Wednesday, September 19th, 2007
Wednesday morning we decided to take a drive to the southwest coast of Maui to do a little shopping at The Shops at Wailea. Not that we needed to do more shopping, it was really an excuse to take a nice coastal drive and visit the third Tommy Bahama store of our trip – the only one with an attached cafe. I picked up a Maui Tourist T-Shirt, Julie grabbed a more trendy dress at BCBG Max Azria (what she’s wearing in the attached photo) and found a bag she wanted at Tommy Bahama. Tommy count so far this trip – (Scott: 4, Julie: 1). Afterwards we had lunch at the Tommy Bahama Cafe. Julie had a chopped salad, I had the Ahi salad (I’ve had a lot of Ahi this trip). We finished lunch with the best desserts so far. I had an out-of-this-world Pina Colada layer cake and Julie had Butterscotch pudding with chocolate swirls.
After shopping we headed back to the hotel for a timeshare presentation – yes we did one of these and it was my idea. To me it’s just window-shopping and I’ve never had a history of getting talked into something I really didn’t want. From what I knew of the costs I was really curious how they’d demonstrate that this type of vacationing was actually better (and cheaper) than just staying in hotels. For sitting through one of these we got $100 gift certificate at the hotel and a 50% off coupon for our next stay at any Starwood hotel other than in Hawaii. The initial sales presentation was interesting and lame at the same time. They presented a lot of good information up-front punctuated by questions that (as Julie puts it) made us feel like we in Kindergarten (ex: What do you think is a better value: option A, or option B). Next we took a trip over to the actual property and looked around. We were pretty impressed by the facilities and the rooms were quite spacious and nice (the three TVs won me over 
) . We also saw some nice amenities for the kids like a pirate ship sitting in the middle of a kids pool.
After we came back we met the "manager" – the sales guy who presented us with the costs and "bribes" as they put it to convince you to buy. I think we both agreed it might be nice at some point in our life but not now. They tried the usual hard-sell of saying we had to give them a decision now – in response we both said the answer was "no". Then of course they said we could think it over overnight if we had to "go to a luau". Yikes – what a joke. We told them we’d think it over and be back the next day. I’ll leave you in suspense to our next blog to find out our answer 
.
I’m still glad we got to see what this is all about but I was pretty annoyed that their "90 minute" presentation took about 3 1/2 hours of our trip. After this adventure we set of to Lahaina for dinner to a tapas place recomended by the concierge called Mala.
Mala is a small joint on the water on Front St right behind the Lahaina Cannery Mall. Though the food ended up being quite good, the prices didn’t quite match the cramped atmosphere (more diner-like on the inside where we were seated). I’m not sure why the concierge called this a tapas place – it’s really a restaurant like any other. I had the Filet Mignon (still jealous from Julie’s the night before at the Plantation House) and Julie kept it simple with a burger & fries. Since we did dessert earlier in the day we opted to skip tonight. The last stop for the night was the nearby Safeway to secure breakfast items for the next morning since we’d knew we’d be getting up early for another golf lesson. The trip to Safeway here was interesting since unsurprisingly we found things like Papayas, Coconuts, Dragonfruit, and Mangoes to be the local fruits featured in quantity and things like apples, bananas, and citrus mostly imported in lower quantity. The selection of flowers was also quite different with tropical plants and leis.
Back at the hotel we contemplated getting in one of the hotel pools or hot-tubs but unfortunately the pools closed at sundown and we decided given the degree of our sunburns the hot-tub wouldn’t be a great idea.
