ALOHA!...Part 2

January 31, 2009 Day 3:

It’s another beautiful day in Kailua. Portuguese sausage rolls and chocolate croissants from Elvin’s Bakery for breakfast. (yum)

So no days have been really planned out. It’s just kinda go with whatever we feel like doing at the moment. Today we decided to head to Waikiki Beach.

After finding a (temporary) parking spot, we were ready to hit the beach! Man there’s a lot of people out today…duh Carolina, it’s a Saturday. Lol Anyways, we get to a stand on the beach with a rack o surfboards and that’s where we met Zack from Peru.


Zack would be our surf instructor for the next hour. This took a little coaxing to get Steph to join me (as this was her first time) but she soon realized it was totally worth it! :)



After the super brief “pop-up” lesson on the sand…we were off and running…errr, make that paddling! ;) The hard part of surfing is not the actual “standing on water” part…it’s the paddling…and we will still feel the pain in the days to come. But I gotta say, it hurts sooo good! :)

The waves today were tiny but it was still great. Steph even got up on her first try! Please enjoy the slideshow…yeah there’s about a hundred pics…you don’t have to look at them all. :)

We had such a good time (and workout). Did I mention…surfer boys are never a bad thing to look at. ;)



*only one casualty occurred…I somehow stepped on something (Steph thing urchin) and it won’t come out of my LEFT foot…must stop and get Neosporin and band-aids STAT!

Then we “ran like the wind” back to the car, as it began to rain…not cuz we were afraid of getting wet, but because we were afraid of getting a ticket or the car towed…trust me, if it was gonna happen to anyone…it would most definitely happen to us. We made it back to the car (with the meter flashing ZERO) and decided lunch would be good.

On to the Hard Rock Café Honolulu we went! (yes I know it’s “touristy” but we’ve already been through this in the New York and Vegas postings…get over it, I dig it!) lol


We had a great lunch and yummy drinks…and had fun conversations with the waitress, merch guy, and the manager…Stephanie talked him in to giving us the kama'aina discount (locals’ discount)…um awesome. :)



We left Honolulu and headed back to Kailua. Along the way we stopped and took in the sights.





There was a railing and then this...




past the chicken and pigeons was this...



I could soooo watch the water all day long with no worries. :)

We then decided to another couple of hours before the sun started to set back at Lani Kai beach. The plan was to enjoy the peacefulness like we did the morning before. Well that didn’t exactly happen. There was a group of about 4 or 5 little boys playing something that looked like either pirates or knights…either way, they had swords. :) They were cute but slightly less than silent. But then we had the pleasure (or misfortune) of watching the “1,2,3 Girls.” This group of about 6 girls decided it was necessary to have pictures of them on the beach jumping (at the count of 3). A couple of pictures would have been sufficient, I’m quite certain, but NO they kept on for at least 30 minutes. Oh yeah, we mocked them (we even thought about running and jumping in to get in a shot)…but we weren’t the only ones. Lol Slightly annoying, but still, I was on a beach, and all was right in the world. :)



After a slight issue of being locked out of the apartment, I decided that we would head back to Waikiki and get a room for the night…we were still pumped from surfing earlier and want to do it again tomorrow.

***Guess who else is NOT COOL…hotels.com. The phone operators have no clue what about what they’re talking about. Still waiting on a refund from their idocracy. Give your money to someone else.***

But whatever, we got a room and cleaned up and made our way down to “the strip” about 2 blocks over. Warn out and tired but once again hungry. So you can totally laugh at this I don’t mind…we ended up at that traditional Hawaiian eatery known as The Cheesecake Factory.



HA! Yeah I know there’s one in Dallas, and no I’ve never been there, and no there's no palm trees in front of the one in Dallas.

It was good and they had a live band complete with ukulele. :)

Whoo hoo! I made it to midnight tonight. Yay…and good night! ;)