There’s something about Hawaiʻi that keeps calling us back. In
the past ten years we’ve been to the other main islands (Maui, Kauaʻi, and the
Big Island of Hawaiʻi) so we thought this time we should check out Oʻahu. We
booked a quick one-week trip through Costco to Waikiki Beach.
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| Duke Kahanamoku statue on Kuhio Beach |
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| Kuhio Beach |
We stayed at the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort, which was in a perfect location right on the beach and within walking distance to lots of great restaurants. Our balcony even had a (partial) ocean view. (We also had a full view of the balconies of the hotel next to us; it’s always interesting to look across while sipping a sundowner and see about a hundred other people staring back at you).
Our room was decorated in – what else? – a Hawaiʻian theme.
From the beach in front of the hotel, we had great views of
Diamond Head, a huge volcanic cone that is one of Oʻahu’s most-recognizable
landmarks.
The other great thing about the Outrigger beach resort is
that they have a fantastic jazz venue on site, The Blue Note. We went to two
shows here during our stay and it is a great place to see a live performance –
there are only about 300 seats and all of them have a great view of the stage.
Lots of big names perform here even though it’s a small venue because, hey, free
trip to Hawaiʻi.
We rented a car for one day and drove the loop around the
island, starting our morning at the USS Arizona Memorial in Pearl Harbor. The
Park Service is currently repairing the dock at the Memorial, so we couldn’t
disembark and see inside, but it was a very moving experience just to be there
and reflect on the many sailors and Marines who lost their lives on December 7,
1941.
Our next stop was at Haleʻiwa Aliʻi Beach Park on the North
Shore to watch the Van’s Triple Crown surf competition for an hour or so. The
waves were huge and the surfers were just tiny specks in the blue sea, but the hilarious
commentary over the loudspeakers filled us non-surfers in on every drop,
cutback, and wipe out, and helped us make sense of what we were seeing.
As we made our way to the eastern side of the island, we
stopped at the Byodo-In Temple which is a half-size replica of Japanese temple
of the same name. Since we plan on heading to Japan in spring 2019, this was an
interesting place to visit – we plan on seeing lots of temples while we are in
the Land of the Rising Sun.
Our last stop with the rental car was at Kualoa Regional
Park, where we had great views of the Koʻolau Mountain Range, which has been
the backdrop for many films and TV shows including Jurassic Park, Lost, and
Magnum PI.
As I mentioned, we only rented a car for one day, but the
local bus on Oʻahu is cheap and easy to use to get around. We took the bus into
downtown Honolulu to check out the beautiful ʻIolani Palace, America’s only official
royal palace and a National Historic Landmark. It was decorated in Monarchy-era
bunting in honor of what would have been King Kalakaua’s 182nd
birthday.
We were also able to take the bus to the world-famous
snorkeling site at Hanalei Bay. It was packed with people, and it is so popular
that they actually close the site down one day a week in order to try to let
the coral recover from all the snorkelers. Unfortunately the coral still looked
mostly bleached to us. Although the snorkeling was kind of a bust, at least
there were gorgeous views of the bay from the trailhead.
Hawaiʻi is a food-lover’s paradise, and of course we had
plenty of kahlua pork, poke, and loco moco on this trip. We also made sure to
have at least one token meal that included SPAM.
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| Too. Much. SPAM. (And way too many pancakes, too!) |
But something new that we tried on this trip were malasadas
from Leonard’s Bakery. Malasadas are the Portuguese version of little jelly
doughnuts, covered in sugar and filled with all kinds of sweet jams. We tried a
variety of them – the guava flavor was my favorite.
This was Kevin’s second trip to Oʻahu and my first, but
there was just so much to do and see on the island that I know we’ll be back
again soon. Aloha!
