HAWAII!!!! Saturday and Sunday

Last fall, I got to thinking. We would be celebrating our 9 year anniversary in the summer. And usually, people go all out for their 10 year. (Hawaii was on my radar.)  But.... I was sort of planning on having a baby that year. And I was NOT going to be largely pregnant in Hawaii or taking a nursing baby on our anniversary trip if I had the choice. SO, solution?! Go all out for the 9 year anni. BUT, we were married in July. And we already knew we'd be spending a week with the Evans in Flagstaff that month. And a week in Oceanside with the Lindbloms in August. And we were going to be Ma's and Pa's in a trek in June. Soooo, to space out all the vacations and activities, we opted for May. And since Trav's birthday is May 5, why not plan it that week?!

SO, that did it. We would be celebrating our 10 year anniversary on our 9 year anniversary, in May. Ha!

 

We booked the flight in December and after a lot more debating, booked our hotel in January. Travis was leaning towards Turtle Bay since it's on the North Shore and had more of a "Hawaii vibe" than busy, big city, Honolulu. To make a long story short, we did it! I was SOOOO excited. It didn't feel real. I felt like it would always be way off in the distance. The week before we left I couldn't believe it was already here! It was a lot of work getting the whole family packed up, assigned out to different family members, schedules made and Power of Attorneys signed. We drove into Mesa on Friday afternoon and I spent several hours running around doing last minute errands, getting my nails done and one last tan in. :) We put Olive down at Marcie's house to sleep since we'd be leaving at 5:30am the next day. The rest of us slept in the Evans basement. Collin woke up when we were getting ready to leave and got to say one last goodbye. I was really nervous about leaving the kids. I get such anxiety about that. Luckily, it only lasted a couple of days. And I only had one semi-anxiety attack on the plane! (I really should medicate myself.)

 

Getting on that plane was surreal. SURREAL. How could this really be happening?! I'm such a doomsdayer. I thought for sure something would happen to prevent this trip. But no, we were boarding a flight for paradise for a whole week and without kids!!!

It's a 6 hour flight and we were on Hawaiian Airlines.

So here's my advice to anyone flying Hawaiian that I wish I knew:

1: They are very proud of the fact that they are the only airline in the country to provide an inflight meal, but guess what?! It's a couple pieces of fruit and a slice of cheese and some crackers. It's more cute than filling. BRING SNACKS!

2: Wear pants, socks and shoes, and a jacket! Why?! Because it's FREEZING!!!! And there's no air control like there is on Southwest flights. They drop the temperature down to 60 degrees then push their carts up and down the aisles, smugly selling blankets. It's just plain mean.

 

OK, rant over. Besides that, it was a great flight. :) Travis downloaded Taken 3 and we watched that. I got started on my book that I borrowed from Marcie... The Selection. And also read my "vacation guilty pleasure".. US Weekly.

 

And even thought I had to use the potty twice, it's nice that they let you stand in the back until one opens up. As opposed to Southwest flights where you have to keep a hawk eye out and scurry to the back the second someone vacates a bathroom, hoping you beat the guy next to you.

 

Finally, everyone was SO NICE. I'm not used to that. I couldn't fit my carryon in one of the compartments, so two different people hopped up to move their stuff around to try and help me.

A random couple in the middle aisle, saw us sharing headphones while watching our movie and offered to let us use one of their headphone adaptors that allows for two sets. I know these aren't big things, but they caught me off guard. I really don't feel like I see random acts of kindness much anymore. Especially not when traveling! (Maybe everyone was just in a good mood because we were headed to Hawaii. ;) 

 

Around 11am, Hawaii time, our first sighting or Oahu opened up!! Ahhhhh!!!!!!!

So our trip started out kind of rough. The long flight did a number on my back and I couldn't stand up straight for a couple hours afterward and was in a lot of pain. Which really stunk for the country mile we had to walk to get our luggage. (I remembered that from when I flew there in college! Why do they make it so far away?!) Then there was a ridiculous line at our rental car office. I think Travis waited in line almost an hour while I sat outside with my sore back, teetering on our luggage and starving.

 

Once we were finally on the road, we set our sights on the Shorebird restaurant in Waikiki. Both my sisters raved about this place. It was supposed to be an awesome buffet and you grill your meat, pineapple, bread, whatever on these giant grills inside. Welp, it was 1:30pm when we got there and after we were seated, we realized they don't start the grills up and the dinner buffet until 4pm. I was SO DISAPPOINTED! Just ask Travis. I turned into a pouty 3 year old at this point. I was so looking forward to digging into a huge, delicious, Hawaiin meal and it was just ripped right out from under me. I scowled at the menu for a long time before settling on a Reuben Panini made with fresh fish. And I swear it wasn't just my mood, but it was awful. So were Travis's fish tacos. The lamest fish tacos ever! Oh! It was such a bust. But at least we had some food in our stomachs and we could head to the hotel now.

The drive to the North Shore is exactly how I remembered it.

Breathtaking.

Massive, green mountains towering over every turn. Bright blue ocean, bordered by white, sandy beaches off to the right of Kam highway. It's so incredibly gorgeous. 

It took about an hour to get there and right before we did I saw some fruit stands off the side of the road. I asked to Trav to pull over so we could get a sampling. :) 

I got a fresh coconut to drink and some cups of fruit to put in the fridge for breakfast in the morning. There was a shrimp truck too, so Travis got a plate. It definitely beat Shorebird.

I wish I had taken some pictures of the little drive into Turtle Bay. They really keep the grounds immaculate.

It probably helps that they have Opala cans all over for people to throw their trash. ;) Kind of an inside joke just for Trav.

 (Opala is Hawaiian for "trash". They felt the need to print that next to trash on every can. I guess for all those Hawaiians wandering around helplessly, trying to throw away their garbage, but not understanding what "trash" meant. ;)

We were on the second floor, pretty close to the elevators, which was nice, since we didn't have to walk far.

OK, ready for next rant? I like our room, but here's where Turtle Bay fell short...

1: The shower was terrible! It was a huge shower head, placed really high in the shower, with no extra settings and only okay water pressure. When you are a hotel on a beach it is ESSENTIAL to have good water pressure. Nay, excellent water pressure. When you're washing out ocean hair with sand everywhere, you NEED good pressure. Or at least a removable shower head. So annoying.

2: I have never been in a hotel room before that didn't have black out curtains. The nastiest hotel I ever stayed in still had black out curtains. Its a no brainer. I understand that SOME people want to wake up to sunlight filtering in, but then those people can just push back their black out curtains. Our room only had these wooden panels that covered the window, but didn't block out sunlight. It was so strange. I had a hard time with the time change, so it would have been really helpful in the mornings to be able to block the sun.

And finally, I recognized that all the rooms on floors 3 and up had balconies, but ours didn't. Bummer. That would have been nice too.

 

OK, no more being a downer! The rest of the experience was wonderful! We had the most amazing view out our window. We paid for a "Partial Ocean View" room, but there was nothing partial about this! My jaw dropped when I saw it.  

The bathroom was great. This was only half of it. The other half was just as big and through the door on the right. Tons of room.

 

It was early evening by then so we decided to change into our suits and go for a walk along the beach. We walked out on the coral and up a ways from the hotel. Then we tested out the hot tubs. Very hot.. check. Very relaxing... check!

By the time we got back, I felt bad, but I was exhausted. We went to bed at 6:30pm. That's 10:30, Gallup time. Well, I'll say TRIED to go to sleep. There was some party going on outside on the beach and the noise kept me up. I finally took some Advil PM around 8pm into happy slumber. 

SUNDAY

Well, we were up at 5am on Sunday. Go figure. We tried to think of some Sunday appropriate activities and decided that Pearl Harbor fit the bill. I hadn't gotten tickets beforehand, and we knew they opened at 7am each morning with standby tickets.

Here we are with our coconut, papaya, and pineapple breakfast, driving to Honolulu. 

We got there at 7:30am and I was expecting a huge line like my sister had. Nope! We even got to park in the tiny lot right in front of the main building. I checked my purse while Travis got us 8am tickets! Score! 

We wandered around the grounds and read some of the placards. You can see the Arizona Memorial off in the distance behind Travis.

 At 8am we started the tour with a 20-30 minute video. Then we rode the ferry out to the Memorial. I had done this 12 years ago but really didn't remember much.

All the names of the 4,000+ men that died. I guess some men that lived, chose to be buried with ship later on when they died.



Afterward, we walked through one of the museums on the grounds. It is a very humbling experience to learn about the men, lives and families that were sacrificed or affected by this event. 

It didn't really take as long as we thought and we were done before 10am! We decided some real breakfast sounded good before finding a ward to go to. I got online really fast and found a restaurant called Orchids that was listed to have one of the top 5 breakfasts on the island. BUT, then it said that their Sunday brunch is legendary and known the island over. Voted "Oahu's Best Brunch" by Honolulu Magazine. My eyes widened a bit. Sunday brunch??!! Well, it WAS Sunday brunch right then! Score! So off we drove! Turns out, it was a restaurant inside the hotel right next to the hotel we were at last night for Shorebird. The Shorebird is inside the Outrigger Reef hotel... that's where my sister, Shelley and her husband stayed last year.

 

Outrigger Reef ^^^^^

 And Orchids was inside the Halekulani, next door. We found out later that the Halekulani is like a $500 a night hotel. When we walked up, a beautiful wedding was going on inside the courtyard.

 

 

We were escorted around it, to Orchids. Where we were told they were currently full and it would be a 20 minute wait... as if that was a deterrent. Oh, we waited! And this was the room we waited in. Yeahhhh. Life is rough.

 


 

I got these pictures online... this is what it looked like inside, with someone playing the piano. 

Ok, this is where words will fail me. This buffet.... ohhhhhhh myyyyyy goshhhhhh. It beats the pants off the Little America Sunday brunch in Salt Lake! If you know that buffet, this will mean something to you!

I wish I could write the names to all these delicious foods. But each name card was impossibly long with words I'd never heard of before. I can remember some of it... on the left is an egg benedict type thing that is not of this world. I've NEVER tasted eggs like that before. And the cheese crepe with a lilikole sauce was ridiculous. The second I put it in my mouth, I knew I'd forever be disappointed by any other food I'd eat for the rest of my life. I could not devour this plate fast enough. 

So I felt REALLY sheepish taking any pictures, because I was the only one doing so, but I'd never seen this before. Edible dirt? Really?

"Crudite with Baby Vegetables and Edible Dirt"

They had a sushi bar, an exotic salad bar, an ice cream bar, an omelet bar and everything in-between. The desserts didn't just look amazing, they melted in your mouth. Unfortunately, by the time I made it to dessert, I was so full, it was painful to put anything in my mouth! But don't you worry, I persevered! And it was only after I sat down and looked at Travis's plate, that I realized I had used a dinner plate to acquire my sweets. Oops. Not oops. :)

Complete with some not-from-a-can guava juice that sealed the deal.

The sauces...ohhh the sauces.

I only took this picture because when I read it, I thought it said turd tartlets. I'm so mature!

About the time we were going to spontaneously combust, I ventured to ask Travis, "Sooo, what do you think this cost?" It had dawned on me that no where did we see a price. We weren't handed any menus and there were no signs. He guessed $45. I cringed. I really hoped it would be under $50. Welp, the bill came and it turned out to be $70 a person!! Ahhhhh. I somehow managed to feel a little sicker. This is when the whole "there are starving children in Africa" thing really makes you feel like a jerk. I grimaced and looked apologetically at Trav. He just signed the check and asked me, "So if you knew what it cost would you not have eaten it?" Ohhhh, crap. Ummmm. I pondered for a second then said, "Wellll, I would have thought about it first." That got a laugh from him. Maybe a jaded laugh, but at least it wasn't a scoff of disgust. He's not into the fancy food, but I'm glad at least that I married someone who does really enjoy food as much as me. :)

There was quite a lot of shopping in the area, so after we ate, we meandered about a bit. Travis even bought a pair of sunglasses! He hasn't had a new pair in over 10 years. I was so proud of him for finally buying some. Even if they were only 20 bucks. (Apparently, they were a cursed pair...perhaps because we bought them on the Sabbath...they broke at the beach just hours later.) I got myself a Hawaii, Hurley shirt as my souvenir. ;)

Not much later it was time to go back to being Mormons and get our sacrament meeting in, hehe. 

(Never mind that we remembered it was fast Sunday and we were still engorged from brunch.)

So this was the nearest church building!!!

Never mind calling it a chapel.... apparently this place is referred to as a "tabernacle". I'd say! It was ginormous inside and reminded me more of a large, Catholic cathedral with its long, middle corridor. And how about that mosaic of Christ on the front, eh??! As for the rest of the church... it was all outside. Like an outside mall. Sooo interesting. And since it was testimony meeting we said lots of "alohas", responding to each person that went to the pulpit. I still need to learn more about this place! It's obviously really old and I'm guessing one of the first LDS churches built on the island. 

The tree in the front lawn alone, made for a beautiful setting. 

OK, back to vacation mode.... we couldn't resist and decided to spend the rest of the afternoon on the beach. Church had been at 1pm, so I'd say we got to the beach around 3pm. It was a perfect day. So sunny and warm and hardly a cloud in the sky. We just drove back to the hotel where we had eaten brunch since we were getting pretty familiar with that area by now! It was kind of surprising that the beach wasn't more crowded. Not complaining! I got us some drinks at a nearby stand and we relaxed the day away.

 

I love having my nails done. I think this is the 3rd time in my life I've gotten gel fingernails and I was loving having them all pretty and matching my toesies!

As the sun started waning, we decided it had been 7 hours or so... we could probably eat. ;)

The Shorebird had been so disappointing but I didn't want to give up on the dinner buffet I had heard so much about. AND it was literally right next to us, so we went.

We both ordered the beef kabobs and grilled up some pineapple and garlic bread to boot. Not to mention all the other salads, fruits and veggies we got from the buffet.  



Can't argue with this view! My hot husband next to a gorgeous ocean!

Walking through the Outrigger Reef after dinner, we caught sight of a big sign advertising some excursions you could book there. We saw one that looked like the snorkeling cruise my sister had done and loved. So we talked with a concierge and ended up getting our whole week mapped out and tickets bought! We signed up for the cruise on Tuesday, PCC on Wednesday and zip lining on Thursday. (We ended up switching the PCC to Friday, but I'll get to that later.) It felt so good to get everything figured out!

 

OK. I know what you're thinking. How could we be holding ice cream?! Wellllll, yeah, there's no excuse. Except I wanted it.

And I had seen an ad for Lapperts in the Hawaiian magazine on our flight and the concierge at Outrigger confirmed it was good ice cream. AND it just happened to be at the Hilton Hawaiian Village resort just up the street. I needed no more reasons.

My cone was a dessert in and of itself.



And it's a good thing we went, otherwise we wouldn't have the very dear memory now of a certain "cough/tooting" incident while we were walking away! The perpetrator will remain nameless. But you can be sure she was VERY embarrassed. You just wouldn't have known from the hysterical laughing that ensued. (Seriously, cried TEARS. My sides hurt from laughing so hard!) I'm going to blame having children on that one. 

It was dark as we walked back to our car, licking our overpriced ice cream, and still snickering about the "one that escaped." And I loved every second. Not a bad first, full day in paradise.