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…
Tag Archives: Hawaii
Hawaii Day Twelve – Chinese Lunch
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…
Hawaii Day Eleven – Hanauma Bay
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…
Hawaii Day Ten – Aquarium and Shopping
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…
Hawaii Day Nine – North Shore
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…
Hawaii Day Eight – Island Drive
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…
Hawaii Day Seven – Ala Moana Beach
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.
Hawaii Day Six – A Set of Wheels
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…
Hawaii Day Five – Kahala Mall
We didn’t really do much on day five. We had become a little exhausted taking care of Vanessa and Ian. Especially Ian. Sometimes he just wouldn’t stop crying. By the time we could “move out”, enough of the day had gone past. We decided to just go somewhere nearby, and that would be Kahala Mall. There wasn’t anything particular in Kahala Mall that we wanted to get.
Hawaii Day Four – Aloha Tower
We went to the Aloha Tower today. It’s supposedly ten storey high, the tallest in its time. It does look quite stately. Ten storey isn’t very high at all by today’s standards. But it’s plenty high enough if you want to go up and find that the elevators aren’t working. That’s what happened to us. As we were contemplating whether it would be worth our while to climb up the stairs, we noticed that the stairs were also sealed off….