The journey begins – Our 1st holiday together!

Hawaii or as some call it paradise.. I couldn’t agree more!
Laura’s experience..

Oahu, Hawaii

So to start with, as you know, Trent has much more experience at travelling the world then me, yep I know so jealous haha, but I was excited to learn that we both had Hawaii on our bucket list that we were both yet to explore and yes we both have a bucket list, can this guy get any more amazing.
To find a man who is so motivated, positive and in love with life that he has goals and a bucket list, it’s rare these days to find such man who actually has ambitions in life (girls you know what I mean, there are guys who live day to day and then there are men who are smart with their money and can still ‘live like its their last day on Earth’ but more practical and attractively ) so you can understand my excitement when on a date with a man who mentions ‘his life goals and ticking things off his bucket list’ to me this was important and another trait I fell in love with him for.

Since our first date in 2018, of 6+ hours mind you, (I know 6+ hours on a first date and it wasn’t a hostage situation, you know you’ve definitely got a good thing going on) I feel we have been spiritually connected ever since, in the fact that every day we talk, we support each other, we think on the same wavelength and we’re always learning something new about each other. I think from the start Trent knew I was a lover of travel and food, which added to something else we both had in common, even though I didnt have nearly half the amazing stories to back it up unlike him (he has travelled to some of most amazing places in the world and I could sit and listen to his stories all day – but I’ll leave them up to him to tell).

Back to Hawaii.. in January 2019, after lots of talk about travelling and how we both work busy full time careers, we agreed we both needed to spoil ourselves and just book something and go! So we did! The hardest part was just choosing where to actually go. It’s the world, there are endless opportunities how do you pick a place to go with a new partner in your life while hoping not to be too adventurous, or relaxed or remote or boring! Arghh! But again, it just showed how we were very similar when we threw out the same ideas. On my bucket list there is Bali, Hawaii, Thailand, Fiji, so I was happy with anything ‘island like’ but full of adventure. So we were excited to both agree on Hawaii – who wouldn’t want to go there.
With kids and a busy life in place of course we needed a holiday together to explore, relax and have ‘us time’. As we currently dont live together this was something that we were both looking forward to – endless enjoyable us time all day every day – well we hoped so, as this would be the longest time we had spent in each others company just us and on the other side of the world (as they say ‘you dont really know someone until you travel with them’).
So here is where I find that Trent and I are a little different – Trent; a strong confident man who is resourceful and independant when it comes to booking holidays. Laura – a worry wart whose first thought is to race to a travel agent to get things taken care of! Haha! Lets just say that Trent has opened my eyes to planning a holiday – you really can do it all by yourself without stress! Dont get me started on airbnbs and the money you save! Haha!
Lucky for us Jetstar had a sale on. We got a good deal on return flights for May 2019 and started our countdown for when we’d be arriving in Oahu.
Oahu is made up of more than 100 islands but is best known for its eight main islands. Of these, only seven are inhabited.
Oahu has alot to offer, well recommended by tourists, has the famous Waikiki Beach, hikes, craters, shopping, food, surf, waterfalls and of course the well known Pearl Harbour. Oahu is the largest of the islands by population and it is the center of Hawaii’s government and economy.

The next most important thing after booking flights was we needed a place to stay and choosing the right place can be so overwhelming with so many hotels on offer. As I said in the past I felt at ease with this decision as I let the travel agent do the hard work for me, but Trent has now introduced me to Airbnb (worldwide accommodation leader) and it really is a game changer. Yes you have to do all the research yourself, have a airbnb account, read so many reviews, only use trusted hosts but it really did save us alot of money! I highly recommend it, in fact I would use Airbnb for my future accommodation when travelling. We found a perfect Airbnb apartment just a 3 minute walk from the famous Waikiki beach. And it had all we needed, a bed, shower, toilet and kitchenette. For $180.00 AUS a night you cant go wrong.. I was blown away that some hotels charge up to $600 a night! I think you’re on holidays, to explore the island you only really go to your hotel to wash and sleep, save on the accommodation.. for other things like shopping at ROSS haha.. I’ll get to that soon.
The weeks dragged on and we were waiting impatiently for our fly out date to come around, but in that time we were so excited and became obsessed with thinking abou Hawaii nonstop and all the fun we were going to have.. We youtube tubed like crazy! We are both similar in ways of loving adventure, exploring, food, beaches and cocktails so my advice would be research what you want to see before you go so you have an idea on what you want to do. Im not talking crazy control freak where you rock up to your holiday with a set day by day itinerary of what you will be doing every hour on the hour, but at least make a list of what you want to see and do because once you are there you will be on such a high you dont want to miss anything. Our list consisted of: trying traditional Hawaiian food like, poke, loco moco, mai tai cocktails, shave ice, food trucks and of course famous restaurants with fresh seafood! I can happily say we did all of this and I feel we crammed so much into our trip that we covered 99% of what we wanted to eat and see. Here’s a break down of our 9 days in paradise, where everything we feel just went so well for us!
CLICK ON THE FOLLOWING BLOGS FOR DAY BY DAY UPDATES

Mahalo x