Dear Editors,

I am having a hard time trying to figure out which island in Hawaii to visit. My daughter and I want a relaxing vacation - mostly just hanging out near the ocean and pool. We don't want an itinerary, and we would like to stay in a hotel that has everything around it. We do not want to rent a car either. It also has to be a nice hotel that has a lot of amenities. We like our weather on the warmer side.  We would also like transportation to and from the airport.

Katherine

Hi Katherine,

This week's question comes from Katherine:

If there’s one thing women know about, it’s romance. And if there’s one thing the staff of The Window Seat Blog know about, it’s travel. With that in mind, the bloggettes came together and picked nine hotels in North America they would recommend for Valentine’s Day or a romantic getaway any time of year. For great deals on hotel stays for Valentine’s Day, visit Travelocity.com/romance.

Highly subjective and listed in no particular order, the Window Seat Bloggettes' most romantic hotel picks:

El Conquistador Resort & Golden Door Spa

Farjardo, Puerto Rico

Ah, the Hawaiian luau, so much a staple of the Hawaiian vacation experience. Before I actually went to one, I pictured a giant big fat pig roasting on a spit. I envisioned scantily clad men and women dancing near tiki torches under the stars and moon. And I imagined there’d be lots of loud shirts and goofish tourists scarfing down umbrella-clad cocktails.

Some of that vision was myth, and some was, indeed reality, as I found out last month at Waikiki Starlight Luau at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort & Spa. So what really goes down at a Hawaiian luau? Read on, and I’ll give you the luau lowdown.

As someone who works in the travel industry, I often feel a lot of pressure to do anything, see everything, and be everywhere when I travel. This past trip to Hawaii, in between Aloha Festivals activities, it was very important to me that I made some time to do absolutely nothing at all. For the sake of “research,” I wanted to park myself on that world-famous Waikiki beach and zone out to the horizon, holding a pulpy paperback in my hand, and reading snippets in between swimming like a buoyant fish. After all, isn’t the beach the reason so many people come to Waikiki in the first place?

Here are some of the numbers: 13 floats. 14 marching bands. 27 vintage cars. 3 trolleys. 1 royal court. 1 private mounted unit. And an uncountable number of flowers. All this and about 4,000 other parade participants was about to converge on Waikiki’s Kalākaua Avenue, where I’d snagged a curbside seat in the bright morning sun. I’d just come from the pre-parade preparations, which I described in my last blog entry, and was eager to see everything come together.

Is it bad that when I saw Monday’s post and read the phrase, “a reason to love Mondays,” my first thought was, “The Bachelorette!”?

Probably. But I feel a little less guilty about why I’m currently loving Monday nights when I think about the main reason behind my devotion to the reality TV show: getting a glimpse of the amazing locations featured each week.

Please don't use the "S" word in my presence. You know the one. Starts with "S" and ends with "taycation." It positively chills me to think about would-be travelers staying home. Like, in their houses. Watching TV and eating chips or something. When they don't have to! People, I don't know if you've heard, but a close friend of yours (me!) coined 2009 the "year of the travel deal." You see, I have insider information, so I'm allowed to make such statements.

photo courtesy of IgoUgo member RobAA

“Are you all by yourself”?
“Is it just you”?
“Only one tonight”?

If you’ve ever traveled by yourself, then you’ve probably faced one of the questions above, all of which seem to imply that you’re somehow, shall we say, lacking, for being unaccompanied. But the truth is, many solo travelers, like myself, are perfectly happy to be alone. Who doesn’t want free reign over an entire hotel room, or the chance to do everything on your list and nothing you don’t want to do, or the power to set the pace of each day?

Based on a recent trip to wonderful Waikiki, here are some of my tips for solo travelers:

Early-morning light shone upon Oahu's cliffs and waves as I hiked atop Makapu’u with MaryLou Hata Foley of Outrigger Hotels & Resorts and Naomi McIntosh of NOAA’s Hawaiian Islands Humpback Whale National Marine Sanctuary. Both are native Hawaiians and painted a picture for me of this very same trail in winter, when the sparkling waters below buoy the breaching flanks of great humpback whales as they make their pass through Pacific waters.

The three of us were discussing the notion of responsible tourism, and how a traveler can go beyond just moving through a place taking pictures, but instead treat a place as living and breathing, as something unique, and as something worth protecting. But how to foster an attitude of stewardship in island visitors who just want to relax with a mai tai? As it is right now, tourism is Hawaii's number-one industry, but ironically that tourism is harming the very treasures that people travel to Hawaii for in the first place. In response, a few pioneer hotels and tour companies have taken it upon themselves to implement more responsible practices, often in some highly creative only-in-Hawaii ways.

View from Makapu’u.