Teresa Fannin, reader, writer, gardener, chocolate fan & tea drinker

Tag: Hilton Grand Vacations. King’s Land

Waikoloa Beach

So, by the time you read this we will be home. This beautiful land will be a memory for us, ten lovely days. We’re staying at King’s Land. Open, along a golf course, with wild goats, the buildings are spread out over a number of acres. One afternoon we took a ride around the Waikoloa area to the Hilton Waikoloa Beach. the tramThis place is amazing. And although I don’t mean for this to be a commercial, you can’t help but be impressed by a hotel that covers sixty-three acres, has over twelve hundred rooms, three large buildings, plus a convention center, a lagoon inside the hotel property and views, OMG, views. As you walk into the main lobby you, check in on one side and Hilton1concierge on the other, ahead is a tram. Yes, it’s that big, a tram is needed. And, if you don’t want to go on the tram, well, then, take a boat. We walked into a pavilion that was being set up for an event, and found a small pond on the other side of the pavilion.

Black SwanAs I walked to the water edge, a black swan turned from across the pond and swam Black Swan posedtoward us. And then, much like that peacock at the rain-forest zoo, turned and posed, as it kicked large Koi from gathering around it.

The hotel has it own swinging bridge. And views.

rope bridgecabana hill

Amazing views from the cabana hill just below Buddha Point at one end of the property, to the view Tom is recording on the other. 
tom recording view

budda hilOkay, so here is the rub. This is a beautiful facility. One woman on the concierge staff said that many people come and never leave the hotel.

 

view from budda hill

Good for Hilton, if you own stock, well, great for them. But to come all this way, to the most isolated population center in the world, and never leave the hotel? Really?

resorts

IMG_0006We’re on a different planet for the next ten days. It felt that way after the trip here. I mean, four and a half hours to Phoenix and then six hours to Kona? Would it take that much longer to get into outer space? LOL, it’s not so bad, I mean just look at these pictures. Greenery, flowers, waterfalls, IMG_0009lots of waterfalls, pools, long, lovely pools, that meander from one side of the common area to the other and slides, there are three. If you are going somewhere to just be, then this is as good a place as any.

But. There’s something about being in paradise. I grew up in Paradise, yes, there was a capital P. The San Fernando Valley, 1950-1969. And my urban geography professor IMG_0010at Cal State Northridge said that we were living at the end of PERFECT! Right then, my senior year in college, it was quite a blow. The end of perfect. That’s was it, and there was me, a twenty-something, who feels immortal and, well, twenty-something,’cause that’s the way it works.

But every time we go to Paradise, any paradise, Disney World, Hilton IMG_0007Head and now Hawaii, well. I really don’t want to do perfect or paradise. I’d rather earn it, and I think we earned these ten days. I wouldn’t want to live here permanently. Because then you begin to see the flaws behind the magic of paradise.  S’matter of fact, I get nervous around perfect. I look for the flaws, the blemishes, the hiccups.  Maybe it was because I saw it and now it isn’t. Yep. That’s it.