Hawaii Photo Album
Oahu - Honolulu & The North Shore.
We both managed to book a solid week off from work and started debating our options of where to go. Pacific Mexico? The Caribbean? The US West Coast? Hawaii? Go back to French Polynesia? Spain? After reading plenty of tripadvisor reviews and comparing prices for just about everything, we decided to go to Hawaii. Then, there's the decision of what island. Since it was our first trip to Hawaii, we decided to go for Honolulu and Waikiki Beach, the most popular tourist destination in the state.
But, knowing us, we wouldn't be thrilled with a week in a bustling city -- so we decided to split our time between Waikiki and the North Shore.
Arrival - Saturday, April 14th.
We left Austin, Friday, April 13th around 6:30 -- or at least that was the plan. A late crew delayed the flight, and a storm in DFW pushed it even later. We arrived in LAX just moments after our Honolulu-bound flight took off. So, we spent the first night of our vacation at the LAX Hilton, courtesy of American Airlines. They rebooked us for a 6pm departure on Saturday, but we managed to get stand-by for the early morning flight.
At the airport, we hailed a cab and wound up with a limo, so we made our grand entrance to Waikiki Beach in style. We stayed at the Sheraton Moana Surfrider for our first three nights, in a room overlooking the beach and Diamond Head Crater. The Surfrider is a historic hotel -- the middle part was built around the turn of the last century.
Our room, in the Tower, had a great view to Diamond Head. Here we are right after checking in, wearing the leis the hotel gave us.
It's easier to cope with jet-lag when you get some sun -- and what better place than the tropics to do just that?
We wandered down the beach (toward Diamond Head) from the main strip of hotels.
Here's the sun setting over Waikiki on Saturday, April 14th. And, wow, aren't we still pale in these pictures!
We're sure Steve could have captured this scene better -- but after several shots, this is as best as we could do to show the Waikiki strip just after sunset.
