What can I say, it’s been another day in paradise!

This morning was the latest I’ve woken up all week, thank goodness, and I started off my day with a trip to the gym. Call me crazy but I love visiting gyms in Disney resorts, so this was another tick off the bucket list, although surprisingly I wasn’t overly impressed by this one as I thought it lacked some equipment that other gyms have had. The great thing about Aulani, however, is that they have a whole bunch of fitness classes, a lot of which take place on the beach, and while I won’t be able to take part in all the ones I had hoped to thanks to the recovering broken ankle, I plan on doing a few before we leave.

We had breakfast on the terrace again, and then headed down to the beach where we set up camp for the morning. The typical blogger in me spent a good amount of time utilising the beautiful scenery to get photos for some upcoming blog posts, much to the confusion of onlookers who were probably thinking ‘why is that girl arranging makeup in the sand?’ but hey ho.

Our plan for lunch was to eat the leftover pizza from yesterday, but on the way back to the room I had to stop for a Mickey snow cone! I mean, it’s shaved ice with some flavouring so it hardly spoiled my appetite for the pizza and it was so cute!

I accidentally had a little nap after lunch, although I’m starting to realise that this sort of thing is totally acceptable on a beach holiday. For the afternoon, we headed down to the pool, and it was so warm I could practically see my skin tanning by the second. We spent the rest of the afternoon and into the evening by the pool, just hanging out, drawing and doing a little planning, then finally headed back inside, via the shop, of course..

As well as my tan, I seem to have developed a kinda nasty heat rash down the side of my left leg, so I’m hoping that subsides by the morning!

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.

This morning we were up super early once again to get to San Francisco airport for our flight to Hawaii which was at 9am. We boarded our United Airlines plane, got ourselves settled for the 6 hour flight, and then the captain announced that there was a problem with one of the engines of the plane, and while it was still legally acceptable to fly with this minor problem, he was refusing the aircraft and we all had to disembark.

Now United have had a lot of bad press lately, but I would just like to say how incredibly impressed I was with how everything went from that moment onwards. Within minutes of us all getting off the plane, trolleys of bottled water and snacks appeared at the gate for passengers to help themselves to while awaiting further information. As there was no immediate update, we asked to be transferred onto a flight scheduled for later in the day, but the lady we spoke to was kind enough to not only book us onto that later flight, but also keep our booking for this flight open so that when an update came out, if our original flight would take off earlier than the new flight, we could still get on it, which was amazing.

Luckily, a new aircraft arrived for us in just over an hour, and despite taking off 3 hours later than planned, we arrived in Honolulu only 2 hours after our original arrival time, so we didn’t miss out much at all. As we came in to land, we actually flew over Aulani, so my first sight of the resort was from the air and it was stunning!

We got an Uber to the resort, where we were greeted with fresh flower leis and cool citrus infused water and checked in by some lovely cast members who made sure we got buttons. For the first six nights of our stay, were in a standard view studio, then our last night is in an ocean view studio, so from this room we don’t have much of a view besides some greenery and a little water feature, but we do still have a little balcony type patio.

After checking out our room, we realised how starving hungry we were, so went off to explore and find somewhere for some dinner, opting for the Off The Hook Bar And Grill and some Disney classic chicken tenders which we ate in the shade with a view of the pool. The resort is so stunning, I can’t believe I’m actually here and I’m not sure I’ll ever get over it.

After eating we did a quick scope of two of the gift shops, and I’ve already spotted a few things that I want.. Then we headed back to chill in the comfort of our room with the sun still shining in, relax in the softest dressing gowns ever provided by a hotel and get an early night to recover from the long, slightly stressful day of travelling.

I can’t wait to update you with what we get up to tomorrow!