A few weeks ago, I wrote about Vietnam and how my family was hoping to plan a trip over the holiday vacation.  After endless discussion, we decided to choose a different location for vacation, as we would only have one week to allocate to the trip, which wasn’t enough time to justify the long flight.

We brainstormed various places, but the trip didn’t seem to come together as easily as our trips usually do. While my family was visiting me in D.C. for Thanksgiving, we received a Black Friday email multiple times for the hotel my parents stayed at on the Big Island of Hawaii called the Hapuna Beach Prince Hotel. They had great deals for the times we were planning on taking the trip, so we booked the hotel, flights and rental car in Kona that day!

Although I would love to visit Vietnam one day, I am thrilled to be going to Hawaii. I went once before when I was younger but didn’t fully appreciate the trip. On my last trip, I took a helicopter ride over the island, visited a volcano, sat on the beach, snorkeled, had authentic Kona coffee and ate at Merriman’s, one of my favorite restaurants. I am planning on doing all of the above this time as well. My question for our loyal GT readers is: What are your favorite things to do in Hawaii? Have you gone to any fantastic restaurants we should make sure to get a reservation for? Any suggestions are greatly appreciated.

What are all of you doing for the holidays? Are you taking any interesting trips? For me, most importantly, I am looking forward to spending time with my mom, dad, brother and boyfriend, regardless of the place.

I will, of course, blog about Hawaii in an upcoming post once we return to let you all know about the fun things we did in the sun!

— Lindsay Gruen, digital account executive