Honeymoon Update!

A while back I shared where Mr. Cola and I will be staying on our honeymoon, in a private house on the beach in Kauai. But due to the cost of flights, we've had to update our plans slightly.

I'd been stalking the flight prices from San Francisco to Kauai since last summer, always hoping they'd go down. The lowest I'd ever seen the one direct flight go was to $749 per person, which was last August or September. Still, we held off, hoping they'd go lower.

But now that we're about three months away, we knew we had to pull the trigger on buying our plane tickets, but obviously we waited too long. As of last weekend, the direct flight we'd been wanting was at $1,212 per person! Seriously?

So we reluctantly started looking at flights with a connection. Usually if I'm flying by myself, I don't mind a connection, but with Mr. Cola it's another story. Every single time we fly together it seems that either my luggage gets lost, or we end up with delays the cause us to have to sprint through the airport to make our connection (And you know I'm never wearing comfy shoes! Heels just aren't fun to run up escalators in!).

As it turned out, none of the other flight options worked very well for us on the way back from our honeymoon. They all either involved leaving at the crack of dawn, which would be a waste because we've paid to stay in our rental house until noon our final day, or the flights were red eyes, so we wouldn't get home until the following morning and be stuck in the airport for a loooong time.

So our solution? We're staying an extra day! Now our honeymoon will be 8 days long, and we will stay our final night in Waikiki, on Oahu! This means that we can take a mid day flight to Oahu, and have 24 hours in Waikiki, before arriving home the following night at about 9pm. And the best part is, flying this way is only $744 per person!

We do have to pay for an extra night in a hotel on Oahu, but I found us an ocean view room a block from the beach for only $135 per night. Combined with a couple extra meals, we're still spending way less than what the direct flight would have cost us.

And now this means we get to hike up to the top of Diamond Head Crater on Oahu, which I've wanted to do since seeing our friend's pictures last summer:


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We also plan to just walk around Waikiki and sightsee, as well as have a sunset dinner near the beach. I think that our new plan will be so much fun, since we will get to experience some of two Hawaiian islands now!

We've also nailed down our activities on Kauai. Tuesday night we'll be attending a dinner luau at Mediterranean Gourmet, walking distance down the beach from our rental house:

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If the sea is calm one day, we will hike down to snorkel at the Queen's Bath in Princeville (but only if the water is really calm, many people have been killed here by being swept off the rocks by unpredictable waves):

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On Thursday we will be taking a 90 minute helicopter tour with Jack Harter Helicopters to view the beautiful scenery from above:

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Saturday morning we will be taking a snorkel tour up the Na Pali coast with Na Pali Catamaran, one of only a few tours that leave from the north shore. Most tour operators leave from the south shore, and you waste a lot of the tour time just traveling to the north side of the island, which is where the Na Pali coast is located.

And if the water is calm enough we will even get to take the boat into some sea caves!

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On top of these planned activities, we will also be spending a lot of time snorkeling in front of our rental house, and relaxing on the beach. But I just can't take a vacation without at least a few activities!

Has the cost of airline tickets had any impact on your honeymoon planning? And are you planning a relaxing or activity-packed honeymoon?