We had the most relaxing week on the island of Oahu. Neither of us are the best flyers, a six hour flight is tiresome and I always get a case of ‘Jet Belly’ so the first day can be a bit wobbly as I get my land legs back! Once we settled in though…. it was fantastic.
We had planned on going to Albuquerque for Balloon Fest this week, which according to the weather reports we saw I am glad we changed our plans to Hawaii. Normally I book our travel myself, but this time I booked a package through Costco’s travel services. Six nights in Oahu with airfare and airport transfers from and to the airport was less expensive then four nights in New Mexico (during Balloon Fest). We had the traditional Lei greeting and this deal gave us each a free breakfast/lunch or brunch at Duke’s or Hula Grill restaurants which were in our hotel, the Outrigger. While we waited for our room to be available at 3:00 we used our first coupons at Hula Grill and I had a perfect lump crab and spinach eggs benedict. Yummy!
We took the trolley to Chinatown to compare the baked char siu manapua’s at Royal Kitchen and Sing Cheong Yuan. As I recall our winner was Sing Cheong Yuan. I prefer them steamed like the one above. We wanted to stock up for the week on local goodness so picked up fried rice at the Golden Palace (watch that first step coming out -it’s a doozy!). We picked up roasted pork and bbq pork also. We decided the hop off hop on trolley wasn’t for us, seems most people don’t ‘hop off’, they just hold their phones out and record the entire journey – and don’t move for old ladies who are ‘glowing’ with Hawaiian heat and humidity! We were given a refund and took Uber or Lyft from then on.
While you can pay to have loungers and an umbrella and sit right on the beach, we found perfect, for us, loungers under a palm tree 10 feet from the beach every morning except our last full day. I kept my phone in the room for the most part so there aren’t a lot of photos but the ones I have…..I may be enlarging and hanging in the living room! We spent a lot of time bobbing in the ocean, watching people taking surfing lessons and someone on a hydrofoil surfboard.
We went to the Kahala Market and got Poke and some sashimi – it was so fresh and so good! One night we found one of many food trucks in Waikiki. And we found Banan! I knew it was close but I didn’t realize we would be able to see the shop from our balcony. Banan offers non dairy banana ‘ice cream’, made simply from locally grown bananas and other fruits and herbs. We got the Pineapple Yacht and it was, again, yum!
We were at the Journey concert where Kirk Hammett from Metallica came on stage and Arnel sang Enter Sandman. I need more adjectives but it was a great night.
The view from our balcony made it easy to decide we didn’t need to go explore the island on this visit. This was an amazing vacation, it was the getaway we needed right now.
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Our New Neighborhood 2023 