This wasn't my first time to Oahu, but it was my first time really experiencing Waikiki. It was awesome and crazy...kind of like Vegas meets the ocean, minus the casinos and the neon lights.
We only planned to rent a car for the second half of our trip, so we spent the first few days laying on Waikiki beach, hiking Diamond Head, shopping, and visiting Pearl Harbor. We stayed at the Hyatt Regency, which was gorgeous and perfectly located right across the street from the beach. It just happened to be the hotel where my mom worked for a few months in the 1970s, when she came to Hawaii as a single girl looking for adventure. It made me smile to think of her tiny 22-year-old self walking those hallways.
I'm going to save my tips on how to navigate Waikiki on a budget for another post, but believe me, this place is not cheap. We splurged on dinner and famous hula pie one night at Duke's, one of the best-known restaurants in Honolulu.It was definitely worth every penny
and every calorie.
One of the things that I loved most about Waikiki was the shopping. There are tons of stores that stay open until 10 p.m., so you can grab dinner and then window shop in Hermes or spend an hour trying on swimsuits in Victoria's Secret (sorry Matt!). The people watching is spectacular, and they also have some surprisingly talented sidewalk performers to keep you entertained. When we got bored of walking around, we'd head back up to our room and watch the action from our balcony.
Despite all the fun we had in Waikiki, we did come away with one horror story. We were sitting on a short rock wall that surrounded a potted tree on the main street in Waikiki, Kalakaua Avenue, eating our nightly frozen yogurt (told ya). About five feet away from us, another lady was sitting on a similar rock wall, doing the same thing. Suddenly, I noticed that the rock wall she was on was ALIVE with cockroaches. It was like they had come out of nowhere and were all heading straight towards this unsuspecting woman. I started screaming for her to stand up, and that's when I noticed that the wall we were sitting on also had dozens of cockroaches all over it. Huge, disgusting cockroaches. Poor Matt thought I'd been shot by the way I was freaking out. Give me snakes, give me spiders, but please, for the love of all that is holy, keep the cockroaches away from me.
The North Shore is my favorite part of Oahu. I'll take a cheap taco stand and miles of empty beaches over high-end shopping any day. We spent our time on the North Shore paddle boarding, eating shave ice, taking pictures of sea turtles and soaking up the sun. Unfortunately the waves were too big to snorkel, but that just gives us a reason to come back again someday!
We left our hotel at 6 a.m. to see the best surfers in the world compete in the Billabong Pipe Masters at the Banzai Pipeline. Getting up so early paid off because we got front row seats to the action. We even got to see surf superstar Kelly Slater!
If you've got a patriotic bone in your body, Pearl Harbor is a must-see. We wanted to go on Pearl Harbor day, but unfortunately it was sold out so we had to go a few days before. I would definitely recommend taking the audio tour and going out to the USS Arizona.
We were lucky enough to meet the Pearl Harbor vet pictured below and see some of the other veterans march in the Dec. 7 parade down Kalakaua Avenue. These guys are truly heros, and it was an honor to get to meet one of them in person!
Going to Waikiki and not hiking Diamond Head is kind of like going to Paris and not seeing the Eiffel Tower. We took a taxi from Waikiki for about $20 round trip and made the hike in 45 minutes or so. The view was gorgeous, and it felt great to burn off some of the frozen yogurt I'd been eating every night.
