maui)

Hello friends! This is my first blog post as Elizabeth Baldridge, and I have so much to update here. I've had a really hard time deciding where to start in terms of catching up on posts--my long overdue East and West Coast bachelorette parties recap? Thoughts on being a married lady? Wedding details? But I've decided that since we don't have our professional photos back yet from the wedding (it takes a few weeks), and because this blog started first and foremost as a travel blog, I am going to start with HAWAII!

To read a little bit on why we picked Hawaii (and specifically why we decided not to take our dogs on our honeymoon), read this post. Also, as heads up, this is going to be a lengthy post. A big part of this is so that I can preserve all the memories and details for myself to look back on, so apologies in advance!

After the best day ever on August 4 (our wedding) and one extra day seeing our friends and family after the wedding, we jetted to the island of Maui just about 36 hours after tying the knot. We spent the first few days of our honeymoon in the southwestern part of Maui, called Wailea. The "A" on the map below shows you which part of the island it is:

Backing up a little bit, we flew Hawaiian Air to Maui and it set the best tone for our trip! Hawaiian is so much fun to fly because it's all themed around the islands which really gets you in the spirit for your upcoming vacation. They serve delicious Hawaiian food (a full meal on each over-ocean flight, even in economy) and a complimentary rum punch drink upon landing. This is in no way sponsored by them, I was just really impressed! When they offered the rum punch, Grace and I made a rule that for the whole trip, anytime we were offered a tropical drink or champagne because it was our honeymoon, we had to accept! We ended up following that rule many times :)

Once we landed in Maui, we headed to our first hotel of the trip: the warm, welcoming, and exquisite Hotel Wailea. I had high expectations going in--Hotel Wailea is part of the Relais & Chateaux hotel group, which has really high standards for members; it's always in the Travel & Leisure top 100 hotels in the world; and it's been ranked #1 hotel in Hawaii by Condé Nast. Even knowing all of that, we were blown away. Everywhere we stayed was amazing, but Hotel Wailea was our favorite for sure, and I'm so glad it was our first stop! 

We also loved that the hotel is adults-only and has only about 70 rooms, which are all suites. It just really elevated the experience (though everywhere else we stayed was kid-friendly and those places were great, too--it was just nice to start our honeymoon in such a tranquil environment).

Walking in felt cinematic and somehow one of the most memorable moments of the whole honeymoon: we stepped out of our taxi from the airport and were instantly greeted by hotel staff. Beautiful fresh flower leis were placed around our necks. Glasses of champagne appeared in our hands. An ocean breeze flowed across the open-air lobby and flower petals scattered across our feet. We glided to the check-in and couldn't help laughing out loud just in amazement at it all. The hotel felt quiet, though we knew most of the rooms were booked--the way the property is laid out makes it feel like you're the only people staying there. It really was the PERFECT first place to soak in the fact that we were now newlyweds.

Then we got to our room and it got even better.

The view from our balcony (called a Lanai in Hawaii)

A very dark and grainy picture of our room (not sure why I didn't get a better one!)

Our perfect bathtub (not pictured: huge rain shower right beside it)

Because we'd told them it was our honeymoon, a couple of hours after checking in we got a knock on our door and a bottle of champagne was delivered as a welcome gift, complete with a sweet note to "the Baldridges"! We sat out on our lanai and enjoyed it along with some taro chips and salsas, guac, and hummus.

We decided to keep it low-key that first day and just check out the hotel grounds (there are several acres of it) and then go to dinner at the hotel restaurant.

Some of the views strolling from our room to dinner.

The dinner at the restaurant hotel was one of our favorites of the entire trip. As soon as we sat down, we were brought two glasses of champagne because it was our honeymoon. I feel like we could have bathed with all the champagne we were given at Hotel Wailea!

Part of the criteria to be a Relais & Chateaux member hotel is that all the members have to have a great restaurant on the property. Hotel Wailea's, just called The Restaurant, did not disappoint. We got delicious oysters, a tomato and burrata salad with a crostini, king crab pasta (SO good), and diver scallops. I also got a bright pink dragonfruit drink (pictured below). It looks like it would be crazy sweet, but it was light and refreshing--it's really just the natural color of the fruit that makes it so neon! For dessert, we had the "orchard sweets", which was a mango bar with coconut and some kind of fried topping. Everything was perfect. I couldn't have imagined a better first day + dinner to start our honeymoon!

The next morning we woke up and ordered breakfast to our room! I loved how they would come and set it out on our lanai with a white tablecloth. It was so deliciously decadent :)

I got the avocado toast, and Grace got the French toast. I feel like whenever we go out for breakfast, Grace gets something sweet and I get something salty! That's kind of our personalities, haha. We also got a big French press of Maui coffee. I'm not a coffee drinker but I tried it and even I have to admit it was delicious. Definitely the best coffee I'd ever had. I got an iced tea which was also great.

Hotel Wailea is up in the hills of Wailea (which is why you get such great views), but you can't just walk outside and go to the beach. But, the nice thing is that it's only a 5 minute drive to the beach. And the staff at the hotel will give complimentary rides down to the beach any time you want in one of their butterfly door Teslas! 

Then when we were ready to come back, we'd just call and they'd pick us up in 5 minutes. They will actually take you to and pick you up from any location in Wailea, which we took advantage of--such a nice perk of staying there!

Once you get down to the beach. Hotel Wailea has its own strip of lounge chairs with attendants on site who will lay out fresh towels for you, give you cold bottles of water, and call the car service to come get you.

This is the spot!

We headed down to the beach in the morning after getting our first breakfast of the trip. It was such a beautiful day! But, with Hurricane Hector getting nearer to the islands (more on that in my next recap), the surf was ROUGH. We got knocked down really hard within minutes of trying to swim, so we ended up just lounging and reading mostly. 

After a couple of hours on the beach, we decided to walk down to the Shops at Wailea and got lunch at Longhi's. There, my life was forever changed when I had THE BEST tuna melt of all time. I am a tuna melt gal so I always have to sample them wherever I am--and this one was unreal. It was made with fresh catch albacore, not canned, and was so over-the-top good I couldn't even believe it. Grace got a fresh catch piece of fish as well. 

After lunch we made our way back to the hotel and the rest of the day we just soaked in our time together and enjoyed the hotel :)

Low-quality self timer photo, high quality honeymoon lanai vibes

The next morning: more amazing room service breakfast! Coffee again, avocado toast again (this time for Grace), and an açaí bowl and a Bloody Mary for me.

Because our hotel's pool was under construction while we were there, they had arranged for us to have privileges to use the Fairmont's pool. We decided to check it out on our second full day in Wailea and the hotel gave us a ride down there. It was gorgeous, though a very different speed from our hotel. It actually made us even more glad we were staying at Hotel Wailea, even though it was still fun to hang out there for an afternoon!

It was a palatial and bustling place. We took a quick tour of the grounds to select which pool we wanted to hang at (there were several!) and ended up picking the "goldilocks" of all the pools: the Upper Pool which had a swim up bar. We initially thought we'd prefer the adults only pool, but it was way too quiet. There wasn't a single person swimming, and we actually wanted to swim! So the Upper Pool was the perfect happy medium between screaming kids and the too-quiet adults pool. It also had some of our favorite poolside drinks of the whole trip. I of course had to order the one that comes in a pineapple. 

Inside was a delicious pineapple and coconut blended drink.

We also ordered some tasty lunch.

Fun fact about Grace: girl LOVES to play around in a swimming pool. Notice I didn't say she loves to swim--she doesn't really do laps or anything. But she turns into a 12 year old in the pool and it's the funniest thing. She'll challenge you to a handstand competition, try to do an underwater backflip, and try to tread water using only one arm for 60 seconds. It makes me want to have our own swimming pool one day because it brings her so much joy. I knew nothing of this prior to our honeymoon because we'd never really been in a pool together! It was a hilarious surprise.

That night was one of the nights I had most been looking forward to on Maui: our reservation at Mama's Fish House! I'd heard about Mama's Fish House for years and felt so lucky to finally try it. Also, one of my bridesmaids (and best friend) Sarah gave us a gift card to go there as a wedding gift since it's one of her favorite restaurants on earth. We timed our reservation for sunset and it really was a once-in-a-lifetime meal (unless of course we are lucky enough to go back)!

This card was waiting at our table (which had the best view in the house!) when we arrived.

Walking up, the restaurant is set in a beautiful little grove right on the water. We strolled and got a picture since we were early for our reservation. Side note, Mama's is actually not in Wailea, but on the North Shore of Maui. It's not too bad of a Lyft ride though.

I didn't get any great photos of our dinner (it wasn't really the place to take a flash iPhone photo, if you know what I mean), but it was the most divine food imaginable. Grace ordered the traditional Hawaiian plate, which was a huge spread of everything from taro and plantains, to poi (a traditional Hawaiian sauce--kind of an acquired taste), to ceviche, to poke, to octopus, to grilled kanpachi (fish). She tried it all and loved it. I got the signature meal at Mama's--a fresh catch of fish (that night, Kanpachi) stuffed with crab and lobster and baked in a macadamia nut crust, with a lobster tail on the side. OMG. It was unreal. We also shared the Maui onion soup and a crab cake to start. We got some delicious cocktails to wash it all down, and just generally we were in heaven. It was truly a perfect meal and the hospitality at Mama's was unlike any restaurant I have ever been to. If you are in Maui on your honeymoon (or any trip, though it's kind of a splurge/special occasion place), GO THERE! And make sure to tell them it's your honeymoon when they call to confirm your reservation! They asked if we were celebrating anything and I didn't think anything of it, but I was so touched when they had a special congratulatory note waiting at our table when we sat down. Of course I saved it and will be tucking it into our honeymoon album when I get one made, along with a few other special notes we got on the trip :)

The next day, it was sadly time to check out of Hotel Wailea! We were so sad to leave, but excited for the next leg of our trip. I think if Hotel Wailea had been the final stop of our trip, it would have been impossible to leave, but having more stops on the island gave us motivation to actually hit the road.

Grace's Hawaiian road trip outfit :)

It wouldn't be an "us" vacation without a road trip somehow involved, so on this morning we set out to drive the Road to Hana. I won't say anything more about that on this post--it will be my next recap--but it was incredible. You can drive it in any car, but I decided to rent a Jeep Wrangler because I knew Grace would have fun driving one. There's an Enterprise counter at the nearby Marriott, so we took one last ride in the house Teslas down there and picked up our Jeep. We were ready to hit the road and so excited! 

And that's where I'll leave off until recap #2! I'm going to try to write about one of these a week for the next month or so to recap the whole honeymoon. Thanks for following along--it's so sweet to relive it through writing these!

Deciding Where to Go for Our Honeymoon!

I am so excited that we will be spending a couple of weeks in the great state of HAWAII for our honeymoon! I have been to Hawaii with my family and absolutely love it there, but I've only been to the islands of Oahu and Hawaii (known as "the Big Island"). Grace has never been. We will be spending half of our time on Maui and the other half on Kauai. Today I want to share a little bit about how we chose this destination and our process for planning so far. Once we've actually planned out the trip a bit more, I'll do a post about planning the trip, similar to my planning for Alaska post. This one is more just about how we decided where to go for our honeymoon :)

How We Decided Where To Go

First of all, Grace is an angel and would have let me pick literally anywhere in the world I wanted for our honeymoon. I thought about the following: Santorini (I went two summers ago and it's unreal beautiful); an Africa tour (one of my other all-time favorite travel destinations; I've spent time in Zambia and Botswana and would love to go with Grace to South Africa, Madagascar, and the Seychelles); OR a big US road trip where we could bring the dogs and take ferries to places like the San Juan islands off of Washington.

So why did I pick Hawaii? A few factors. First, although I love adventurous travel, I wasn't really looking for that in a honeymoon destination. I really wanted something relaxing, stress free, and easy for our honeymoon. I want to do a huge Africa trip at some point with Grace, but that's a logistically complicated trip. And as BEAUTIFUL as Santorini is, it really takes a full 24 hours to get there from California. In addition, all of those places involve a different language, different currencies, passports needed, etc. Hawaii is just incredibly easy.

• You don't need a passport (as a US citizen). We both have passports but it's one less thing to worry about and potentially lose/forget
• There are ONLY nonstop flights from California. There's literally nowhere to stop because you're just flying over the ocean! And you can get there in under 6 hours
• The time difference is minimal (3 hours from California)
• Currency, language (for the most part), etc. is all the same as the US

Again, I'm a pretty experienced traveler but just for purposes of our honeymoon, I really want something as simple as possible! Hawaii fit the bill.

One other factor is gay-friendliness. With the exception of severe cases of homophobic places (i.e., Jamaica), I try not to let this determine my travel destinations. I'm not offended if people in certain countries assume we're just friends or sisters traveling together; if we can fly under the radar and experience beautiful places on earth, I'm all for it. We live in West Hollywood so I generally assume that anytime I leave my home it will be to a place less gay friendly than where I live, haha. As a gay couple it's common to turn heads in certain places where you travel (in the Yukon Territory of Canada and some parts of Alaska, for example). But for our honeymoon? I want the red carpet rolled out, champagne upon arrival, the whole enchilada. I don't want people asking if we're friends or assuming we want two separate beds in our hotel room. Of course, that can still happen anywhere, but Hawaii is SUPER gay friendly (it's the rainbow state after all!), so it lessens the chance :)

If you saw Grace's IG stories a few weeks back, you might have seen that I made a PowerPoint going over the different options of which islands we could visit in Hawaii during our honeymoon. It's true! I am a planning nerd at heart.

Picking Which Islands to Go to in Hawaii

This part was surprisingly easy. I'd already been to Oahu and Hawaii (the Big Island), and awesome as they were, I wanted to go somewhere new that Grace and I could both experience for the first time together. The other inhabited islands in Hawaii include Maui, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, and Nilhau. Molokai and Nilhau are very different from the rest and don't include large resorts or many amenities (you actually can't visit Nilhau without an official invitation). They probably don't have the best "honeymoon vibes," at least based on what we're looking for. Lanai is tempting, but out of the three (Maui, Kauai, and Lanai), it feels like the one I can skip for whatever reason. I've heard so much about Maui and Kauai and so those were the ones we settled on visiting.

Deciding What to Book First

I have been getting super antsy and excited about booking our accommodations (there are so many good ones on Maui and Kauai!), but ultimately I realized I needed to book our flights before anything else and I'm glad I did! I found a great fare and our flights were completely free with all the credit card points I've racked up. I also booked our first three nights at a resort in Wailea (a town on Maui) that I am super excited about. I have a few more accommodations, plus our car rentals, to book and then we'll be set! Also, at the strong urging of a few people, especially my best friend Sarah, I made a reservation for Mama's Fish House on Maui! I don't want to make too many reservations or pre-set plans, but I think booking a few key things that we'd otherwise miss out on without advance reservations is worth it.

What I'm Most Looking Forward To

I'm excited for our first totally carefree, no responsibilities vacation . . . ever! Don't get me wrong, our dogs are my babies and I love them so much. But we always take them with us (hence the title of this blog), which makes vacations a lot more active because we have to be on a stricter schedule with dogs' feeding, walking, etc. This will be one of the first vacations we've really ever had time to just sleep in, spend our days with no schedule, and be super lazy and do things on a whim whenever we want. In my experience, Hawaii is a great place to have no schedule, so I'm just so excited to be lazy with Grace. 

In terms of the actual islands, I think on Maui I'm most excited to drive the road to Hana and on Kauai I'm most excited to see the Na Pali coast (where a lot of iconic tropical movies were filmed like Jurassic Park). I think Hawaii will be the perfect mix of having plenty of things to do but also being on "island time" when we want to just relax and soak in the fact that we're married!

Why We Opted Against a Road Trip and Traveling with the Dogs

In this post, I talked about being torn between two potential honeymoon destinations but didn't say what they were. Well, the two things I was torn between were (1) Hawaii, which ultimately won and (2) taking a big wild road trip with the dogs, seeing Vancouver again, taking ferries to the San Juan islands off of Washington, exploring Montana, etc. To me, that second option is still SO tempting and something I hope we get to do at some point. But I decided on Hawaii because I want to prioritize relaxation and I want to focus on JUST us. A lot of our lives revolve around our dogs' schedules (in a good way) but we are the only people in our marriage--so I want to slow down and remove all distractions during our honeymoon. And while a road trip definitely puts me at peace, there's a difference between being at peace and being totally relaxed. I'm hoping Hawaii will give us both!

When We're Leaving

We are leaving on Monday morning after our wedding! I feel like the idea of being whisked away to your fabulous destination immediately following your wedding is super romantic and dreamy, but not very practical. We want to spend part of Sunday with our guests who are still in town and also have time to get organized with the dogs and not be rushed with packing and everything. We also might want to sleep in on Sunday morning and not be worrying about getting to the airport! So a Monday morning departure is perfect. With the time change, we'll be in Maui before noon! On the other end of the spectrum, I know it's also pretty common nowadays to wait a while after the wedding before honeymooning. I think that's a great choice too as it prolongs that newlywed season and gives you something to look forward to. That said, I've always dreamed about spending those first couple weeks as a married lady on my honeymoon. So it was important to me that we go right away (albeit minus one day). 

Thanks so much for reading! If you have any Maui or Kauai suggestions, I'm all ears :)