Maui Wowie at The Paia Inn

August 13, 2008 at 12:35 PM | by annie0007 | Comment (1)

Maui, the second biggest island in Hawaii and the most touristy, has its share of monster resorts, expensive, over-the-top luau magnets and villas. So when we heard about Paia Inn, a little cool outpost on the island's North Shore, we thought, oh yeah!

This is a quiet, boutique inn on the North Shore's Hana Highway. Five suite rooms sit smack on the beach and away from the craziness of those gigantic resorts. The rooms have flat-screened TVs, bamboo floors, and funky artwork, plus a boutique and an art gallery right on site.

It's an former sugar-cane plantation town, with a lot of the old architecture still intact, a self-styled "progressive" hamlet nestled in between a shoreline condo sprawl and the town of Lahaina, belted with big hotels.

This place sounds like a great place to just drop off the face of the earth, do some windsurfing and swimming on the white sand beaches, check out the road-side waterfalls, tee up at the nearby golf course, hike through the local rainforest, or walk to town, with its an amazing array of restaurants and shops (ethnic art and Indian curry, anyone?)

Tripadvisor reviews at this point only amount to two, but they rave about it (apparently so does Fleetwood Mac's Mick Fleetwood). And we love the whole idea of yoga in the yard, rentable bikes, stocked mini-bars and boogie board rentals. Aloha, indeed.

Rates are at around $239 for two people.

HotelChatter

Select a Destination:

Maui Hotels / Beach Hotels / Inns / → All Tags