March Break

I’m sitting on the plane with Zach and Sami jetting our way to Vancouver on the first leg of our journey to Maui (Hawaii).   Vancouver is almost five hours flight time from Toronto, with a couple of hour layover in Van we then board another five hour flight directly to Maui arriving around 9:30 pm Hawaiian time this evening, which will put it at about 3:00 am EST.   I’m guessing we’ll be exhausted!

After a crazy week of work and settling into our new place (its been a bit of a whirlwind to be honest) we can all finally begin to relax…actually I’ll be able to relax more when I land in Vancouver and can send all of my work email that churned through in the first hour after takeoff :-)

Destination - Lahaina

 So, Maui you say?   Sort of an usual story of how this all came about as Maui definitely wasn’t my first choice for our March break.  Actually when I asked the kids in early December where they’d like to go for our week at March I initially suggested London and Paris as neither of them had been, but both at various times had suggested it as a destination for one of our trips.

I thought they jump at the chance, but they both seemed a little indifferent until Zach said that he actually preferred to get a little sunshine vs. more grey skies in Europe at the time of year (sensible to a fault that lad!).   Being the dad that I am I pressed them on Europe, but still not so keen.  “How about Hawaii?” asked Zach - and in typical dad fashion said “we’ll see”.   Isn’t it funny how the voice in your head say’s OMG – your dad would have said that!

Being the pragmatist that I am (yes, my words not yours) I wanted to check both availability and cost at that time of year as many airlines are notorious for putting up their prices just in time for school holidays.   Not so nice for families but I suppose it’s no different that fuel price being increased around the same time of year for the very same reason.   Free economy at its best… or worst!

With all my air travel over the years I still have a relatively large number of airline frequent flyer points so I wanted to see if I could use them, and then what the actual cost of the tickets would be given the myriad number of taxes associated with “free tickets”.

I was floored when I checked availability and dates for flying in and out of London Heathrow for three economy points tickets.   Holy crap, the cost was $2100 for the three of us to fly on points tickets (unbelievable number of taxes to be sure).  With the cost of our tickets being $700 per person (and that’s just to get on the plane) it mad it a very expensive travel proposition.   Especially when you add on top eight days of lodgings (notoriously expensive in London), food, entertainment etc I wasn’t going to get much change out of $6500 - $7000 for the week.  

On the beach in Maui

 Let’s try “plan B” I thought to myself.   Hhhmmm – what’s the most expensive place in Hawaii?    It had to be Maui, after all it’s the most exotic name of all when you even breath the word Hawaii…

This is the part where I held my breath as I keyed in the dates and locale…all in the cost was $500 or about $167 per person.   Wow!   Not sure why given that it’s two five hour flights vs. a 7 hour flight to London.    It didn’t take too much convincing that this was the way to go – but breaking it to the kids would be interesting, as I knew they really wanted to go there all along – Hhhmmm…cue the “evil laugh”!

I started off by telling them how much the cost of the tickets was to London (trying to feign my disappointment), and that it was just going to be too much money for a week in London.   I could see they were a little disappointed but said was okay…damn it they were ruining the storyline by being so accommodating (I guess they’re good kids so clearly understandable).

Not able to hold it back any longer, I said that we were going to Hawaii instead, but not just any place in Hawaii – Maui!    Huge smiles broke across their faces as they showered me with hugs (this was the best part by far!).

Sami has made it quite clear to me and Zach that she wants to relax and not have to traipse around the island looking at monuments and doing touristy stuff more than absolutely necessary, as she wants to go to the beach and pool and take it easy.   I assured her that I only had a couple of things that I really wanted to do, but otherwise I was with her in terms of making this relaxing week.

A week of first for Zach & Sami!

 In addition the kids have already been researching surf lessons for us all at the local beach so my best guess is that it’s going to be quite the week of firsts!  

Now, that being said my treat for the week is a helicopter flight over Maui and Molokai (nearby island), scheduled for Monday morning.  I’ve never been in a helicopter so definitely looking forward to that, with my camera in hand I’m hoping to capture some great shots.   (Okay, this actually might offset the cost of London if you factor in my treat, but c’mon its Maui after all!)

Stay tuned – it should be an awesome week in paradise :-)