Traveling to Hawaii with kids

Aloha everyone! (Sorry, I never get tired of saying that.)

We have entered the last stretch of our summer holiday in Hawaii. The islands were not new to my husband and I. He did his PhD here and I lived with him right before and after we got married. It was our dream to bring the kids, and our holiday has definitely been a dream come true. Nonetheless we had to make a number of compromises, which I'd like to share with you in case you are planning a similar trip.

My husband is teaching a course at the University of Hawaii until mid-August and our original idea was to spend the whole summer here. As we started working around this plan, we realized that it would have been CRAZY expensive to do so. With two kids, renting even a small apartment for two months would have costed us a small fortune. Honolulu is not set up for this kind of traveling, I think. There are beautiful hotels and resorts (like the ones we stayed at), but if you stay in an apartment and need to buy groceries, finding a supermarket with less expensive prices than the many ABC stores is difficult. Carrying your groceries home without a car (and a baby in a stroller) is even more so. On the Big Island, where we spent half of last week, you need to rent a car. The major compromise we have made is thus to stay here all together for three weeks, and then spend the rest of the summer apart. While my husband teaches the remainder of his course, I will go and visit my parents in Italy. 

As our departure date is approaching, and we have now all slipped into a relaxing routine of pool swimming/lounging in the morning and boogie-boarding at the beach in the afternoon, I know even more how much we will miss to be here all together. I can only cheer myself up thinking about the beautiful memories we are taking with us -- like swimming with the dolphins. Indeed.