Saturday morning, I was up at my normal 4am or so and worked on the blog. Ash was up not too far behind me. Once that was up, we did the final packing we needed to do which wasn’t much since we’d only been here 2 nights. We made sure Vasco was up by 7:30 and we were out the door by 8am to stop for gas, breakfast, and then head to the airport.

After getting gas, we stopped at Tobi’s for food and coffee. Ash and I shared an acai bowl and Vasco had one for himself. A tasty, light start to the day.

We had a 10:36am flight to Honolulu. It’s a very short flight. Everything went according to plan with bags and rental car, and we were leaving the Honolulu airport by about Noon.

Ash and I were pretty excited about where we were staying. If you’ve ever been to Waikiki, you’ve probably seen it: The Royal Hawaiian, aka “the pink palace.” Below is a shot of the main entrance. It’s a Marriott property and Ash was able to use his status to get us a sweet upgrade for free. That’s Ash and Vasco walking ahead of me.

This was built in 1927 on prior palace grounds of King Kamehameha I.

It’s a very nice room with a great view of the water and Diamondhead. Not too shabby.

We did a little unpacking and made our way out for a bite to eat and our first activity. We decided to just stop at a Subway that was on the way but when we walked in we realized there was no place to sit. Oh well. We got our sandwiches anyway and ate them on the drive inland to Manoa Falls, about 25 minutes away from the hotel.

We rested a little bit before we made our way back down. It was interesting to see how the changes in where the sun was shining on the way down changed the look of things.

This photo blows my mind. As did the scene when I first came upon it. The sun was a bit lower than on our walk up and it was hitting this passage through trees directly onto this tall tree that was sort of alone and it was positively lit up from the right side as we’re looking at it. Everything around it had a glow to it. And you can see from the people there taking photos how huge this was, with the mountains in the background making it very majestic. It took my breath away when I walked upon it and will every time I see this photo.

Are you tired of pink yet? Pool area on the right. On the left is the hotel from the beach. That middle window on the top floor? That’s our room.

Waikiki Beach and Diamondhead.

We made our way to Kalakaua Ave, the main drag in Waikiki. Lots of restaurants and high-end shopping. And a completely different vibe than the rest of the islands, including this one.  I took a photo looking each way as we crossed Kalakaua. One of the few things I remembered about being here in 1993 was they have “all walks” which I love. This means all of the pedestrians cross at the same time, regardless of the direction they are going. Even diagonally. Which we did. It makes so much more sense to me, I don’t know why every city doesn’t do this.

We stopped at an ABC store to pick up a few things before making our way back to the hotel to rest a bit before dinner. If you’re not familiar with ABC, it’s another thing I love about Hawaii. Think super convenience store. Pretty much anything you need you can find.

We went to Roy’s, by a chef named Roy Yamaguchi, less than a 10-minute walk away from the hotel. They sat us on the sidewalk which was great. We’d had a light breakfast and dinner and made up for it here. I thought we ordered too many appetizers, but it was all gone: salmon on pita bread, Brussel sprouts, and a sampler of spring rolls, kim chi, a spicy tuna roll, and shrimp.

For me at any rate, this was the best meal of the trip. Every bite was amazing. And it wasn’t nearly as expensive as those other two we had, and miles better than the first one on Christmas Eve.