With so many things scheduled for these two weeks, Tuesday was just a day to unwind and relax.

Neither one of us normally eats a really big breakfast everyday, so when we’re here on Maui, it isn’t usually a daily thing. When we do decide on eating breakfast, though, like we did on Tuesday, we never have to go far.

Whenever you read about how to save money and eat smarter when visiting Hawaii, books and blogs always say “avoid the buffets.”  They are normally way over-priced and you typically only eat one or two plates anyway. Well, for us here at the Sheraton, we book a room package that includes a free breakfast buffet for two every morning, so that’s a big plus.

I’ve mentioned that this was a first trip to Maui during one of the busy seasons, and that was evident this morning. For eating breakfast at around 9:30am, we had a good 20 minute wait. Never had that before on our other trips. The wait wasn’t too bad, however, because there was one of the ukulele players and a hula dancer from the luau downstairs performing for the guests in line. It made for some nice atmosphere.

After breakfast, we head back to the room for a little bit. Yes, as you can tell by reading this, I am actively blogging on my vacation, sharing with everyone our experience here on Maui. After all, that’s the whole purpose of having this site, right? (If you’re not sure, check the tagline in the upper right-hand corner).

At the moment, my blogging isn’t staying that current, with me being about two days behind. I’m working on that, though, and trying to push out these journal entries early (very early) in the morning so that I don’t take away time from the rest of these beautiful days on the island. Anyway, as soon as I was able to finish the first journal entry for the trip, we were back out the door.

One of the things we like to do after having that big breakfast is to walk it off. There are so many places to go walking here in Ka’anapali, so that’s what we did. Our first stop was at the Westin, where we hiked up the stairs to the Heavenly Spa. The intent was to book spa reservations for Cindy on Thursday, but things started to look a little dark.  Literally, not figuratively. Was the spa closed at 11:30am?

Actually, the spa lost power about 2 minutes before we got there. Can you imagine being in the middle of a massage and then, poof, no lights?  There was a woman in the hallway as we left that was finishing her manicure, too. Too funny. Cindy was still able to talk to one of the receptionists at the spa, bring back a “menu”, and call later to make the reservation.  Let’s home the power is fine the entire morning on Thursday.

After the Westin, we continued down south along the beachwalk and enjoyed such a beautiful walk. There wasn’t a cloud to be found overhead as we made our way passed each resort. We noticed a lot more foot traffic and activity stands along the beachwalk than in the past, but I guess we can attribute that to the busy season as well. We spotted a few paddleboarders this year, which up until recently, we hadn’t seen as being a popular thing with visitors here.

With our nice hour long walk out of the way, we found ourselves back at Whalers Village. It was time for a light lunch, so we headed down to the food court for my absolute favorite, Nikki’s Pizza. For whatever reason, I have not been able to find a better slice of Hawaiian pizza than at Nikki’s. Anywhere. Those giant, juicy chunks of Maui pineapple with very thin slices of ham is, for me, the true definition of ono-licious. I scored one right out of the oven, too. Sweet.

The other mission we had at Whalers was continuing to look for attire for our vacation portraits. We spotted some really nice shirts for me at Honolula Surf Co., but they were priced a little higher than I was willing to pay. Cindy was trying on a few things, and it was about then when I received a call from a rep at the Pacific Whale Foundation needing to reschedule our whale watch on Wednesday. It was pushed back from 1:30pm to 3:00pm, which wasn’t too bad.

We left Whalers Village with no success on the portrait attire, but that would soon change. The next stop was the Lahaina Cannery Mall. It only took a few stores to first find a shop that had some really nice Alohawear for both Cindy and I. While that wasn’t the intent of this shopping adventure, we now had this year’s alohawear for our luau next week. Plus, that good shopping fortune continued over to the next store where Cindy found the outfit that she was looking for. Cross that off our list.

With two shopping victories out of the way, we headed back to the resort. Cindy did a little reading on the lanai, while I, you guessed it, was back on the laptop blogging away. For awhile there, I thought I had the whales swimming out near our lanai all figured out. Whenever I sat down to type something, there’d be spouts or a splash out on the water. So, I’d stop, grab the binoculars and take a look. After about 10 minutes of watching, I’d sit down and repeat.

Cindy came in from the lanai and took a little nap while I was blogging. It wasn’t long before the sun started its decent down from the sky, and I witnessed another beautiful sunset here on Maui. From the vantage point on our lanai, we can see the island of Lanai to the left and Molokai to the right. With this view, the sun set just behind Lanai, and with only a few clouds above the edge of the island, the sun and all it’s glory tickled the cliffs as it went down. I did my best to capture this moment, but the colors on that little LCD screen just didn’t do justice to what I was seeing with my eyes.

By about 7pm, it was time for dinner. We decided to try a new place nearby, Lulu’s Lahaina at the Cannery. We walked passed it early in the week, and it looked like a nice place to try. Although parking at the Cannery that time of night was pretty packed, there was no wait at Lulu’s and the food and service we pretty good. We had a table right near the window, and while there was quite a bit of activity going on outside, we didn’t really notice it that much.

To cap off dinner, we had the malasadas at Lulu’s, which were really, really good. It was then a walk over to Starbucks and back to the resort. It was normally about this time of night where we would head out to the beach for a nice after dinner stroll. Unfortunately, the winds had picked up pretty good, and besides that extra chill it was carrying with it, it would have made that walk a little bit more difficult to enjoy. So we decided to just call it a night.