Travel - Hawaii Cruise

Recently my hubby and I took a 14-day cruise to/from Hawaii. The cruise departed from the port in Long Beach, CA and had more sea days than port days.

It took 5 days to arrive in the islands. By then we had got our sea day routine down pat.

Below, scenes from our cruise ship approach to/at our Hawaiian islands ports of call:

Kahalui, Maui

It has been way too long since my last visit to Maui which was right after I graduated from college. The approach view was picture perfect. While there, we chose a bus tour to upcountry Maui. Most of our time was spent at a cool distillery with cafe and picnic area.

Honolulu

I grew up in Honolulu and my extended family lives there so we spent our port time visiting relatives. Our family dinner was celebrated with coconut cake from the new Halekulani Bakery. It may have been the last one available when my sister bought it! Thank goodness for coconut cake karma.

Nawiliwili, Kauai

The scenic port on Kauai is in Nawiliwili. We had a terrific time touring Lihue and Wailua with our off-the-clock uber driver. Since our time in port was less than 6 hours, we didn’t stray too far from the port. We did hang out with tiki drinks at Duke’s in Kalapakī and also shared a slice of Hula Pie. When in Hawaii…

Hilo, Hawaii

As we cruised into port in Hilo, I was pleased to see the observatory atop Mauna Kea, high above the clouds. As a high school student, I spent time in Hilo in a summer science/math program so seeing Mauna Kea brought back fond memories of our excursion there.

For our cruise land activities, we visited the lovely Lili’uokalani Gardens, took a short hike to Akaka Falls, and toured the small Pana'ewa Zoo. Unfortunately we did not have time to walk around in downtown Hilo, which I would have enjoyed. But that leaves something for us to do next time in the islands.

Related architecture posts: Travel - A Trio of Mid-Century Buildings on Kauai , Travel - A Trio of Buildings in Downtown Honolulu