In April, our family went on a vacation in Hawaii.\u00a0 My parents went with us, and we spent a week on Oahu, the “main island”.\u00a0 We stayed in Waikiki Beach, which is just southwest of Honolulu.<\/p>\n
Wednesday 2011-04-13<\/strong><\/p>\n Wednesday was a long travel day.\u00a0 We woke up at 3am to get ready for our early flight out, hopping across the country, finally to arrive in Honolulu at 6pm (plus six hours time zone difference).\u00a0 By the time we got to the hotel and had supper, it had been a 24-hour travel day.<\/p>\n Thursday 2011-04-14<\/strong><\/p>\n Thursday started at 2am, when Foong’s ipod alarm clock (still on Eastern time) went off.\u00a0 She woke us up, claiming that it was 8am and that we needed to get ready for our “orientation breakfast”.\u00a0 After our long day before and a half-night’s rest, no one wanted to get up.\u00a0 It would be several hours before some of us were alert enough to figure out what had happened.<\/p>\n At the real 8am, we were ready to get up, and so we went to an “orientation breakfast”.\u00a0 That’s a free welcome breakfast, sponsored by the hotel and many local businesses, where they tell you all about Hawaii and give suggestions on what to do.\u00a0 We got suckered into taking a shuttle bus “to our hotel” by way of a museum and jewelry store, where they show you how coral is collected and polished into jewelry.\u00a0 I spent most of my effort convincing Sydney that she would not get to open an oyster and discover (purchase) a pearl.\u00a0 This game would last all week.<\/p>\n When we finally caught the shuttle back to our hotel, we decided tp declare our independence from our breakfast-feeding captors.\u00a0 So we took our van and drove through Waikiki beach and to Diamond Head crater.\u00a0 The trail to the top was closed for repairs, but we got to watch a helicopter taking supplies up to the top of the trail.\u00a0 We found a geocache, and then headed out to explore some more.<\/p>\n One place we explored was Safeway.\u00a0 We wanted to pick up breakfast stuff for the hotel, and some snacks and drinks for when we’re out.\u00a0 They had a full lunch buffet, so we ate there and we watched the locals shop… an adventure in itself.<\/p>\n We spent the afternoon at our hotel, on the beach and at the pool.<\/p>\n Friday 2011-04-15<\/strong><\/p>\n On Friday, we visited Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 We saw the submarine USS Bowfin, the Arizona memorial, and the USS Missouri battleship.\u00a0 It wasn’t a day that will live in infamy, but it was a sobering, educational trip.<\/p>\n Saturday 2011-04-16<\/strong><\/p>\n We spent Saturday at the Polynesian Cultural Centure, which is on the Northeast side of Oahu.\u00a0 This is a Polynesian-themed park that is run by the nearby Brigham Young University – Hawaii.\u00a0 Like most of the park’s employees, our tour guides, Liam from New Zealand and Kotona from Japan, were BYU-H students.\u00a0 We visited villages from Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga.\u00a0 Each village had activities which showcase some aspect of Polynesian life.\u00a0 We had dinner at a Luau, and later saw their eveng show, “H?: Breath of Life”.<\/p>\n The trip to the Polynesian Cultural Centure was definitely a highlight of our visit to Hawaii.<\/p>\n Sunday 2011-04-17<\/strong><\/p>\n On Sunday, we drove to the North Shore to visit the Dole Plantation.\u00a0 We took a ride on their mini-train, where they showed all of the different types of tropical crops that are grown in the area.\u00a0 The most surprising part of our visit was learning that pineapples grow as blooms on the top of small bushes (I had always imagined them hanging from trees, like bananas or coconuts).\u00a0 While we were on the train, it started raining.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this was a long tropical mountain rain that did not let up, and so the rest of our visit was spent inside the gift shop.<\/p>\n We left the plantation and drove on to the North Shore.\u00a0 Although the drive was only 8 miles, the landscape and weather changed dramatically along the way.\u00a0 It was sunny and warm in Haleiwa, and so we got out and walked on the beach.\u00a0 We also spent some time just up the road at Waimea Bay Beach Park.\u00a0 The sand on the North Shore is a beautiful mix of shell fragments and volcanic pieces (especially compared to the sand at our hotel in Waikiki, which is trucked in from somewhere else, because of years of erosion).<\/p>\n Monday 2011-04-18<\/strong><\/p>\n On Monday, we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, a bay that formed in an old volcano crater.\u00a0 The floor of the bay is covered in coral, and you can easily see tropical fish and other wildlife.\u00a0 This was an excellent place for a family to try snorkeling for the first time, because there are few waves and currents, the water is not very deep, and it’s easy to go from the snorkeling area back to the beach.\u00a0 We saw all sorts of fish, and we even saw an octopus — and on the shore, there were chickens!<\/p>\n In the afternoon, we walked over to the Hilton to see their “Hawaiian Village”, which I thought was supposed to be some sort of display of native Hawaiian culture.\u00a0 Instead, what we found was a collection of fancy shops that surrounds the Hilton’s pool pavilion.\u00a0 It was nice, but not what I had expected.\u00a0 The real shocker was seeing their display of African Black-Footed Penguins… in Hawaii??<\/p>\n We spent the rest of the day hanging around the pool and the outdoor restaurant at our hotel.<\/p>\n Tuesday 2011-04-19<\/strong><\/p>\n We did some rough calculations, and we decided that it would be a good idea to do at least one load of laundry before we had to start “recycling”.\u00a0 So we consulted the internet and made an elaborate plan to have our breakfast in Waikiki, just down the street from a laundromat.\u00a0 This would also give us a chance to explore downtown Waikiki.\u00a0 So we got the van, found a place to park, started a load, had breakfast, found a geocache, moved the clothes to the dryer, explored Waikiki some, and picked up our clothes.\u00a0 We were so proud of how clever we were.\u00a0 (Later, we discovered that our own hotel had a coin laundry in the basement, but it never occurred to us to check that close to home base!!!)<\/p>\n From there, we headed into downtown Honolulu to explore the ‘Iolani Palace, which was the official residence of King Kal?kaua and Queen Lili’uokalani.\u00a0 Inside the palace, we learned about how the many tribes of Hawaii were united by King Kamehameha, and later how the queen complied under protest to the forceful annexation by the United States.<\/p>\n From there, we visited the Aloha Tower, which overlooks Honolulu Harbor, and is surrounded by shops.<\/p>\n I had made up my mind that it was time to experience an authentic Hawaiian meal, so we went to a place called “Kaka’ako Kitchen”.\u00a0 It’s not much in terms of atmosphere, but it’s supposed to be good food.\u00a0 I had Loco Moco and Nalo Greens… which I discovered was really just country chopped steak with gravy and a green salad.\u00a0 So much for culture.<\/p>\n Wednesday 2011-04-20<\/strong><\/p>\n We woke up Wednesday morning and headed back over to the Hilton’s “lagoon”, where the girls rented a paddleboard, which is like a large surfboard that they stand on and paddle with a long oar.<\/p>\n We had already seen the beaches, volcanoes, the city, and Pearl Harbor, but we still had not seen the tropical rainforest.\u00a0 So after lunch, we decided to take a hike on the Manoa Falls trail.\u00a0 According to the guide book that we read, this was supposed to be an “easy” trail, perfect for families.\u00a0 In reality, although it was less than a mile long (one way), it was steep and muddy, and slippery in many parts.\u00a0 The scenery along the path was amazing, with a thick forest at the base, then twisted viney trees, large clusters of bamboo, and finally an opening at the foot of a 100-foot waterfall.<\/p>\n After our hike, we had a little bit of afternoon daylight left, so we drove up to punchbowl crater, which is a large dormant volcano surrounded by a residential neighborhood in Honolulu.\u00a0 Inside the crater is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.<\/p>\n Thursday 2011-04-21<\/strong><\/p>\n Our flight back home was at 9pm, so we had most of Thursday free to explore.\u00a0 We packed up and checked out of the hotel, and then Audrey and I bought one last souvenir, a ukulele.<\/p>\n Our final tourist attraction was Bishop Museum, which has exhibits on everything from early Polynesian culture to lava and volcanoes.<\/p>\n Thursday 2011-04-14<\/p>\n Thursday started at 2am, when Foong’s ipod alarm clock (still on Eastern time) went off.\u00a0 She woke us up, claiming that it was 8am and that we needed to get ready for our “orientation breakfast”.\u00a0 After our long day before and a half-night’s rest, no one wanted to get up.\u00a0 It would be several hours before some of us were alert enough to figure out what had happened.<\/p>\n At the real 8am, we were ready to get up, and so we went to an “orientation breakfast”.\u00a0 That’s a free welcome breakfast, sponsored by the hotel and many local businesses, where they tell you all about Hawaii and give suggestions on what to do.\u00a0 We got suckered into taking a shuttle bus “to our hotel” by way of a museum and jewelry store, where they show you how coral is collected and polished into jewelry.\u00a0 I spent most of my effort convincing Sydney that she would not get to open an oyster and discover (purchase) a pearl.\u00a0 This game would last all week.<\/p>\n When we finally caught the shuttle back to our hotel, we decided tp declare our independence from our breakfast-feeding captors.\u00a0 So we took our van and drove through Waikiki beach and to Diamond Head crater.\u00a0 The trail to the top was closed for repairs, but we got to watch a helicopter taking supplies up to the top of the trail.\u00a0 We found a geocache, and then headed out to explore some more.<\/p>\n One place we explored was Safeway.\u00a0 We wanted to pick up breakfast stuff for the hotel, and some snacks and drinks for when we’re out.\u00a0 They had a full lunch buffet, so we ate there and we watched the locals shop… an adventure in itself.<\/p>\n We spent the afternoon at our hotel, on the beach and at the pool.<\/p>\n Friday 2011-04-15<\/p>\n On Friday, we visited Pearl Harbor.\u00a0 We saw the submarine USS Bowfin, the Arizona memorial, and the USS Missouri battleship.\u00a0 It wasn’t a day that will live in infamy, but it was a sobering, educational trip.<\/p>\n Saturday 2011-04-16<\/p>\n We spent Saturday at the Polynesian Cultural Centure, which is on the Northeast side of Oahu.\u00a0 This is a Polynesian-themed park that is run by the nearby Brigham Young University – Hawaii.\u00a0 Like most of the park’s employees, our tour guides, Liam from New Zealand and Kotona from Japan, were BYU-H students.\u00a0 We visited villages from Hawaii, Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Tahiti and Tonga.\u00a0 Each village had activities which showcase some aspect of Polynesian life.\u00a0 We had dinner at a Luau, and later saw their eveng show, “H?: Breath of Life”.<\/p>\n The trip to the Polynesian Cultural Centure was definitely a highlight of our visit to Hawaii.<\/p>\n Sunday 2011-04-17<\/p>\n On Sunday, we drove to the North Shore to visit the Dole Plantation.\u00a0 We took a ride on their mini-train, where they showed all of the different types of tropical crops that are grown in the area.\u00a0 The most surprising part of our visit was learning that pineapples grow as blooms on the top of small bushes (I had always imagined them hanging from trees, like bananas or coconuts).\u00a0 While we were on the train, it started raining.\u00a0 Unfortunately, this was a long tropical mountain rain that did not let up, and so the rest of our visit was spent inside the gift shop.<\/p>\n We left the plantation and drove on to the North Shore.\u00a0 Although the drive was only 8 miles, the landscape and weather changed dramatically along the way.\u00a0 It was sunny and warm in Haleiwa, and so we got out and walked on the beach.\u00a0 We also spent some time just up the road at Waimea Bay Beach Park.\u00a0 The sand on the North Shore is a beautiful mix of shell fragments and volcanic pieces (especially compared to the sand at our hotel in Waikiki, which is trucked in from somewhere else, because of years of erosion).<\/p>\n Monday 2011-04-18<\/p>\n On Monday, we went snorkeling in Hanauma Bay, a bay that formed in an old volcano crater.\u00a0 The floor of the bay is covered in coral, and you can easily see tropical fish and other wildlife.\u00a0 This was an excellent place for a family to try snorkeling for the first time, because there are few waves and currents, the water is not very deep, and it’s easy to go from the snorkeling area back to the beach.\u00a0 We saw all sorts of fish, and we even saw an octopus — and on the shore, there were chickens!<\/p>\n In the afternoon, we walked over to the Hilton to see their “Hawaiian Village”, which I thought was supposed to be some sort of display of native Hawaiian culture.\u00a0 Instead, what we found was a collection of fancy shops that surrounds the Hilton’s pool pavilion.\u00a0 It was nice, but not what I had expected.\u00a0 The real shocker was seeing their display of African Black-Footed Penguins… in Hawaii??<\/p>\n We spent the rest of the day hanging around the pool and the outdoor restaurant at our hotel.<\/p>\n Tuesday 2011-04-19<\/p>\n We did some rough calculations, and we decided that it would be a good idea to do at least one load of laundry before we had to start “recycling”.\u00a0 So we consulted the internet and made an elaborate plan to have our breakfast in Waikiki, just down the street from a laundromat.\u00a0 This would also give us a chance to explore downtown Waikiki.\u00a0 So we got the van, found a place to park, started a load, had breakfast, found a geocache, moved the clothes to the dryer, explored Waikiki some, and picked up our clothes.\u00a0 We were so proud of how clever we were.\u00a0 (Later, we discovered that our own hotel had a coin laundy in the basement, but it never occured to us to check that close to home base!!!)<\/p>\n From there, we headed into downtown Honolulu to explore the ‘Iolani Palace, which was the official residence of King Kal?kaua and Queen Lili’uokalani.\u00a0 Inside the palace, we learned about how the many tribes of Hawaii were united by King Kamehameha, and later how the queen complied under protest to the forceful annexation by the United States.<\/p>\n From there, we visited the Aloha Tower, which overlooks Honolulu Harbor, and is surrounded by shops.<\/p>\n I had made up my mind that it was time to experience an authentic Hawaiian meal, so we went to a place called “Kaka’ako Kitchen”.\u00a0 It’s not much in terms of atmosphere, but it’s supposed to be good food.\u00a0 I had Loco Moco and Nalo Greens… which I discovered was really just country chopped steak with gravy and a green salad.\u00a0 So much for culture.<\/p>\n Wednesday 2011-04-20<\/p>\n We woke up Wednesday morning and headed back over to the Hilton’s “lagoon”, where the girls rented a paddleboard, which is like a large surfboard that they stand on and paddle with a long oar.<\/p>\n We had already seen the beaches, volcanos, the city, and Pearl Harbor, but we still had not seen the tropical rainforest.\u00a0 So after lunch, we decided to take a hike on the Manoa Falls trail.\u00a0 According to the guide book that we read, this was supposed to be an “easy” trail, perfect for families.\u00a0 In reality, although it was less than a mile long (one way), it was steep and muddy, and slippery in many parts.\u00a0 The scenery along the path was amazing, with a thick forest at the base, then twisted viney trees, large clusters of bamboo, and finally an opening at the foot of a 100-foot waterfall.<\/p>\n After our hike, we had a little bit of afternoon daylight left, so we drove up to punchbowl crater, which is a large dormant volcano surrounded by a residential neighborhood in Honolulu.\u00a0 Inside the crater is the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.<\/p>\n Thursday 2011-04-21<\/p>\n Our flight back home was at 9pm, so we had most of Thursday free to explore.\u00a0 We packed up and checked out of the hotel, and then Audrey and I bought one last souvenir, a ukulele.<\/p>\n Our final tourist attraction was Bishop Museum, which has exhibits on everything from early Polynesian culture to lava and volcanos.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" In April, our family went on a vacation in Hawaii.\u00a0 My parents went with us, and we spent a week on Oahu, the “main island”.\u00a0 We stayed in Waikiki Beach, which is just southwest of Honolulu. Wednesday 2011-04-13 Wednesday was a long travel day.\u00a0 We woke up at 3am to get ready for our early […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,17],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-350","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-vacation","count-0","even alt","author-alan","last"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=350"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/350\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=350"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=350"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/alanporter.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=350"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}