Customer Reviews

Hidden Hawaii: Including Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, and the Big Island (Hidden Travel)

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Good luck finding Island information when you are headed for a small Hawaiian Island. Only this book had the information we were looking for! Before we left, we were booked into one of Lanai's two B&B's and tore out the pages pertinent to our destination. Most people when they go to Lanai tend to stay at one of the two Four Season's resorts. We prefer the small hotel/ B&B route. Lanai has one of each. The newly remodeled Lanai Hotel right on the town square, and 'Dreams come true', our B&B. We got a very good feel for local life. Lanai has a population of 2500 people, a mixture of Korean, Japanese, Hawaiian, and Caucasians, most of whom came to work on the pineapple plantations 'the company'. Now the 'company' is the Four Season's hotel. We go to the island for the local life, and to go off--roading. Most of the roads here are unpaved FUN! This guidebook offers plenty of information about the small eateries, shops, and roads that we needed, all in a few pages we could tuck into our suitcase.

Ray Riegert's Hidden Hawaii: Including Oahu, Maui, Kauai, Lanai, Molokai, and the Big Island (Hidden Travel) published by Ulysses Press incorporates full-bleed photos of the Pacific Ocean, lava flows, on the outside and inside of the book. I claimed this travel guide from the Mini Book Expo for Bloggers because my husband and I have been talking about a vacation to Hawaii since before we got married six years ago. Ideally, that would have been our honeymoon of choice, but money was unavailable at the time for that kind of vacation, so we went somewhere closer for our honeymoon--Jamaica. Now that we are older and wiser and are willing to plan ahead, we are looking toward our goal, Hawaii, and hopefully, Kauai.

This travel guide is larger than I would like to take along with me on the streets as a handbook for exploration, but then again I carry a large SLR and other photographic equipment. However, this book does have a lot to offer tourists interested in a trip to the island chain.

The white and green pages provide readers with a crisp, clean page to read, and the contents are broken down by island--Oahu, Big Island, Maui, Lanai, Molokai, and Kauai. One of the best parts of this travel guide is that it not only tells the reader the touristy locations that are "must see," but also the hidden aspects of the islands. For instance, in Waikiki, one of the most well-known attractions is Diamond Head. One of the hidden treasures of Waikiki highlighted in the book, which peaked my interest, is Queen Kapiolani Hibiscus Garden where tour buses do not have a place to stop, but tourists can spend the day in splendor picnicking.

Hidden Hawaii not only describes the major hotel chains in Hawaii, but some of the smaller hotels and bed and breakfasts. It also contains green and white maps broken down by particular regions and various coastlines, which will help tourists orient themselves. Some of the maps outline streets, and many of them are dotted with attractions.

I would love to see the Star of the Sea Painted Church on the Big Island for myself, which is another of the hidden treasures that can be found in this book. According to the book, a Belgian priest painted murals of religious scenes inside the church, which reminded me of the Sistine Chapel's ceiling in Italy painted by Michelangelo. This church must be a sight to see.

From outdoor activities like kayaking in the ocean to hiking to tennis, this book has something for everyone, even those just interested in lying on the beaches and getting a suntan. There are favorite tourist night spots and those that are hidden.

My husband and I enjoyed looking through the book and picking out the hidden spots and the more well-known spots we would like to see on our trip someday, but we were a bit disappointed that there weren't too many photos of the islands and some the parks, destinations, museums, activities, and the like. All of the photos in the book are at the beginning. If I had to pick a drawback, that would be it.

This book is for tourists interested in the hidden side of the islands and the tourist attractions. I would recommend it as a starting guide for a trip to Hawaii.

This book was all right. The intro general-info pages are really detailed (info for traveling with kids, international visitors, senior travelers, transportation options, etc.). However, there are scant few photos -- just a couple of pages' worth stuck in the middle, and they're more landscape-oriented than tourism-oriented, so they really aren't relevant to a guidebook.

There's some good information in there, but if you know what island you're going to already, then get a book about that particular island; otherwise you have to wade through a bunch of stuff that isn't relevant to your trip. For instance, I found the Hidden Maui guidebook to be much more helpful for the trip we'll be taking.

Although this book was a little older, it still gave us great ideas and accurate info for our trip. There were specific directions to places we wanted to visit, and we found some new ideas as well. Very helpful reference for our trip.

I recently checked out this book (among others) from the local library prior to a trip to Oahu. For my trip, I was disappointed by this book, and found this to be one of the less-useful ones.

First, this book was largely useless because the author omitted almost any information about accessing different tourist sites through Hawaii's tourist-packed mass transit system, The Bus. Most tourists I met relied on mass transit and tour buses. What good is a guidebook if you don't know how (or whether) you can get to the things the author mentions?

Secondly, the author frequently lacks discernment and context in his suggestions. For example, the Waikiki Shopping Plaza is listed as offering "about a dozen [budget] ethnic and American restaurants", without context. When I visited, I discovered the usual set of food court fry pits that could be found in any American shopping mall. Why would anyone interested in "Hidden Hawaii" be interested in these?

Needless to say, I rapidly tossed this book in my hotel room, and carried around the Rough Guide around. Thud.

If you're looking for something and can't find it...It probably dosen't want or need to be found. Ghandi...or Pee Wee Herman. I wanted more pictures of the nude beaches.