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It’s time to start planning my honeymoon in Hawaii!

Yes, the day is finally here. The trip is booked and I’m only a few months away from being in Hawaii!

The flights are all set as are all of our lodgings and now it’s time to figure out what we want to do there.

That might make it sound like we just booked it all today. However, in reality, we sat down a few months ago and picked out where wanted to go. We had my fiancee’s dad help with the planning and he took care of a lot of the booking for us. I’m not a huge traveler and he enjoys that stuff so he was glad to help out.

I got an email from him about three weeks ago with all the confirmations. I also happened to find out that he took care of those expenses for us as an early wedding gift.

That was crazy awesome of him and it really made me appreciate how lucky I am. Hawaii is an expensive place and having these two big costs covered as a gift is a big boost to our financial well-being. Thanks future father-in-law for the best gift ever!

We’ll still spend a bunch of money on food and excursions and we still have to rent cars but this is a BIG cost savings.

Now it’s time to start planning.

The truth is that if I don’t get started soon, we might miss out on some things we want to do. We only get a few days on some islands and certain things need to be booked in advance. Therefore, I need to get organized and that’s what I’m doing here!

The original plan was to visit two islands. We would start in Kauai for about 11 days then fly over to the Big Island(Hawaii) for 5 days before heading back home. The volcanic eruption forced us to change our plans as our eastern part of the Hawaii stay was cancelled.

That meant we could either extend our stay on Kauai or add another island to the mix. We chose the latter and will spend a few days in Maui before heading over to Hawaii and spending two days on the west side of the island.

Now, that everything is settled, here’s the basic layout for our honeymoon!

Kauai

Fly into Kauai at 7:27 PM local time Thursday(Day 1). The 6 hour time difference will likely mean jet lag and a need for rest.

We spend a full week here until the following Thursday(Day 7). That includes the first day where we’ll be tired from the flight and time changes.

We’re steps away from the beach at our place which is nice and there’s a few good restaurants in the area. The place we’re at has a kitchen to so we’ll likely stop at a grocery store so we don’t have to eat out every meal.

There are obvious things we’ll do like hang on the beach, eat plenty of poke and fish tacos and try out the many good food trucks around the island. It’s the rest of the stuff that I have to figure out. There’s so many great things out there that it’ll be tough to narrow it down to a few.

I do know that we want to visit Waimea Canyon and do some kayaking as well. We’ll likely try to take a boat excursion and if I can get over my fear of flying, we’ll take a helicopter ride over the island.

On day 7, we move shop north to Princeville until Day 11. This is a shorter stay since there’s more we want to do in the south.

There is an ATV excursion in this area that sounds cool. It combines an ATV ride, a zipline and swimming under a waterfall.

There’s also a cool restaurant that does a five course meal under a communal tent that I’d like to try. Unfortunately they only serve dinner two days a week so hopefully we’re around where they do.

I hear the beaches up north are beautiful as well. We might also need to take some long drives around the island and visit the Na Pali Coast state park.

One of the things we want to do is get a jeep and open up the top and just explore the island as much as we can. We’ll have 11 days here but I’m sure it won’t be enough to experience everything.

On day 11, we pack up, head to the airport and head to Maui.

Maui

We get four days here but that only includes two full days. We get in mid-afternoon on day 11 and will travel to our place in Kihei. That’s right in the middle of the island so it gives us a good starting point for our travels.

There’s a lot of things to do here but a few stand out already. There’s the road to Hana which we definitely want to do and that’ll take one full day. We also likely want to do go up Halekala and see either a sunset or a sunrise.

Maui wasn’t actually part of the original plan so we don’t have a ton of time here. It’d be nice to make it to the western side of the island if we’re not too tired from flying on day 1. There’s so much to do and so little time!

In the mid afternoon of day 14, we fly to the big island for the final leg of our trip.

Hawaii(Big Island)

We get here around mid afternoon on day 14 and our flight home is on day 16. At least the flights between islands are short! That means we really only have one full day on this island.

My fiancee wants to do a helicopter tour here because volcano. However, as I said before, I’m afraid of heights so who knows!

We’ll drive around here, eat more fish tacos but it’s possible we just mainly rest and veg out before our trip home. The flight home is a rough one. We leave at 11 AM Hawaii time and arrive at 6 AM EST the next day due to the time zone shift.

Talk about some serious jet lag.

I have a few days off to recover before heading back to work. Luckily it’s slow in December so I may work from home a few days while I get back my internal clock.

All in all, it’s a trip I’m super excited about but now I have to figure out what I want to do all these days.

Right now the itinerary is rather vague.

Honeymoon in Hawaii itinerary

We have 16 days in Hawaii. Here’s a starting outline of what we plan to do. Right now, it’s very basic and I have to fill this out soon. I won’t mention it each day but there’s an all encompassing find good food aura on each day.

1: Travel to Hawaii, check into place in Poipu. Be tired and sleep.

2: Unpack, get groceries, get our bearings, spend time on beach, drive around the area.

3: Beach, Waimea Canyon, head west.

4: Boat tour of some sort, hang out around the area.

5: Kayaking or excursion of some sort. Maybe relax and get some couples massages after.

6: Head east. Brave the sky and take a helicopter tour. Cry and be afraid of the ridiculous heights. See cool things.

7: Spend the morning in the area then pack and drive up to Princeville and check into our place up there.

8: Explore the area, head east. Outdoor dinner under communal tent.

9: Beach, check out princeville, head west toward Na Pali coast.

10: Excursion, ATV ride, zipline, waterfall.

11: Spend the morning in the area then pack up and fly over to Maui in a puddle jumper. Check into place in Kihei. Ride west and check out the area – maybe try to see some whales.

12: Road to Hana, stop at a lot places and take lots of pictures. I hear it’s pretty.

13: Maybe wake up early and see a sunset at Halekala or be lazy and sleep in and just do it during the day.

14: Spend the morning in the area then fly over to Hawaii. Check out the area in Hawaii after checking into our place.

15: Brave the sky again and take a helicopter tour over the volcano unless day 6 ruined heights for me for life. Cry if applicable due to heights. Maybe take a boat trip instead.

16: Pack up, be sad and get ready for our terrible flight home.

That’s it! It doesn’t look too bad even if it’s very vague at this point. I wrote this post to get that vagueness out of the way so that I can now start planning the entire thing.

We have a good baseline but want to narrow it down to things I really want to do.

There’s naturally going to be days where the weather sucks or we just don’t want to do anything. In that case, we’ll just figure out what to do on that day whether it be a massage, a puzzle room or some shopping.

Still, I want to have a pretty good itinerary ironed out because a lot of things have to be booked in advance.

This post made me decide I’m not really there yet so I ordered a guidebook for Kauai to get things started. That’s the island we’re spending the most time on and that will require a bit more planning since we have so many options. Everyone at work recommended this “blue book” for Hawaii so I picked up it today and can’t wait to jump into it.

I think I’ve got a good starting point but now that it’s getting closer. It’s time to get planning and make this the best trip ever! That’ll include reading the book above and spending time on yelp and tripadvisor deciding on places to eat. Can’t forget the food!

We’ll also probably want to try some things we’ve never done. There’s surfing, snorkeling and all sorts of other water activities to do. It’ll be an exploration bonanza and I hope to see a lot of cool animals and eat a lot of cool local fruit and food.

There’s also a bunch of stuff we still have to buy before the trip. I’ve been trying to wade through the 80000 water shoes with good reviews on amazon to get some of those. We also added some things like a full face snorkel to our wedding registry. I bet I’ll look super cool in this thing.

There’s plenty of other stuff to buy but I don’t want this to become a Hawaii home shopping network post.

We’ll also do a ton of stuff we already do and enjoy like hiking and exploring the island and talking walks on the beach while trying to find turtles and seals.

I’m also thinking of getting a new camera and getting into photography for this trip but who knows if that’ll pan out. I often get ideas to try new hobbies and give up immediately so perhaps the phone will suffice.

All I know is that in November and the few months after, this blog and my Instagram will be all about Hawaii and how cool it is so get ready for that.

This is just the beginning of planning my honeymoon in Hawaii and there’s plenty more to come. I just have to get to planning.

For those that have been to Hawaii, specifically the 3 islands I mentioned, any recommendations?