Hawaii

On Tuesday Chad & I flew to Hawaii. We flew into Honolulu and arrived in the early evening. We rented a car and drove out to our hotel, which was in Ko Olina. The rental car tried to give us trouble and didn't seem to be shifting gears so we called the rental car company and they told us we had the car in negative drive. It was an automatic, but could be driven sort of like a manual. Stupid! So once we had it in just Drive, it was much better.

We arrived at the hotel and our "ocean view" room on the third floor turned out to have a view of a giant palm tree. I called to ask if it was for sure an ocean view room and they said it was, but Chad ended up going to the front desk and got us moved to a 6th floor room with a way better view. Here is a view of the pool from our lanai (patio in Hawaiian).

That night we went down to the hotel casual dining restaurant on the beach and shared some appetizers and had some mai tais before going down to the beach and laying in some beach chairs and watching the stars. It got chilly though so we headed back to the room. The next morning there was a light rain, but I sat on our lanai watching the rain and eating my breakfast and it was glorious.

The weather cleared up and we headed out to Waianae to go to the boat harbor to meet up with Dolphin Excursions for a dolphin snorkel adventure.

We did not take our cameras on board cause we didn't want to get them wet, but there was a professional camera guy on the boat who took pictures both on the boat and underwater. We bought the CD of our trip and we should get it later this week and I will do a separate post of the dolphin snorkel trip because it was AWESOME! Let's just say we swam 3 times with a pod of 75+ wild dolphins. They would just swim right up to us and then under us and we would snorkel over them looking down on them swimming past. They were spinner dolphins so we also saw some spin and twirl out of the water. We also swam with schools of colorful fish and even saw a sea turtle and a small octopus. It was super cool and I will post in more detail when I have the pictures.

After snorkeling we went back to the hotel to get cleaned up and head to the North Shore to the Polynesian Cultural Center to go to their luau and then see their night show Ha: Breath of Life. Neither of us anticipated an hour and a half drive out there and that was part to do with traffic and part to do with the REALLY SLOW speed limits all over Hawaii. Once we got to the PCC we went straight into the luau. The PCC is run by the Mormon church so there was not any alcohol at the luau, but they did have these yummy pineapple drinks that I just sucked right down.

While at the luau I saw some waterfalls behind the performers and I thought they looked familiar. I went to Jake's Facebook page and saw that his profile picture looked like it was taken at this same luau. I had no idea, so after the luau I went out and found the exact waterfall Jake had that picture taken in front of and then made Chad take my picture. Jake's was taken when it was darker, but you can still tell it is the same place. Here is Jake's Facebook picture:

And here is the photo I had Chad take of me:

That night was the Super Harvest Moon so while walking around the PCC waiting for the show to start we took this picture. It doesn't really do the moon justice, it was really bright!

Chad then saw this funny line of statues and thought it would be funny if I took his photo acting just like them:

The hour and half drive home was really tough because I was so tired, so by the time we made it back I was ready to crash. We never really got onto Hawaii time and were awake by 7am Thursday morning. I wanted to go to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. We got there and got tickets for the 10:00am boat and watched a movie about the history of Pearl Harbor. Then we went to wait for our boat to leave.

Once on the Memorial I took this photo looking out the skylight.

This was the view off of one side of the memorial:

And this was the wall of remembrance for all the service men that lost their lives.

We were not allowed to take photos of the outside of the memorial until we were leaving so I took these next two on the boat as we were driving away:

Chad's back was really hurting him ever since we got back from snorkeling so I gave him the option of going back to the hotel, but he knew I wanted to hike Diamond Head Crater so he agreed to go with me. He did not realize what he was agreeing to and was upset when he saw how tall the crater was. Here I am at the base of the crater before we started up.

I didn't take any photos on the way up because I was doing my best to keep going at a steady pace and keep my breath. I did stop once to catch my breath and sat at the top of a stairwell to take some sips of water. Once we made it to the top, the view was breathtaking. These pictures do not do it justice.

Chad took this photo of me at the top. i felt so accomplished! Chad was just worn out and cranky.

By the time we made it back down I knew we needed to head back to the hotel for Chad to keep his sanity, so we went back and relaxed for a bit before heading to the pool bar to get some drinks. This definitely put Chad in a better mood.

We discussed some options for dinner and ended up going to a steakhouse at the hotel where we sat overlooking the lagoon and watched the sunset.

That night we went to bed insanely early because we were still not on Hawaii time and the next morning was our last one in Hawaii. I got my usual coffee and pastry to enjoy on the lanai and snapped this photo:

We packed our bags, checked out and then headed to the hotel spa cabanas to get massages before we left. They were really nice. We had lomi lomi massages, which is a traditional Hawaiian massage. It was different than a Swedish massage, but I really enjoyed it. After our massages we headed to Wahoo's Fish Taco for Chad because he loves that place to eat lunch. Then we headed to the airport. We got to fly home first class and that was really cool. It was our first time to ever fly first class and it was nice because it was an overnight flight and our seats laid almost all the way down so we were able to get some good sleep on the way back. We changed planes in Chicago and got back to DFW around 8:30am. While we were gone Grandmommy & Haha watched the boys until Friday and then Nana & Papa watched them the last night. They sent us some pictures while we were gone:

Nana, Papa & the boys picked up up from the airport. Riley wanted to get a present and he was lucky because we had presents for him in the bag. One was a ukulele, and he opened it right up and serenaded us in the airport with the days of the week song. It was awesome!

We always try to plan a weekend at the end of our vacations to give us time to decompress before we have to go back to work so we spent this weekend napping and doing laundry and stocking up on groceries. Looking forward to the week ahead since I was able to get some relaxing in while in Hawaii.