08/01/2019

After an uneventful 3 hour layover in Oakland, we were finally on our way to Hawaii! My experiences so far with TSA have been pleasant, I don’t really understand why they are hated so much. Besides, walking around the airport in my socks makes me feel like a kid again!

Southwest Airlines had a very comfortable plane complete with lots of yummy snacks (Milano cookies, hello…) and a send off from a shark on the tarmac since it is Shark Week on Discovery Channel, which was cute!

In Honolulu, our Airbnb hosts picked us up in a Porsche so my daughter was excited about that! After settling in for the night at their home, we woke up to this view, which made me too excited to sleep any longer and ready to start the day and fill up my stomach with local food.

I got our daypack together to be ready to explore! Sunblock, bug spray, hat, wallet, bandana, medicine, tripod, rain cover, ziplock bags, knife, charger, and towel. Raincoat too since the weather forecast has predicted rain the next few days. Our Airbnb hosts let me rent one of their vehicles, a small Honda SUV, for a total of $133 for the next 4 days. In Hawaii, that’s a cheap score!

Our first day was Honolulu and Waikiki. I decided to get the “touristy” stuff out of the way and out of our systems by doing the souvenir rounds for everyone the first day; this method worked during our trip to Disney World and so I thought it was worth trying again.

We needed breakfast after the jet lag filled day, so I wanted to try the famous Leonard’s Bakery – unfortunately it was just waaaay too crowded and I couldn’t find parking. Instead, we found the 24-hour Liliha’s Bakery and were serviced quickly because a guy had to catch an Uber and gave us his place in line. This place was filled with rare pastries such as green tea rolls and apple butter bars. They also had a hot dog and pizza pastry which looked like the original foods were placed in a donut-type “boat” to be eaten all together. We got the banana boat and a rocky road cupcake and were so hungry we ate it outside the place.

I then found this place I had heard about that supposedly served the best mochi in the area, Nisshodo Candy Shop. We bought 2 mochis at $1 each but were not accustomed to warm mochi, which tasted like rubber flour. Disappointed, but at least we tried it!

After fighting downtown Honolulu traffic, we stopped for a proper local lunch at Asahi Grill on the outskirts. I ordered the traditional pork with gravy, ball of white rice, and macaroni salad, and my daughter got the yakisoba with spam. The pork was soooo tender and I thought the fried spam along with the beets in the yakisoba went really well together. Very good food at this place!

Now it was time to visit the Iolani Palace. The first rule about driving in Honolulu: it sucks! The roads are curved everywhere, no parking in the street to be found, and everyone here drives fast and close to you since the roads are pretty narrow everywhere. We found public parking in a garage and happened to find a $5 bill on the ground, what luck! The first stop was to pay respects at the Hawaii Law Enforcement Memorial, located in a quiet park near the State Capitol building. Next to that was the Nagasaki Bell, which was donated by the city of Nagasaki in 1990 as a symbol of rebirth and for peace and reconciliation.

The State Capitol and Queen Lili’uokalni’s statue were right across from each other on the way to the palace. This is where we also noticed that there were flowers on the ground everywhere due to the wind blowing them off of the trees. My daughter started to pick them up and place them in her hair.

We paid to do the Iolani Palace tour and waited outside of these gorgeous trees for the tour to start:

Before the tour they ask you to put on slippers to walk around inside the palace. I felt like a surgeon about to go into an operating room:

During the audio tour, we learned about how this palace is the only one in the U.S., the history of the Hawaiian monarchy, and how Queen Lili’uokalani was imprisoned in her own home here and eventually removed. Each room was clearly labeled, such as library, music room, and living areas, and all items meticulously preserved, from the dining hall to the clothing worn by the members of the monarch. There’s also a basement area when you exit the main palace to see the kitchens and the royal jewels worn by the monarchy.

Directly across the street is the famous King Kamehameha Statue, located in front of the judiciary history center. This is the point where I also noticed the historic area had special signage in the streets:

A walk up the street to see the oldest existing house in Hawaii and Kawaiaha’o church, where the 6th monarch King Lunalilo, known as “The People’s King” for being the first elected monarch is buried:

I had to make a quick stop to the Honolulu Police Department, where I was able to buy a patch from them and chatted with the officer there about policing in Hawaii. They are allowed to use personal vehicles such as trucks and SUVs as police cars, with a special blue light that sits atop them.

We returned to the car and I located a meter spot not too far away so we could visit the Honolulu Museum of Art before they closed. Checking out art museums in other areas are must sees for me when I travel; it gives me an opportunity to view how artists use different mediums to create their work, which in turn gives me inspiration to try on my work. There were great pieces of modern art by Hawaiian artists, an interesting exhibit called 21st Century Women, and ancient items from Asia from Japan, Korea, Polynesia, Philippines, and Hawaii, all in wings with peaceful gardens peppered with sculptures. Here are some works that we saw:

Off towards the Chinatown area to see the famous landmark Aloha Tower, the lighthouse building that was once the tallest building in Hawaii. The tourist brochures show the area around it, called the Aloha Marketplace, as a fun, shopping experience but it was empty with hardly any tenants and the busiest place was a gaming cafe. So we snapped a picture of the tower and read about the history of it, then moved on quickly after that.

Time for dinner so I drove to the Waikiki beach area for us to experience the world famous Duke’s Waikiki restaurant located inside the Outrigger Waikiki Beach Resort right on the waterfront. Let me warn you: parking in downtown Waikiki is a nightmare. As in there is no parking anywhere. Most parking around this area is reserved for hotel guests and valets for fancy restaurants. I finally found a parking garage after about 30 minutes of driving and with a lot of help from Google Maps.

We went from the garage to the hotel, about a 15 minute walk. We passed many high end resorts and the usual mall type stores, H&M and Louis Vuitton, it had a Rodeo Drive vibe to it. There was an open air market in a Astro turf little patch on the way also.

Finally we arrived and checked in at the front. The lady told us it would be about an hour wait unless we found open seating at the bar, and we could check it out ourselves. We walked inside and found an outdoor seating area right on the beach, that had a separate check in podium, which would have been nice to know at the first podium we went to. While waiting for our table, we watched the sun set slowly and the skyline begin to light up. There’s a place to enter the beach right by the seating area so we took off our sandals and went to the shore, where I got to watch my daughter touch the Pacific Ocean water for the first time. 🙂

Finally, we sat down to eat and ordered a cheeseburger, Korean beef tacos, and this wonderful banana split milkshake; seriously, it was like the dessert in liquid form! It did begin to rain for a quick minute, but it didn’t bother us, it was like a hard drizzle. The couple in the table next to us grabbed their drinks and sat under the table during the quick shower: everyone found it funny. 🙂

Afterwards, it was a stop at the famous Hawaiian Cookie Company (where they had free samples!) and souvenir shopping at the ABC Store, which was like a mini all-you-need-shop everywhere (seriously, we saw like 5 of these in the span of about 5 blocks). My favorite buy from this place: a traditional hula girl for the dashboard; and a hula guy!

Time to head back to the car and turn in for the night. I noticed that there are a lot of homeless people in the streets of Hawaii, and Waikiki after dark is no exception. They came out with radios to dance, trinkets to sell, and we even saw a man with several parrots who charged for taking a picture with them. I don’t recommend walking alone at night here, though. The once lively streets were dead quiet, and it was only about 11 pm. Good thing about walking at any time though: the weather is literally perfect.

It was easy to go to dreamland, but tomorrow was a full day too: Pearl Harbor was waiting to be explored!