You guys, Aulani is so beautiful. I keep pinching myself.

Jet lag had me up before 5am, despite trying to force myself to keep sleeping. We started the day with the only activity we had booked in advance, which was the character breakfast at the Makahiki restaurant. After checking in for our meal, we were sent to line up for a photo with the main mouse himself, then taken through into the restaurant. We were seated right next to a huge koi pond at the edge of the outdoor seating area and the view was just stunning.

Breakfast was a buffet, with everything from Mickey waffles to fried breakfast items, even pre-stacked little eggs Benedicts, but there were also more traditional Hawaiian dishes available too. Needless to say it was all delicious. While eating we were visited by Minnie and Pluto, and there was also live entertainment from a lady who sang and did some audience participation with the kids and families in the restaurant.

After breakfast we left the resort to head to the shops. The area we’re staying in is called Ko Olina, and it’s basically just resorts, a golf course and a few holiday homes, but there’s a little ‘town center’ of a few shops and restaurants, and we just wanted to go to the market to stock up on some food for our stay. In our room we have a fridge, microwave and toaster, so we bought all our breakfast items for the week, plus a few snacks.

Once back at the resort, we had a couple of annoying back home things to sort out – we exchange on our house this week so we had to get home insurance sorted. I left Matthew to read the fine print and headed to the gift shop for a bit of shopping, then when we were both done we finally headed down to the beach.

Now the beach at Aulani is actually open to the public, but unless you’re staying at one of the nearby resorts it’s not really easy to get to, and you’d never know from how quiet it was. I mean, Bournemouth beach back home is probably busier on a sunny day in April! We got some sunloungers then headed straight for the water as it was pretty hot out, so much so that the sand was burning out feet!

The water was fairly still, being more of a lagoon than an open beach, so the waves crashed on the reefs in the distance but there was hardly any rippling where we were. We spent the next few hours alternating between our loungers and the water, then got a little peckish so headed back inside for some snacks and a cool down.

I’m finding the concept of a relaxing holiday quite difficult to get my head around as I’ve pretty much never done the whole ‘go somewhere warm and just lay out in the sun’ sorta holidays, so I keep feeling like I should be doing more, but at the same time I’m loving it. I had a little nap as my early start was getting to me late afternoon, but when I woke up I wasn’t feeling very well (probably heat, tiredness and dehydration all hitting me at once) so I ended up going to bed at about 9pm, but I have to keep telling myself that that’s ok, I’ve still got a week of this paradise.