We booked it! We decided to stick with Hawaii and we're so happy about it! Though it's more expensive than a lot of places, Joe realized that he cannot sit by the pool or on the beach for a whole week, and Hawaii will have tons of things to do. We're really excited to rent bikes, go hiking, kayaking, and [maybe, for me] take a surf lesson!
We decided to use a travel agent after speaking to one back in March. Neither of us have used a travel agent before, so we weren't sure how it would work out, but we got a great deal! Here is a rough itinerary:
Day 1 - Direct flight to Honolulu. Check into hotel in Waikiki with oceanview room, free breakfast, and third night free (!).
Day 2 - Rent car and visit Pearl Harbor and other Oahu sites (aka some of the locations where
Lost was filmed).
Day 3 - More Oahu.
Day 4 - Fly to Kauai and rent car. Check into Sheraton Kauai Resort with oceanfront room, 5th night free, and $50 hotel credit per day.
Days 5-8 - Explore Kauai.
Day 9 - Fly back to Oahu and then back to Chicago.
We went through Hawaii-Aloha travel. We had a basic plan for the honeymoon in mind, but we did need some help. The agent we worked with was great! She lives in Honolulu, so she knows a lot about where we're going and even things like where to eat. We originally only wanted to stay in Oahu to see Pearl Harbor and then leave, but she convinced us that there is a lot to see there and that if we stayed a couple more days we still wouldn't see everything. And she was able to get us the third night free at the hotel, so we were sold.
We knew we wanted to go to Kauai and spend most of our time there. After talking to friends who have been there, we decided to stay on the south end of the island where it rains a little less. Joe wanted to stay at a resort, so we found two resorts in that area. We told the agent that we'd like to see what the Sheraton cost, and we actually went through a few options with her. At first she put us in a gardenview room with a guaranteed upgrade to partial oceanview with every third night free and free breakfast. We thought it over (for about 20 min) and then decided that we wanted to see how much more it would cost for the oceanfront room. When we called back, she looked and saw that we could get the oceanfront room with the fifth night free and lose the free breakfast for about the same price! But we do get a $50 hotel credit/day, and since parking will be $20/day we will still have $30 each day to spend on food or other things at the hotel. And the travel agent thought this was a great idea because we might want to go out for breakfast one or two days, and we can use the hotel credit for lunch or dinner, not just breakfast.
So we pounced on this deal. The whole package comes to just over $3600. We think that's a great deal! I'm sure we could have found cheaper places to stay, but we want to splurge a little on our honeymoon. This will be our first big vacation together and our only honeymoon, so we want to remember it!
