Kauai Recap Part 2

Yay! Made it to the middle of the week! It always feels like an accomplishment ;) If you're planning a trip to Kauai, hopefully you'll love today's post! If you missed last week's Kauai Trip Recap Part 1, you can find it here. Like I mentioned on our trip on Instagram, the second half of the trip was a crazyyy tropical storm, which I'll get to in the post later, but first I have to tell you about one of the most amazing things we did. 

While staying on the South side of the island (Poipu), we did a stunning beach hike/walk. I would call the first 5 minutes a hike, as you're walking straight uphill, but that is the worst of it! After that, you walk a trail (sometimes rocky) right along the coast. It was GORGEOUS! If you're going to Kauai, you cannot miss this! It's called the Mahaulepu Beach Trail and you start off at Shipwreck Beach. Thankfully we had one of the most beautiful days the day we did this walk!

This turquoise water will never get old!

My mom and I:

In our happy place!

After this hike, we packed up at our hotel on the South side of the island and headed to the North side (Princeville). Once we got settled in the room at the Westin, my parents were so excited to show us one of their favorite beaches called Lumaha'i Beach. You have to drive to it, then walk down a hill to get it, but it's not hard and boy is it worth it! These were by far the biggest waves we saw on the trip. It would have been very unsafe to swim on the left side of this picture, but to the right was a little cove made from some huge rocks and that created a small bay where the waves were smaller and safer to swim in. I was too scared, so didn't go in ;) But the other three did!

That night we went to what we ALL agreed was our favorite dinner of the trip. We went to brand new place called Ama in the charming town of Hanelei. Not only was it delicious, but the view was incredible of the mountains and it was a really fun atmosphere!

I wore this Joie Romper that I rented and OH MY GOSH, guys. Favorite romper I've ever worn. Ever. I wanted to buy it so bad!! Shoes can be found here.

This is the restaurant when we went back the next morning and it was light out. The view of the mountains is stunning...see below!

 
Now remember it was OVERLY rainy and overcast, so this doesn't even do it justice. But the fire pit was super fun to sit at while waiting for a table. The food was insanely good. I don't eat any seafood so I got steak kabobs and plain noodles, which I seasoned with the juice of the steak. SO GOOD! My husband and mom got the Mazeman Bowls (my husband got the pork one and mom got the veggie one) and both were SO good! My dad got the fish tacos and said they were amazing as well.

But, I can't stop talking about Ama without mentioning their dessert. They have small donuts (like beignets) and a chocolate dipping sauce with divine coconut ice cream. We scarfed down our plate of donuts and I begged to order another one, but everyone else thought we'd be too full ;)

The next morning we enjoyed a yummy breakfast at our hotel!

Another fun thing we did was going to the Kauai Coffee Company. My husband is a big coffee drinker, so this was super cool to him to see how coffee was made and get a ton of free samples ;)

 They had probably 30 jugs sitting out to test! Then the gift shop was full of all the flavors so you coul grab a bag of your favorite flavors.

 We quickly toured the coffee bean vineyard, which was FULL of hundreds and hundreds of trees growing coffee beans. I had no idea this is what they looked like!

 The grounds were really beautiful, too.

This is about the day the storm rolled in...we tried to go see the Kilauea Lighthouse, but you can see from the pictures that it was already getting super gray and rainy. It was SO incredibly windy I felt like I almost could have taken flight ha!

After that quick trip (which I think cost $5 / person!) my parents drove us by their favorite beach called Anini Beach and even though we couldn't lay out on it due to rain, it was fun to see it after years of them talking about it! Couldn't help but sneak a picture of them:

I don't have any pictures from the next two days because we were literally stuck inside a hotel room because of the storm for what felt like 48 straight hours ;) We tried to make light of it, but it was honestly a very scary experience with one night straight of thunder and lightning. It struck ever 5-10 seconds for 6 hours straight starting at 1am, so we didn't sleep a wink during that. Then the entire day just down pouring. Kauai got over 27" of rain in 24 hours, which was record-setting. Trees were split in half due to lightning strikes, houses were flooded, animals got out of their ranches and farms and congregated on the beaches (Google pictures of Bicen on the beach!), bridges were shut down so we couldn't get anywhere, flights were cancelled, tons of locals were stranded, people were being rescued from their homes via surfboard...I mean, it was crazy.

That night when we were laying in bed with lightning striking (what felt and sounded like) directly outside our door, I was just praying God would spare us and keep us safe. I'm so thankful we were okay and no other harm was done to the locals. We kept saying it was a bummer for us, but that this was devastating to locals and shops there, especially on the North side of the island.

Funny aside: when it was raining for two days straight my mom and I booked a massage, because that's something we can get behind when it's pouring ;) Well, the therapists couldn't even get into work so our massages were cancelled and we ended up going to the kids center at the hotel (when the power was out) to COLOR. That's where we were at. We colored postcards with some 7 year olds to pass the time ;)

When it finally broke up a bit, we got ready and darted out of there for dinner at the St. Regis hotel, which looks over Hanalei Bay. So pretty! After 36 hours of being in PJ's, putting on this dress felt good, haha!

We saw some waterfalls and the (merky) river on our way back...

It rained a lot the next day as well, but we noticed the South side of the island wasn't getting hardly any rain, so I begged to drive over there and see the sun! Didn't take much convincing, really :)

It wasn't super sunny, but it didn't rain! So we'll take it. And this is the day all of us got the most sunburned, ironically. We soaked up the sun at the Marriott Beach.

That night we headed back to the North shore and went to my parent's favorite bar one last time, Happy Talk Lounge, since the little town of Hanelei was still closed from the flooding.

I got dressed up in one of my favorite dresses I own from my new favorite boutique, August Cloth. I just adore this store for so many reasons. The owner, Crystal, is SO sweet and passionate. There is so much heart behind her business. Every single piece of clothing is also something I would wear in a hot second! It was still raining a little, so these aren't the best pics, but a stranger offered to take this one for us, so we went with it :)

This maxi is so comfy (and if it's chilly, this is a great one since it is fully lined it will keep you warmer than normal maxi dresses). I love the feminine details in the sleeves, print, bow and ruffles at the bottom. You can use the code MICHAELA15 for 15% off your next August Cloth purchase.

Our final morning in Hanalei, we were finally able to get into the little town and we went to my dad's favorite spot: the Hanalei Bread Company & Coffee House. They have delicious pastries, breakfasts and drinks! I got this sweet sticky bun and it was amazing. Here we also were able to talk to a local man for a couple minutes and learned his story, how the floodingaffectedd him, etc. It was really great to hear from him. Thankfully he was okay! He snapped this pic for us below:

After coffee, we headed to our final hotel which was right by the airport, but we took a pit stop at Wailua Falls which was gorgeous!

We got to our hotel and there was some sun, so we layed out for a bit. My husband and I were supposed to fly out this night, but our flight got delayed then cancelled, so we had to crash with my parent's in their hotel room. God was totally looking out for us, because he gave us a room with a King bed and a Queen bed, even though my parents only needed one bed! Glory! We didn't have to sleep on the floor.

This was our hotel room view of the Beach Club Marriott.

We were frustrated with our flight cancellation, but grateful we got a bonus night and half day with my parents!! We went to Duke's that night for dinner and it was really great. This dress can be found here.

One of my favorite selfies of the two of us. Not sure why...just good memories! :)

Well, if you made it HERE, you deserve an award! That was a ton of writing and pictures! I wanted to be as thorough as possible so that if someone planning a trip was reading, it could be a good resource. Let me know if you have any questions!
As they say...Aloha :)
xoxo Michaela
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