Maui: little favorites

 Buying fresh fruit from roadside stands: a Hawaii must-do. Kent loves the passion fruit, while I go for the "apple bananas."

 We weren't huge fans of Front Street in Lahaina--lots of shops and restaurants and "tourists" (I know, I know, I was a tourist too, and I'm being judgy....but I wasn't drunk, or wearing a neon pink Hawaiian flower-print strapless mini dress and a shell necklace, buying overpriced souvenirs, or asking where I could watch a Luau....)
BUT, we did go there a few times because we'd heard amazing things about Ululani's Shave Ice. 
And people, all the things we heard were true.
This is ice turned into something unbelievably creamy, with flavors that were so perfect, so tropical. Put some coconut ice cream on the bottom and some Mochi on the top and...mmmmm.

We found a tiny little spot of beach between two restaurants, and that became "our spot" where we'd sit and watch the waves in the dark, eat our shaved ice, and just talk. Perfection.

 Just the two of us, exploring the island, trying to find a particular beach with some crazy rocks.
We didn't find the beach, but we did find a hammock. 

At the end of the week we agreed that Maui has the best beaches of the islands we've been to. The beach our hotel was on (Ka'anapali,) was our absolute favorite. Crystal clear water, soft sand for about 10 feet out, perfect for just swimming, and then a gorgeous reef with lots of fish, and lots of turtles!

We did so much snorkeling on this trip, we actually ended up just buying our own snorkel gear. We went out a couple of times a day to snorkel, and our beach was our favorite place to go.

 One night, we attempted to go night swimming here at our beach.  
But as we got closer and closer to that dark, dark ocean, I got less and less brave about the idea.
The moon was full and bright, though, so we stood in the surf for a minute (just up to our ankles!) and watched the way the moonlight sparkled in the waves. Gorgeous. And then, a very large, slow-moving shadow swam past us, only a couple of feet from our toes. 
We backed out for certain then.
I'm pretty sure it was a turtle. Yeah, I'm going with a turtle.

 The day we did the Road to Hana (amazing!), we were so exhausted when we finally got home, that a restaurant sounded very tiring. So we found a place making pizzas in a brick oven in a parking lot (Pizza Connection for anyone interested-we highly recommend it!), bought a couple of fantastic pizzas, some lemonade, and took them down to our beach to eat in the sand while the sun set.
We ate in the peaceful golden light, watched tiny crabs come out of the sand, and it felt so good to just relax after such a long long day.

Getting lost on Hawaii is always fun. This awesome pine-lined road was not the way were supposed to go, but it was super cool!

Fresh juices. POG (Passion-Orange-Guava) is our favorite. I think we went through three or four cartons of it while we were there.

Also on the good list: 
Melona Bars. Also known as "Paradise on a Stick." Honeydew melon flavored ice cream bars, from Korea, I think. SO good.

Napping. Any time of day, whenever we felt like it, with no little ones to object, we took a nap.  Sometimes more than once a day.  To my recovering-from-first-trimester self, this was glorious.

Leoda's pies.  If I ever go back to Maui, it might be because of these pies. Mini pies: banana cream, coconut, key lime, chocolate macadamia...we'd buy them, then take them back and eat them on our balcony, or on our bed while we watched HGTV late at night. I've seriously never had a better pie than that banana cream was.

Fabiani's pizzeria, in Kihei. We ate here on our way to the airport on Tuesday night, and we were wishing we'd gone earlier, because we would have been there over and over again! What a place--all the food was amazing, but the best part was the lilikoi (passion fruit) roulade: 

Strolling hand in hand after the sun went down.  Midday it was actually pretty hot (think 91 and 75% humidity,) so that was typically when we'd take one of those naps I mentioned. But after the sun went down, and with a slight tropical breeze? Just lovely.