Many people have asked about our recent trip to Hawaii. I’m not much of a travel blogger, but some highlights below.

It wasn’t until the return flight that I really started thinking about luxury. There I was, four hours into a nine hour flight from Honolulu to D.C., my knees practically screwed up to my chin and an unreachable vent blasting my face with recycled, icicle air, when the thought hit me. I had the last few pages of The Shell Seekers (beautifully written if you’re interested) pressed up to the window as I tried to catch the remaining bit of sunset so I could see what happened to Penelope and Antonia and the rest of them. 

The airline didn’t give us a dinner, just some plastic cookies and a see-through blanket that wouldn’t keep a furnace warm. I was thinking about luxury, but probably not in the way you’re assuming. After all, I’d just spent a week on a cruise in the Hawaiian Islands. What is luxury if not mai tais on white sand beaches and selfies with sea turtles? 

But when you’re awake for more than 24 hours on flights, periodically fighting down motion sickness and occasionally not succeeding, wealth and comfort take on new appearances. Once finally home, so exhausted you can’t unzip a suitcase, and you stretch across clean, cold sheets. Eyes closed. Brain shutting down like lights flickering off floor by floor in a warehouse. That’s when you’ve found luxury. 

Honolulu, Oahu 

It all started with a cheeseburger. Our first night in Hawaii, two in the morning according to the body but only eight o’clock per the clock, Cheeseburger in Paradise awaited. Even the inside of the restaurant was open to the air so I think it was the strong, warm breeze, stiff with sea salt, that kept me awake. I’d never had a cheeseburger with avocado and pineapple, but when in Honolulu, it’s delicious. 

Luxury is letting your jet-lagged body fall asleep early, only to awaken before the sun. Tommy and I meandered along Waikiki beach, crushed seashells between our toes, and watched the pearly pink light steal across the water. We had an early breakfast at a seaside café and then walked back to the hotel with a macadamia nut latte from Kai Coffee (highly recommended).

With the family, we toured the Pearl Harbor museum and ferried out for a closer look at the memorials, and later we drove the winding mountain road to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific. It was all sunlight and umbrella trees, ocean in the distance. Stretches of granite immortalized the names of those lost and never found whose final resting places are known only to God. Taking a moment to remember, to be thankful, I think there’s a certain luxury in that, too. 

Maui

There is a road that goes to Hana, and although there’s not much in Hana once you finally get there, the three to four hour drive on a twisting, often single-lane road can be fun. Luxury is stretching your legs after being squashed in the back of a Nissan Sentra between Grandma and your little brother-in-law. I caught a glimpse of my first rainbow eucalyptus tree and walked out on Black Sand Beach, my toes’ first time seeing hardened lava.

The next day, Tommy struggled out of bed at two in the morning for a long van ride to the top of Haleakala where he then biked down the side of the volcano at sunrise. Conversely, I drank a pina colada and read by the pool. You tell me which is more luxurious.

Hilo, The Big Island

Did you know that there’s a national park for volcanoes? If I’d read anything ahead of time maybe I wouldn’t have worn an ankle length skirt and flip flops to hike to the bottom of Halema’uma’u Trail, but if I lived life with any semblance of preparation then my motto would no longer need to be “live and learn.”

Once appropriately descended and bug-bitten, we caught an up-close glimpse of this desolate, charred crater, looking more like the scorched surface of Mars than a tropical paradise. There’s currently no lava actively flowing in Hawaii (we totally missed out) but the steam vents were HOT. 

Luxury is finally getting back to the ship for a late dinner and ordering both the pot de crème and the key lime cheesecake for dessert.

Kailua-Kona, The Big Island

If you drive long enough, the beach gives way to mountains and the sunshine to steeping fog, the heat relinquishing itself to shadowy coolness. At Mountain Thunder Coffee Plantation you can stand in the doorway of the gift shop while rain runs down the awning and sip $70 per pound samples of the world’s most delicious coffee. All of your senses alive at once? That’s luxury. 

Kauai 

If dinosaurs still lived, they’d be hanging out in Waimea Canyon. There’s something primeval about this vast expanse of carved earth, red rock intermingled with green growth and shadowed crevices. We hiked out far enough for our legs to turn to jello. Climbed onto a precipice with the mouth of a waterfall just at our feet, so high up the thought of free-falling makes you dizzy. 

Once we made the grueling hike back out and wolfed down some McDonald’s, there was nothing more luxurious that sticking those aching feet into the ocean. 

In the evening, all sixteen of us had dinner at Smith’s Family Luau (because McChickens don’t satisfy). It felt like a church picnic except with an open bar surrounded by peacocks and exotic tropical flowers. And instead of thirty-two variations on baked mac and cheese, we savored kalua pig, teriyaki beef, poi, and pineapple bread. Divine.

Na Pali Coast, Kauai

It’s sad and true that I take beauty for granted and can view the brilliance of a sunset with the same nonchalance that I reserve for my orange juice, but occasionally something comes along that utterly disrupts that complacency. Case in point – the sea cliffs of the Na Pali coastline.

There’s a good reason why this spot was chosen for films like Jurassic Park, Pirates of the Caribbean, and King Kong. The jagged, sheer faces of rock, impervious to human attempts to climb, remind us of how little we are in control. I can see still that coast in my mind. It makes me smile, knowing that a few thousand miles west of me, true beauty exists. God didn’t require photographs or aerial drone shots or human gawking to make it beautiful. 

It simply is. 

Home 

Perhaps the greatest luxury of all is coming home. When you’ve finally awoken from your airline, motion sick, jetlag, terrible food choice (did I mention motion sickness?)-induced coma, you take out the memories and turn them over and over in your hands in the same way you studied the seashells in Waikiki. 

Remember the way it felt to duck your head under cool water in Maui. Remember Tommy reading a book in the sand next to you, his feet sunburned, his second pair of sunglasses lost somewhere in the waves. Remember the hush-hush sound of ocean lapping against ship as you fall asleep. 

Luxury, not in the things purchased, but the things created. The memories saved. The people loved. In Hawaii or at home. There’s really no difference.