Hawaii Trip - Oahu

For Christmas and our birthdays this year, my wonderful in laws sent us on a trip to Hawaii. It is their favorite place and we had never been, so they just really wanted us to go. Since we had never been, we knew we wanted to make at least a quick trip to Oahu and go see Pearl Harbor. So we decided to go to Oahu for two days, then over to Maui for five.

We left one morning and were at our hotel in Oahu by around 5 or so. My first impressions of Honolulu - crowded, trafficky, kind of dirty. It is basically a huge city. When we finally got to our hotel, I breathed a sigh of relief. It was beautiful! We stayed at the Royal Hawaiian right on Waikiki.


It is one of the oldest hotels on Waikiki. Just look at these doors. All the doors in the hotel had these old hand carved Hawaiian style doors.


We went to check in and they gave us leis, cold towels and a welcome drink. Then we headed up to our room where I found these waiting for me!

Did I mention we left on Valentine's Day? Jason thought ahead and called the concierge to arrange to have these waiting for me!

That night we went to eat at this Sicilain restaurant, Taormina. I had this delicious seafood pasta that reminded me of a dish I had eaten in Cinque Terre on our trip to Italy. It was divine! After dinner we crashed, knowing we had to get up at like 5 the next morning to make our tour to Pearl Harbor!

The next morning we went to wait for our shuttle to Pearl Harbor. I had called the night before to double check everything, where to wait, which bus we were on, etc. Well, when our bus gets there, they have no record of us. Mind you I have already paid for this excursion and everything. We sit on the bus for a while trying to figure out what the deal is. I call the company I had booked through and while I am sitting there on hold, the driver tells us we have to get off the bus! He says they can't wait anymore and we have to leave. Now readers, if you have never been kicked off a tour bus with a group of people staring at you, I will just let you know. IT IS HUMILIATING! The second I stepped off the bus, the company I was on hold for picked up and I just started crying in to the phone. That's right. I was that girl. The lady was so nice and tried everything she could think of to get that bus back or to get us on another tour. Unfortunately, ours had been the last one and there were no more for the day. We were leaving at noon the next day, so it would be too late. Did I mention the sole reason we came to Oahu was to see Pearl Harbor?

After some sobbing, deep breaths and realization that I was in Hawaii and should at all costs try to simmer down, we finally worked it out where we would take another tour the next day and change our flight to later in the day to go to Maui. We decided we would just do an extended tour of the North Shore that day instead of the shorter tour we had planned to do the next day.

So we got out our guide book, put down our jeep top, and headed toward the North Shore. We really started at the East shore and basically just drove in a loop around the entire island. Our first stop was the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park. You drive in through a cemetery and then come to this breathtaking Buddhist temple.


It almost looks fake it is so beautiful. Here is Jason. =)


Before you enter you are supposed to use this wooden log to bang this huge bell for good luck.


After that, we headed around the shore and stopped to take some pictures of the beaches. If you are a Lost fan, you should know that they filmed a lot of Lost on Oahu. Can't you just see Kate, Jack, Sawyer and Hurley running out of those woods away from the smoke monster?


Here is another beach.


We actually looked up places you could go see where Lost was filmed, but the most obvious was this place. Look familiar?


Yep! That is the camp where the Others lived! It is actually a YMCA camp in the middle of nowhere!

We also got caught in the rain with our top down. We couldn't figure out how to get it back up so Jason would hold it while I drove and looked for a place to stop that was covered. We stopped a few times and tried to get it back up, but those suckers are impossible! After about an hour we found an apartment complex with covered parking so we pulled over. It took us and two passerbys to get the darn thing up and then, you guessed it, it never rained the entire rest of the day. Ugh.

Oh well. We got some shave ice and saw lots of surfers and had a pretty enjoyable day in spite of things. That night we ate somewhere close to the hotel and crashed, knowing we had to get up AGAIN at 5am the next day.