Eric and Dee Dee's Honeymoon: Off to Maui!

We got up and we laid by the pool from 9:00am – 11:00am.

We packed up and said goodbye to the Grand Hyatt and went into Lihue for lunch. Dee Dee heard of a great mom and pop type dinner place near the airport called the Barbeque Inn .The restaurant serves a cross between American, Japanese, and Pac Rim plate lunches. What a great lunch…for $8 we got a salad, entrée (teriyaki chicken and beef) and dessert. Dee Dee had peach upside down cake and I had peach cream pie. Both were great. We highly recommend this out of the way diner…it’s a local place and has great local flavor and value.

We fly to Maui this afternoon and check into the Ritz Carlton.
We arrived in Maui in the early evening and picked up our rental car at Avis. It took us about an hour to get out from the airport, through Lahaina, Kaanapali and up to Kapalua, where the Ritz is.

The Ritz grounds and lobby are striking and are very old Hawaii. The desk and bell hop service are great. We were able to receive a one level upgrade from a garden view room to a partial ocean view. Unfortunately, it took the Ritz three attempts to show us a room that was not musty smelly. We walked into the first room and it reminded me of my grandmother’s old musty smelling house…NOT the smells and location you want to remember on your honeymoon. The bell-hop, Matias, who Dee Dee thought was HOT (a dark skinned Chilean from Santiago) helped us find two other rooms. Fortunately, Matias’ third attempt resulted in a satisfactorily un-smelly room that overlooked the golf course and partially the ocean.

The Ritz rooms, and Dee Dee’s boyfriend Matias confirmed this, are carpeted and have heavy curtains that absorb the humidity. Over a long time period, the carpets/rooms smell musty. Matias admitted that most rooms have the musty smell and that the Ritz planned to remove the carpet and curtains and to replace them with wood floors and lighter drapes.

The rooms are UGLY and done in an old English style. The carpets are either light pink or green supported by light yellow walls and ugly floral print curtains. Their interior designers need to be continually taking interior design classes to keep up with design trends in the past 20 years. The bathrooms at the Ritz are always nice being done in all white marble.

The hotel is very nice, but we don’t think we’d stay there again. The hotel lobby and grounds, pools, beach area are very nice, but the rooms are ugly. Maybe with the upgrades to come, it will be far nicer. However, as far as price goes, the Ritz is on par or even cheaper than other hotels in the busier areas of Lahaina.

After we got settled, we drove down to the Kahana Gateway shopping center and ate at the Fish and Game Brewing Company for a quick salad and burger. We then went to the Hawaiin Village Brewing company for a quick ice cream. They have severally locally made ice cream with hawaiian flavors such as Kona coffee, macadamia nut, etc.