The best hotel to stay at: The Kea Lani Suites and Villas, Wailea, Maui. You only have 2 room choices here: if you have lots of money, rent a private villa which includes its own chef, or, if you're like the rest of us, get a 2 room suite. Each suite has a private balcony, a huge bedroom with a TV, a super living room with a pull out couch and TV/multimedia system to die for, and a bathroom you gotta see to believe.
Hotel to stay away from: The Embassy Suites on the west end of the island. According to friends who stayed there, the service was lousy. The room they got was crawling with ants.
Restaurants
Restaurants with offers from the Entertainment book are listed with a "*". *Hecock's in Lahaina. Tables all have a nice ocean view, but there's no nonsmoking section, so if smoke really bothers you, don't eat here-they don't even care if people smoke cigars (YUK!) However, the food was tasty. The scallops in wine cream sauce were good. The scallops were done just right. The only little thing was that the sauce could have been reduced more-it was tasty but too thin. The mahi mahi was also very good. Service was okay-it took a little too long to get our dinners. The Kea Lani Restaurant at the Kea Lani Suites Hotel. Breakfast and dinner are served at this open air restaurant. We went for the breakfast buffet, which was quite good. It is $20 per person, but you gotta treat yourself sometimes, right? There's a huge selection of breakfast foods, including the stuff that Japanese people eat for breakfast (lots different from what us Yanks eat) and loads of exotic fruits and juices. Pizazz In Azeka II shopping center in Kihei. Pacific Rim cuisine with a cajun flair. In the evening, live jazz music is played here as well. The food here was really good-the roasted chicken with mango cornbread stuffing was excellent, as was the blackened catfish with mashed sweet potatoes-it was spicy good! Big portions are the order of the day here as well. The food was excellent, reasonably priced and the service was good, too. Planet Hollywood and the Hard Rock Cafe Your old favorites are located in Lahaina. *Prince Court at the Maui Prince Hotel in Makena. Excellent gourmet food. April started with the quail salad, which was great-quail is like chicken, but with a more gamey taste. The rack of lamb crusted with Maui onion breading was excellent-super tender and served with a Maui onion sauce. The venison was also excellent-very tender. A first rate dining experience. *Pukulani Country Club Restaurant Located on the slopes of Mount Haleakala at the Pukulani golf club. Don't let the name fool you-it's VERY casual here. The best description for this place is-home cookin' Hawaiian style. The prices here are unbelievably reasonable ($8-$12 even without the entertainment coupon!). 2 different menus-the traditional menu comes with rice or fries and a vegetable and includes shoyu marinated teriyaki steak, which was very tender and yummy, and also local fried chicken-nicely crispy and juicy. The Hawaiian menu has a nice island flair to it-all the entrees (stuff like different meats cooked laulau (in a ti leaf)style and other stuff and all entrees include poi, lomilomi salmon and some other Hawaiian type sides. There is a salad bar for an extra $3, too. There is no dessert menu, but all meals come with complementary self serve soft ice cream. We really enjoyed this experience-it was fun to go local! Sam Choy's Kahului By all means, if you see a Sam Choy's, eat there. The food is out of this world, and the portions are enormous. Start with a salad-it's huge, too-and the creamy oriental dressing is the best. If you order the Hawaiian Seafood Stew, be prepared to take some home-it came in a huge bowl with 1/2 a lobster, clams, shrimp, scallops, and king crab legs in a saffron bouillabase. 2 people could share this. It was fantastic. The salmon with tempura shrimp in papaya sauce was also yummy good. The service was really great, too. This was the best Hawaiian restaurant we've ever been to and definitely in the top 3 of restaurants we've been to overall. Don't miss it. Sam Choy's Lahaina We liked the one in Kahului so much that we decided to try this one, too, since it was supposed to have different stuff on it's menu. The servers here seemed snooty as compared to the one in Kahului, though. The starting salad was alot smaller than the one in Kahului, but still tasty. Definitely try the Award Winning Seafood Laulau-fish, shrimp, and scallops steamed island style in a ti leaf with dill sauce was yummy good. The asian style veal osso bucco was fantastic and quite big-2 could probably share this one, too. Of the 2 restaurants, we like the Kahului one better, but Lahaina wasn't a bad experience, either. The food was excellent-the service was somewhat snooty in Lahaina, but passable.
Sightseeing & Activities There are lots of nifty things to do on Maui. Haleakala We didn't get a chance to do this, but there are a number of different ways to see the extinct volcano on Maui, named Haleakala, including biking down it. There are tours where you rent a bike, then they will provide transportation up the mountain and leave you on your own to bike down and sightsee at your leisure. You can also just drive up it-there are a few scenic stops along the way, including at the top, where you can see a beautiful sunrise if you can manage to get up early enough. Hana If you have a tendency to get carsick, the Road To Hana is definitely not for you. This is a road that runs along the northern end of the east side of Maui. The scenery is beautiful and the road is well paved, but there are over 600 sharp curves between the beginning and the end. It's well worth the drive for you hardy souls, because this is the way to 2 beaches of interest: a black sand beach and a red sand beach.
The red sand beach is NOT easy to get to. It's quite a walk and the path is hard to find, so if you're really interested, e-mail us and we'll give you detailed directions. For details of all the sights along this road, and there are alot, get a copy of the Fodor's book for Hawaii. Maalena Aquarium< Between Kihei and Lahaina. This park is much better than Sea Life Park on Oahu. The exhibits are really nice, including the huge aquarium which has an underwater tube that you can walk through-it's neat to be surrounded by thousands of fish! There are lots of other nice exhibits, too. Don't miss it. Maui Tropical Plantation A huge plantation, offering a tram ride through it's many orchards, giving you an opportunity to see just how those exotic fruits grow. There's also a huge shopping area with lots of Hawaiian made products. If you order ahead, they'll have pineapple and Maui onions waiting at the airport for you when you're ready to go home. No papaya is available here, though. Molokini or Coral Gardens Snorkeling There are lots of different outfits that will take you snorkeling to either one of these places. Most of them really promote Molokini, a really small island just off of the Maui shore. Coral Gardens actually has better snorkeling, because the water is more shallow (15 feet as compared to 25 on Molokini), but it doesn't have an island. Yeah, we said so what, too. It's nicer to be close to the fish. Sometimes you don't have a choice but to go to Coral Gardens anyway, so beware if you've booked a Molokini trip. If winds are kicking up pretty good, snorkeling in the Molokini crater is unsafe and they'll reroute you to Coral Gardens anyway. The best deal we found for these trips is at a place called "Boss Frogs", a snorkel rental shop. If you rent any set of snorkels for a week ($10 for the cheapest set), you get a free afternoon snorkel trip. It's really the best deal, because the other guys might advertise more gingerbread (barbeque lunches, sliding board on the boat, etc.) with their tours ($30 per person was the cheapest we saw), but you all end up in the same place anyway.
April and David doin the Scuba thing.
Scuba Diving If you've always wanted to try it, but didn't want to pay for classes, Hawaii is the best place. They are one of only 2 states that do not require PADI licenses to do ocean dives. More specifically even, the Kea Lani Hotel is the best place in the islands to learn. They offer introductory classes to guests for FREE! You learn the ins and outs right in the hotel pool, then if you are comfortable and the instructor thinks everything's OK, you can go diving at the reef right off of the hotel's beach for only $79, and that includes everything-all the gear and 70 minutes of dive time. It's super cool!
Shopping Kaahumanu Mall An open air mall in Kahului-lots of shops and restaurants. A nice place to shop. Lahaina A nice town on the west end of Maui. It's basically one long street that reminds us of a town on the Jersey Shore. There are lots of shops, restaurants, and things to do here. Take Home Maui Another place that has fruit available to take home with you. Order ahead and they'll have it waiting at the airport for you. Pineapples, papaya, and Maui onions are available. Tedeschi Vineyards One of 2 vineyards in Hawaii (the other is Volcano, on the big island), and this is the only one that produces wines with pineapple juice. Driving up the slopes of Haleakala a little ways is worth it to get here. You can taste the different wines they offer-there are 2 made with pineapple-one dry and one sweet, and there's also a pineapple champagne-they're all great! They also give tours of the cellars and bottling plant. There are discounts offered depending on how much you buy. (It's worth it-for the same stuff sold in the ABC store for $7.99, they only charge about $6.) If you want to take it home, they put the bottles in nice boxes with styrofoam protectors. Whaler's Village Shopping Center In Kaanapali. Another outdoor mall, with over 70 shops. A nice variety, including a Hilo Hatties store that sells only upscale Hawaiian wear-kind of expensive, but lots better looking than the stuff in the regular Hilo Hatties store.
Nightlife: If you want nightlife, the only place on the whole island besides the hotels where anything is open late is Lahaina. There are plenty of places to party there. The rest of the island rolls up at around 9 p.m.
Email / knighton@cablespeed.com
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April and David doin the Scuba thing.
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