South Pacific Trip 2012/2013: Waikiki, Oahu

Sadly, this app keeps mixing up the order of the pics. Hopefully the captions help.

We had a short (1/2 hour) flight from Maui to Oahu and took a Robert's shuttle to the hotel/condo we are staying at. On the shuttle we met a really nice family from Sydney, Australia and had good long chat while we drove through Honolulu. It's certainly a lot more urban than the Big Island or Maui and feels like a big city. Richard likens it to Hong Kong, lots of Asian writing everywhere, tour buses and trolleys, lots of impressive looking buildings, and humid!

We rented a condo in the Ilikai hotel that is at the start of Waikiki beach. It's a pretty snazzy little studio that has a nice view of the ocean but is much more noisy than our last condo in Maui. We are on the 6th floor and our lanai faces the Hilton and they have a luau every night so we are treated to some free music. You can sit and watch the planes come in on the same approach all day long. There is a nice pool that we haven't taken advantage of. There is a lagoon in front of the Hilton next door that we have been taking dips in, nice and refreshing. We were both going to swim a bit in the lagoon and then we both noticed some not very nice stuff floating so we got out before any real exercise occurred (phew!). The following article is about the lagoon if you're interested.

http://www.send2press.com/newswire/2008-01-0121-003.shtml

You can also go on to Youtube and look up the opening sequence of the old Hawaii Five-O show and see the hotel/condo we are staying in, Jack Lord is standing on the top balcony. I'll attach a few photos down below.

Richard went up to the condo about 2 hours earlier than I was ready to, I had a good book. And lo and behold, a guy actually hit on me at the beach! This is shocking to me as not only am I overweight and middle-aged but I was wearing a bathing suit, had no make-up on and had been in the lagoon. I thought perhaps this was a delusion on my part, but Richard assures me given the questions he asked that he was in fact hitting on me. Again, shocking!

I've had a sore throat and swollen glands since we got here (enough already!) so I called our insurance company to see if I could go see a doctor and they directed me to the hospital. Saw an ER doc and he said he thought I had acid reflux. I thought he was off his rocker but after taking the medicine I feel a lot better. This bit of advice is apparently going to cost my insurance company at least $550!!! Good grief! I'm glad I'm a Canadian! Sadly we missed a few days of sightseeing but I enjoyed the relaxation portion. Last night we had a delicious meal at a restaurant just down the street from the condo called The Fat Greek. Good mediterranean salmon and tiramisu.

Today we went on a tour called Home of the Brave that took us to Pearl Harbor and a few other sights relating to the war. We were picked up at 5:55 a.m. from our hotel and thus missed the filming of the new Hawaii Five-O in front of our hotel! I was so close to seeing Alex O'Loughlin in person, argh!!!! Google him, he's gorgeous. Instead we had a very sobering day contemplating the fate of the crew of the USS Arizona and learning more details about what led up the bombing of PH and how the US reacted afterwards.

Tomorrow we are getting picked up at 6:30 a.m. for our 10:00 flight to Sydney and then on to Auckland. It should take us 15 hours and we arrive at midnight local time. We're spending the night near the airport and then closer to downtown once we pick up a rental car the following morning.

Duke Kahanamoku Lagoon