Chraela,  Chraela Honeymoon - Feb 2018,  In My Life,  Travel,  Wedding

Our Honeymoon – Day 4 – Island Hopping

This is post #4 in my series all about our honeymoon! If you haven’t already, make sure you read the other posts first – they’re listed chronologically here 🙂

DAY 4 – TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 6

Our adventures on Kauai had been amazing so far, but sadly it was already almost time for us to head to our next island! Our flight didn’t leave until the afternoon, but we were still up early to gather our things and pack up. We enjoyed our gorgeous view one last time:

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And we were out the door and waving goodbye to our adorable hotel around 9:45. A few more fun details from the place:

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We headed to our usual spot, Kalapaki Beach Hut one last time! For breakfast, I got the Portuguese sweet French toast and Chris got regular French toast with eggs and bacon.

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Both were great and the perfect way to start our day! After breakfast we just had to head to the gas station to top up the rental car before returning it and then it was back to the airport. Again we were so in love with the open air buildings!

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Everybody was so nice still, even TSA – amazing, right? We were pretty early for our flight so we decided to get Starbucks and chill out for a while.

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After a while we saw our plane arrive at the gate!

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Except…not. While we were sitting there I was checking my email and I saw a concerning message that our flight was cancelled…Um…what??? I read it a few times before processing and I checked my flight tracker app too, as if that would somehow give a different answer:

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Uhhhh nope…cancelled. So I quickly sprung into action and showed Chris. We went up to the gate agent who casually told us to head back down towards security and they would help us rebook. We were kind of nervous for what was about to happen but we went and found a nice lady sitting at the Hawaiian Airlines desk who had new boarding passes waiting for us! We headed to our new gate and waited until our actual plane arrived.

I’m still not really sure what happened but we ended up actually getting on an earlier flight, so it all worked out. Still – we wouldn’t have even known if I hadn’t been checking my email so thank goodness for that!

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Our flight went smoothly and we had a layover in Honolulu before we carried on to Hilo on the Big Island. We got off the plane very briefly for the stop, and my mom had told me to keep an eye out for someone with a sign with our names on it in Honolulu – she was planning something for us…

Mom surprised us and set up a lei greeting! It was a super cute surprise and even though we only got off the plane for a few minutes, they easily found us and gave us our leis. Very touristy but I loved it 🙂

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We hopped back on the plane for another short trip over to the Big Island!

On this flight they gave us little maps with some info about the Big Island – I thought it was very cute!

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In our seat pocket they also had a book full of advertisements for Hawaiian things including a spread for Aulani! I was excited to read but it was all in Japanese haha

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Our flight was short and sweet and soon we were landed in Hilo. We headed to get our car and it was very efficient and we got a brand new Mazda this time.

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We hopped in and made our way to our hotel, which was the Grand Naniloa Hotel run by Hilton.

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The hotel was stunning and right on the water. AND they had an open air front desk!!

Hawaii is wild!!!

We got ourselves all checked in and headed up to the room, which was really nice as well:

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They also had fresh baked cookies in the room for us! I guess this is a Hilton thing? It was a nice treat and Chris let me have his also haha

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We dropped our bags and then went to explore the place a bit. The grounds were literally RIGHT next to the water so we walked around for a little while.

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It was so pretty and made for many good photo opportunities!

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Chris Christensen - 47729BB1-5F1B-46BA-90FD-AD008DC83AA9_preview

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Before long we realized we were getting hungry so we headed off to find some food. On the way I saw this stunning park on the side of the road and we pulled over to check it out.

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Liliuokalani Gardens wasn’t a place we had on the itinerary to stop but I am so glad we did because it was full of beautiful things! Like this MASSIVE TREE:

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The whole place had a Japanese influence and after researching a bit we found out it’s actually the largest ornamental Japanese garden outside of Japan itself! It’s name comes from the last reigning monarch of Hawaii, Queen Liliuokalani.

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Some of the bridges had no guard rails or anything which made them feel even more like a Survivor challenge and they seemed a bit treacherous.

We had fun just walking around and exploring – the whole place was so pretty and we even saw a couple going around taking wedding photos!

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There were also tons of stray cats around – we had seen this sign as we came in and thought it was weird:

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But it seems like people dropping off their pets was sadly actually a big problem considering how many cats there were running around! They were seriously everywhere.

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After we had our fill of exploring we actually were quite hungry so we went off to actually go to dinner. We were headed to a place called Don’s Grill, a spot that was praised on Trip Advisor for feeling like an authentic local spot.

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The menu was HUGE with tons of options!!

Chris eventually decided to get a burger and I enjoyed a Philly cheesesteak.

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The food was simple and no frills, but surprisingly delicious – the macaroni salad I had with my sandwich was amazing!!

After we finished dinner, I had another spot I wanted to check out called Hilo Bay Cafe. I actually found them on instagram a while ago and thought it looked like a really nice place, so we decided to head there for drinks and dessert. It wasn’t quite dark yet when we arrived and we were seated at the most perfect table with a great view!

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At the cafe they have a house popcorn that they serve instead of bread – it was so cool and different and very addicting!

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We let our server know we were doing dinner and drinks and she brought us out the menu.

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Everything sounded great and we decided to get a few things – I got the “Take the Elevator” to drink (aptly named because it was VERY strong lol) and we got a chocolate lava cake and dipping donuts to split.

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The drink was tasty but like I said – very strong! I had to nurse it for a while haha

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The desserts were amazing!! Look at that actual volcanic lava cake!!

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Everything was SO good but I think the lava cake was our favorite. Once we were stuffed to the brim, we still had one more stop before we headed back to the hotel…

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Even in Hawaii we had to make a stop at our favorite place, Target! We needed to stop here because the next day we were heading out to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park all day and wanted to pick up some portable foods to have a little picnic of sorts there. In case you’re wondering, Hawaii Target is pretty much the same as Florida Target, with 2 major differences:

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They have a FULL AISLE of Hawaiian Host chocolates. I was in HEAVEN!! My dad used to bring these home to us when I was little – whenever he went to Hawaii on business he would bring back the most delicious candies for us, the Hawaiian Host Caramacs:

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They’re macadamia nuts covered with chocolate and caramel and they are SO GOOD 😭 Chris didn’t understand my squeal of joy when I saw the aisle full of them and I had to grab a box to show him the light.

The second major difference with Hawaiian Target:

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The employees were all wearing Hawaiian shirts!!!!!! I was living. They were so cute and I had to snap a sneaky photo haha

Once we had grabbed everything we needed for the next day we were finally headed back to the hotel to crash.

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It was still relatively early so we decided to go down to the pool and hang out for a bit.

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Unfortunately the pool was very cold so we quickly went back upstairs haha. Even more unfortunately, when I was about to hop in the shower before bed, we discovered the shower was broken! We called maintenance to come and fix it for us. Unbelievably we were actually hungry again and nothing was open at the hotel for food. We knew they would probably take a bit to get up there and fix it….so….we went and got pizza. We’re two for two on eating pizza on Hawaiian islands now.

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When we got back, our shower was fixed and we had delicious pizza to enjoy! We had our second dinner of the night and then it was time to pass out from all the excitement of the day.

That’s all for day 4 of our honeymoon! It wasn’t the most eventful because it was mostly a travel day, but we still did some cool things and ate some cool places!! Our next day is sure to be exciting as we’re heading out to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park – something we were both really looking forward to. I hope you enjoyed this post and this series so far and thank you for reading, as always! <3

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