Hawaiʻi - Waikiki Beach and Oʻahu

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.

Duke Kahanamoku statue on Kuhio Beach

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 182^nd 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.

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!