See what I mean about Vanessa being a gym kind of person? I went to the “fitness corner” (it really is in a corner…) with Vanessa. There was a proper pull-up bar for me, and while I was doing my own pull-ups, Vanessa copied. No need for coaxing or any prompting. She just pulled up on some other bar that she could reach. Alright, she isn’t pulling yet, but she can hang from the bar and swing quite well.
Vanessa had her last dance class today. At least for now. We’re not continuing her class because she doesn’t seem very keen about it. In fact, most of the time, she simply doesn’t follow the class at all, except for the one or two activities which involve something that she likes. Running, and jumping, for example. Stomping her feet with her tap shoes too. But even then, she makes up her own variations of the routines. It’s a difficult time accompanying her for the class when she doesn’t want to listen.
After twelve days in Honolulu, it’s time for us to return home. Our flight is at 8am in the morning, which means we’ve to get to the airport pretty early that morning, and that means getting up and starting the day even earlier to get to the airport on time. Traveling with kids means everything takes a lot more than time than adults alone would have taken. What more, with the “enhanced security” measures being introduced after the NW253 bomb scare, we were a little apprehensive about additional delays that might occur at the airport.
Today’s the last full day we have in Honolulu, because we leave for our flight back to Singapore early tomorrow morning. We decided to all have lunch together at a nearby Chinese restaurant called Happy Days. Easy to find, thanks to GPS navigation again. We had dim sum and ordered a few other dishes. I found myself liking the chilli particularly. Then I realized that I haven’t had any chilli since stepping foot in the US. I don’t know if the chilli at Happy Days was really that good, or that I was simply missing the taste of chilli.
Our previous drive eastward on the Kalanianaole Highway brought us past Hanauma Bay, but it was closed (every Tuesday). Today, we made a trip just to see this place. Unfortunately, the car park was full, and we weren’t let in. In the end, we stopped at another nearby sightseeing point, and walked to Hanauma Bay. The place is awfully crowded. You have to pay to get to the beach. There is a public bus route whose main purpose is to serve beach users, so it doesn’t operate on Tuesdays (when Hanauma Bay closes). I couldn’t understand all the fuss over Hanauma Bay. But when you get there, you will appreciate it.
We did a few things today: Visit to Diamond Head Crater, the Waikiki Aquarium, and then shopping at the Waikele Premium Outlets. We didn’t actually plan to go up Diamond Head Crater initially, but since we were going to be driving past it, we thought why not just stop for a few moments. It does cost $5 per car to go in, according to a sign post at the bottom on the trail doing up. It turned out that the car park at the top was full, so we couldn’t go in anyway. We turned back and stopped somewhere along the way to look around and take some photos.
We went to the northern part of Oahu today. When you have a rented car, you try to make full use of it. It was the Dole Plantation that we originally wanted to visit, but when we realized it was pretty close to the North Shore, we thought we’ll just go up there to visit as well. There wasn’t time for us the explore the entire North Shore. We just wanted to hit Haleiwa, have lunch, then turn back to the Dole Plantation.
Day eight in Hawaii is Christmas Day. We went for a drive around the island of Oahu. It was only half the island, actually. In fact, it was even less than half the island. We planned to drive eastward, head toward Kailua beach, then turn west to Pali Lookout, then back into Honolulu and return home. This is supposed to be a scenic drive to take in the sights of the sea, the beaches, and the highlands. It’s the first longish drive after we got the rented car.
It’s Christmas Eve. We spent the morning at the Ala Moana Beach. It was a big logistic exercise to get that many adults, and an almost equivalent number of kids and infants, organized, packed, and ready to go. It was a really hot day, but that didn’t matter at all to the kids. The adults had to smear lots of sunblock lotion on them though.
We did some research the night before on what transport to get. We wanted to get an MPV, or what the US folks call a mini-van. It turns out that every rental company seems to be out of mini-vans. We decided to go for a “mid-sized” vehicle from Enterprise. It turns out to be quite a largish vehicle, at least by Singapore’s standards. I’ve driven several times in the US, so I am not unfamiliar with left-hand drive and driving on US roads. But this would be the first time I drove out of the car rental lot without a navigator sitting next to me.
I think we had 11 oysters each, from The Line restaurant at Shangri-la Hotel. It's a big buffet with plenty of food.
Lunch at Lerk Thai some weekends ago.
