It’s no secret that Maui is one of our favorite vacation destinations. We love it for the ease, the activities, and obviously the sunshine.
Maui is an easy 5 hour nonstop flight from San Francisco. We flew Hawaiian this time as it was the cheapest and our economy plus subscription on United had expired. We were pleasantly surprised to find that they served a meal. Unfortunately it was pretty bad, even for plane food. On the way out we had a corned beef sandwich and a slightly more edible teriyaki chicken sandwich on the way back. Both came with chips and a sweet.
With both of our children being active and loud we need more space and have been opting for condo rentals over resorts for our last few trips to get more space and to save some money. We stayed in the Wailea Elua village in a two bedroom condo managed by Destination Vacations (?) and it was excellent. We booked directly but you can also book through Airbnb for a premium. The condo (unit 1509- insert affiliate link) was a very short walk (five minutes or less) from beach access at Ulua Beach. You get the most shade and calmest water on the east/right hand side of the beach, near the trees and rocks. There is excellent snorkeling on the rocky outcropping as well. We had daily light housekeeping to exchange towels and a full linen change every third night. The housekeeping is key so that you don’t spend your vacation laundering towels and sheets that inevitably get sandy. Wailea Elua is a very short walk to the Andaz and the great restaurants there as well as the Wailea Beach Resort (link to previous post) and the Shops at Wailea.
We walked to the shops twice for dinner, both times at Tommy Bahama. It sounds so touristy and awful, but we are big fans of Tommy Bahama. The food is consistently very good, they have great cocktails, a great kids’ menu, and (most importantly) are very quick getting everything out when you are with children. We of course visited our other haunts, most notably Coconuts Fish Cafe and Eskimo Candy. Coconuts has our favorite fish tacos in the world and Eskimo Candy has the best poke (as well as a good selection of cooked items). Coconuts is open seven days a week in two locations but Eskimo Candy is only open Monday-Friday so mind your schedule if you want to go! Foodland also has excellent poke if you miss Eskimo Candy. We also visited Mama’s Fish House in Paia but sadly we can no longer recommend it. It’s very far from the resort areas, very expensive, and the food and drinks were just not very good this time. Our mai tais were terrible to the point that we really should have sent them back. Our food was fine but nothing special, especially considering the price. Service was slow and we had to take our kids out to run around multiple times while waiting to order and waiting for the check. Try the plantation house (something like that, have to look it up) for a nice meal instead.
We have been wanting our boys to take private swimming lessons for awhile now, as we were not having success with weekly group lessons at home. We feel that swimming is an important life skill, even if they don’t especially enjoy it. Enter Emily from FloatOn Swim. After few emails prior to our arrival, we were set up with four semi-private lessons at our location. Both of our reluctant swimmers made incredible progress during these lessons. Our four year old, who would shake with fear that water would get on his face during a hair wash, was enthusiastically dunking his entire head under water and snorkeling in the pool by our fourth lesson. Our two year old, who had so far refused to even enter the pool, was happily cruising around with us in neck deep water and even blew a few bubbles. It was a raging success and we cannot recommend Emily more highly
We had such a fantastic time on the island and are already plotting a return trip!
