Adventures in Hawaii

The thing about Hawaii is that when you get there, jet lagged after 3 flights and a 6 hour time difference and weary of planes full of kids who only stop screaming when they're puking, you step off the plane to views of a gorgeous sunset and all you can think is: totally worth it.

The weather is beautiful, the landscape is breathtaking, the people are so happy and friendly and the Shave Ice is delicious. It's paradise with an Orange Julius.

We stayed at the Hilton Waikoloa village on Hawaii's Big Island, which is a resort type area. The hotel is like a village in itself, an impressive complex of hotel towers, pools (with water slides!), statues, dolphins, shops, restaurants and a lagoon, with a tram and boat to shuttle guests from place to place.

On Sunday, we went on a tour of Volcano National Park on the other side of the Big Island, where we climbed through a lava tube and down into a caldera, ate dinner on lava rocks near the ocean and watched the glow of the lava at night.

On Monday and Tuesday, we rented a car (and got a free upgrade to a Jeep. Bonus!) and drove to Kona, where we went parasailing, rode in a submarine, and inadvertently wound up on the beach in front of The Four Seasons.

Vacation is one of my favorite weeks of the year, and this trip was my all-time favorite so far. We relaxed by the pool, went on adventures, ate room service dessert and I read 5 books. I love how vacation makes the world seem simultaneously so big (we traveled for 16 hours each way and didn't even leave the U.S.) and so small (there was a family from Buffalo, NY in our volcano tour group.)

And I hope we have many more vacations to come.

Lyric of the moment: "I see skies of blue, and clouds of white. And the brightness of day and darkness of night. And I think to myself, what a wonderful world..."