Day 1 and 2 - Oahu

Friday
Kim says: Woke up at 4 a.m., and Kim’s dad picked us up at 5 (thanks!). All of our flights were on time, which was great. The unfortunate part was that we had a four (yes, count them…FOUR) hour layover in San Francisco. On first glance we thought maybe this wouldn’t be so bad. San Fran airport has to have lots of shops, restaurants and people-watching to entertain us, right? Wrong. It appears their airport was under construction, so we flew in and out of the international terminal…which had a whopping 10 gates and one restaurant. So that ended up being a very long wait. But we got into Hawaii on time, grabbed a cab, made it to the hotel, and promptly fell asleep at 7 p.m. local time (1 a.m. EDT).

Eric says: Ugh, too early. Tired of San Fran. On flight movie. Yay! Bad Brendan Fraser movie. Boo! HIMYM episode. Yay! No sound. Boo!

Saturday
Kim says: With the time difference, we were up before the crack of dawn. We wandered down the street to a McDonalds (the only thing open that early) and grabbed a bite to eat. Then since the buses didn’t begin running until 7:30ish, we decided we’d just walk to Diamond Head. After all, we could see it from the hotel, so it couldn’t be that far. Ha. So, we walked along Waikiki Beach and then up the looooooooong hill towards Diamond Head. Turns out the walk was about 3 miles, but we did see some beautiful sights we would have missed on a bus! Diamond Head itself was really neat, and the views from the top were amazing! We also enjoyed the zoom on our new camera…definitely a huge improvement from our other one.




Since the walk up was so long (and it was much hotter by the time we left the park!), we decided to take the bus back to the hotel. But we ended up waiting an hour for the bus we needed – maybe we should have walked after all!

When we got back to the hotel, we packed up and headed to the pier to catch our ship – the Pride of America. The embarkation process was much easier and faster than we anticipated, and we were on ship in no time. Our rooms weren’t ready yet, so we had the lunch buffet and explored our home for the week. Not much later, we were able to get into our room – which actually felt more spacious than we guessed. (Imagine spending the week sailing in your college dorm room…but with a bathroom).



Eric says: Weird, 4:30 feels like 10:30. Long walk, tired. Longer hike. More tired. Nice view! Our bus? No. Our bus? No. Our bus! Small room, move over.