An Illustration: Priceline vs. Travelzoo

Aqua Palms & Spa pool, Waikiki.

I was fascinated to see that Travelzoo’s top three hotel deals in Hawaii feature two hotels that my husband and I stayed in on our recent trip. The third is a direct competitor, very close to another hotel we stayed in.

This is not so surprising as it might seem. We reserved all three hotels through Priceline’s blind bidding, and the hotels offering the best deals through Priceline are likely to be offering discounts elsewhere.

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New Photo Gallery: Honolulu

Just posted my new photo gallery of Waikiki and Honolulu. Have a look.

Some Tips For An Affordable Hawaii Vacation

Waikiki.

I’m returning to Hawaii in January for my fifth visit, and I’ll be sure to hear about it from envious friends and readers. But when I ask them whether they’ve been to Hawaii, they’ll tell me it’s too far away and too expensive.

Well, it hasn’t gotten any closer. It still requires an eight- or nine-hour flight from the East Coast. But it has gotten cheaper, and I’m going to share some tips on how to enjoy Hawaii at a minimal cost.

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Kauai’s Hanalei Bay Named Best Beach

Dr. Stephen Leatherman, who releases a Top 10 list of U.S. beaches annually, has chosen Hanalei Bay on the Hawaiian island of Kauai this year, the Associated Press reports.

Coincidentally, I was there just last week. If you click on the photo below, you can see some more of my pictures from the bay:

Hanalei Pier

The annual beach award is a little bit contrived. Previous winners are retired so that a new beach can be named each year. It’s all for a good cause — to raise awareness and support for beach conservation.

Hanalei Bay is an excellent choice, a beautiful two-mile stretch of sand with minimal development. My husband dislikes the concrete pier at one end of the beach, but I enjoy walking out on it.

I made a trip to Hanalei Bay one of my top priorities when I got to Kauai last week. When I arrived I found people swimming long-distance across the bay, fishing on the pier, surf paddling, sailing, doing tai-chi on the beach. Yet the bay is so big it never seems crowded.

I walked from one end of the bay to the other, stopped to do a yoga lesson with help from my iPod, swam and soaked in the placid, clear Pacific and swam across the gentle, refreshing Hanalei River. It was truly idyllic.

I’ll Remember This Alamo

When I picked up a Jeep I rented from Alamo for a week on Kauai, I got such an apocalyptic hard sell for the collision-damage waiver that I’ll hesitate to rent from Alamo again.

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Beaches Want To Be Free

A little give and take along a right of way to Secret Beach in Kilauea.

For the past six days I’ve been going to the beach, all over Kauai.

I  drive up, park, get out of the car and hit the sand. There is no admission charge and no parking fee — ever. Hawaii is like that. Even where there are no public parking lots or bathrooms, public access trails are well-maintained.

A woman I know who’s lived here all her life said she was astonished when she went to California and found that people have to pay to go to the beach. In New England, too, there are charges to use the local, state and national beaches in the summer.

But what if there was no charge? What if we did as Hawaii does, and maintained parking areas and facilities for all residents and visitors? No private beaches. No fees.

Wouldn’t that be good for all of us, residents, tourists, business people?

go! Is No Aloha

A bankruptcycourt judge has blocked Mesa Air Group from renaming its go! subsidiary Aloha, the Honolulu Star-Bulletin reports.

“Mesa succeeded in inflicting great harm, not only upon the Aloha corporate entities, but also upon thousands of Aloha employees and their families,” Judge Lloyd King  wrote. … “It is difficult to imagine a court overlooking what Mesa has done and putting its stamp of approval on Mesa’s subsidiary, go!, becoming Aloha.”

In other words: I knew Aloha Airlines, I flew Aloha Airlines and you are no Aloha Airlines.

A price war with go! in the Hawaiian interisland market is widely blamed for driving Aloha out of business. That bitter history is one reason to block the appropriation of the name.

Another is that allowing go! to pretend to Aloha’s 80 years of interisland flying experience would be misleading to the public. As a pilot recently pointed out to me about commuter airlines flying under the brands of the major airlines, customers have a right to know exactly whose plane they’re getting on.

My Kauai Photos

Tunnels Beach, on the North Shore of Kauai.

You can see more photos here.

Do-It-Yourself Luxury On Kauai

I don't need no stinkin' mat!

Yesterday I had a private yoga lesson on the beach on Kauai, followed by an ocean-view  lunch of steak and salad. Sounds expensive, but it wasn’t.

The yoga lesson was delivered by my iPod — from the Gentle Yoga series by Rudy Peirce — on a sandbar on Hanalei Bay. I grilled the steak myself at a county beach, with some match-light charcoal from the local Foodland store. Then I went snorkeling.

Hawaii’s beaches are free. No entry fee. No parking fee. No fee to use the bathrooms, or the grills. And nobody looks askance at a middle-aged lady doing a few asanas on a sandbar.

Collecting Supermarket Discount Cards

Is the Foodland store in Princeville, Kauai, the most expensive supermarket in the United States? Maybe not, but it has to be close.

All the more reason to take two minutes to fill out a form to get a Foodland discount card. So I did.

I’ve done this before when staying in accommodations with a kitchen, where I do my own cooking and end up shopping in an unfamiliar supermarket chain. It doesn’t take long to fill out the form, and it can save a few bucks.

Today, it saved me $5. On Kauai, that’ll get you a whole cookie!