Hawaii! Part 1

This year, John and I hit our 10 year wedding anniversary! 

And to celebrate, we went to Hawaii!!!

Having not taken a week off of being a mom since I became one, I was definitely ready for this trip! First, we drove to my parents' house (they were watching the kids) and after spending a few days with them, (including the 4th of July with some cousins) we were off!

Wednesday

Stepping off the plane on Wednesday, we could definitely feel the humidity change! But living in Utah, we can pretty much feel the change almost anywhere we go... Lol. 

And after a quick Walmart run for some food, John checked out the beach by our hotel and I took a long awaited nap. Pretty sure I've been needing that nap since I started having kids. Haha! 

The only other thing we did that day was get dinner at Aloha Poke in Waianae. It was pretty good, but we chickened out on trying the fish raw. We tried it later on in the week, and it's not really my thing...

Thursday

The next day, we started bright and early with a 6 a.m. Diamond Head Crater Hike. The view was beautiful and it was a pretty easy hike! Once that was done, we went to the Barefoot Beach Cafe by Waikiki Beach where I finally tried an acai bowl! And let me just say, it sort of tastes like black bean paste to me... Like, I wouldn't be surprised if they mixed half of it with black beans just to save costs. Haha! That being said, John and I did actually trade since he liked my acai bowl way more than the burrito he got!

After breakfast, we headed to Pearl Harbor. The displays and tributes were pretty cool, but we did have to wait for almost 3 hours to go to the Arizona Memorial. I even set an alarm on my phone to get reservations and they were all gone within the two minutes it took me to log in and select different time slots since the ones I chose kept getting filled too fast. And about half of the people that signed up didn't even show. Lame. 

Well, John didn't want to drive back in to Waikiki for the sushi and I was hungry, so we picked a quick place that wasn't too far away called Shay's Smash Burgers. John wasn't so sure about it since it was a food truck in the dirt half of a used car parking lot, but it was great! And the price was pretty decent for Hawaii as well. My only regret was not getting the secret sauce on my fries. Next time...

And now, we finally got to try snorkeling! We went to Electric beach but didn't go all the way out by the giant tube in the water like we should have. It was still cool for a first time, but not the best place. We saw a lot of unique (to us) fish which was fun! One good thing we did was to bring some cheap snorkeling gear along with us. That way, we could use it whenever we wanted without having deadlines to worry about.

Friday

On Friday, we went to the Laie Hawaii Temple. We did a session there and also went to the visitor's center. Afterwards, we had Loco Moco at Papa Ole's and got a mango and blue Hawaiian angel's halo with soft serve ice cream at Angel's Ice Cream! We got a small and it was huge!

After eating at Hukilau Beach and running back to the car when it started pouring rain for a few minutes, we went to Waimea Falls. After all the research I did to find fun stuff to do, this waterfall was listed on a lot of sites, but none of them said you had to pay to see it. And at $25 per adult, it was no small fee. We actually decided against going but we did find a coconut on our way to our next place... Whiiiich was confiscated at the airport agricultural check. She hit the coconut on the table and a bug fell out... so I was more than happy to hand it over. Haha!

The next place we went was to snorkel at The Three Tables and then at Shark's Cove. The Three Tables was great and we even got to swim with a school of fish for a while! Shark's Cove isn't very far away and was pretty similar, but was much more shallow. Overall, they were much better than Electric Beach had been. 

The last thing we did this day was do a shell hunting competition at Sunset Beach. Which went ok. Turns out most of the week, the best shells I found were found when I wasn't actually looking for shells. But I did find a giant cracked snail shell and John found some dead coral, so there's that. Not sure which one of us "won". Lol.

Saturday

Saturday, we spent on the lower West side of the island and started by going to China Wall and the Spitting Cave which were pretty cool! 

After that, we decided to do the Koko Crater Railway Hike. I had forgotten my tennis shoes at the hotel and wasn't too excited to hike in my water shoes, but after John saw the hike while we were driving by, it became to top of his list of things to do! And I'm glad we did it! 

The view from the top was beautiful (possibly better than Diamond Head's view?) and it felt great once we made it to the top of the 1,048 steps! Although, if I were to change anything, it would be to do this hike on the last day of our trip because our legs were sore for the rest of the week!

After our full sun stair master hike, we cooled off with some Malasadas from Leonard's Bakery at Sandy Beach while John tried to body surf in the ocean. 

We then went through the Lanai Lookout Lava Tube (careful crossing the road!) to an amazing small bay and then went to the blowhole that was a little overrated in our opinion.

And that was a great first half of our week! I already want to go back while I'm writing this...

On to Part two!