Hawaii - Days 1 and 2

I've been pretty absent from blogland in the past week and that is because Ben and I were away on vacation. We spent 8 days in Hawaii and had just the best time! I'm probably going to have to break this post up into a couple separate entries so that I don't inundate you with all our pictures and stories all at once.

We left last Friday morning for Oahu and landed in Honolulu at about 2:30 pm, local time. The best part about heading west is that you gain time so although we were exhausted when we arrived we decided it was best to just re-adapt our clocks to local time.

When we first got off the plane, we were greeted with these gorgeous orchid leis (I later read that these orchids are most likely not the native, Hawaiian ones and are probably imported from Thailand, ha!)

If we look a little tired and greasy here, its because we were! We had literally just stepped off the 9 hour flight, but we were so excited to finally be there! (Ben was a little concerned about getting through the flight as he's never had one that long and didn't know how his long legs could handle the cramped conditions. Luckily we were able to get the bulkhead seats so he was able to stretch out his legs somewhat).

Once we got to the hotel, I took this picture of Ben and the view from our balcony. We did this as soon as we got to the hotel we were staying at on our honeymoon and just decided that this should be a little tradition.

Then, we got dressed and hit up the beach to see this breathtaking view of Diamond Head. This is also what we saw each morning as we sat in the little beach side restaurant to eat breakfast. It really doesn't get old, at least not to me.

We hung out on the beach for a bit, then moved to the pool and went inside to get dressed for dinner. I had (of course) made a list of places that I wanted to try and we walked and walked before finally deciding we were too tired to go on a restaurant-finding adventure. We stumbled upon this really nice place called Wolfgang's Steakhouse. I wish I had taken a picture of our actual meal -- it was a ginormous steak and although it said it was meant for 2 people, you probably could have fed 4 with that thing! We finished it off with Key Lime Pie (Ben's favorite) and it was a really great way to start off our trip. After dinner, we headed back to our hotel to get some sleep and to get ready for our trip to Pearl Harbor on Saturday.





We got up early Saturday morning, had some breakfast and grabbed a shuttle from our hotel to Pearl Harbor. I had seen Pearl Harbor before, but I was probably 10 years old at the time so basically this was a new experience for me as well as Ben. Certainly, I have a different appreciation for the memorial this time.


We knew going in that this wasn't a quickie thing to do -- you have to go and get tickets where they give you a specific time that your shuttle will leave for the memorial. We basically had 2 hours to mull around the park and museum before actually seeing the Arizona. When you think of Pearl Harbor, you always think of the USS Arizona as well as the other ships that were actually in the Harbor but you don't necessarily think of all the other ships lost at sea during the War. The park there, looking out onto Ford Island, really does a nice job at paying homage to these other ships.

This is Ben in the Park looking out at Ford Island. This wasn't meant to be a cheesy, posed picture ... I was just capturing him looking at all these plaques. Each one represented a different ship lost at sea during WWII.

One thing that I found fascinating, and I know people who visit Pearl Harbor always say this, is the fact that there is still oil leaking from the wreckage of the Arizona. They say that it leaks up to 2 quarts/day. That is just crazy to me.

We then headed back to our hotel, had some lunch and relaxed on the beach and by the pool for the rest of the afternoon.



My original intention for this post was for this to be a report of days 1, 2, and 3 but its getting a little too long in my opinion so I'm going to continue with the rest of the vacation later on in the week. (And don't worry .... I won't detail every single meal and every single picture for you. Just hit the highlights!!) So ... next up ... our Diamond Head hike!