At Home with the Houses: 3 Islands, 3 Birthdays

A few years ago, Cristy, Katie and I were enjoying the St Regis spa on Monarch Beach, in celebration of our birthdays and Cristy’s upcoming wedding. We were having so much fun relaxing next to the pool that we came up with the brilliant idea to celebrate our 30th birthdays together at the St. Regis in Kauai.

Katie’s birthday is October 7th, mine is the 9th, and Cristy’s is the 12th. We all made a pact to hold off on having kiddos until our 30s so we could take this trip together, along with our husbands. And we did it! So instead of family planning, Katie and I (both type-A when it comes to organizing vacations) began planning our trip to Hawaii. We created nerdy Excel spreadsheets detailing our schedule, excursions, restaurants, flight info, etc. We even held conference calls between the six of us! All of the planning paid off, though. We had an amazing trip. It was the perfect way to ring in a new decade.

As David and I had never been to Hawaii before, we flew into Honolulu a few days early to explore Oahu. The plan was to spend three days in the capital, and then meet the rest of the group in Maui on Monday.

David and I arrived in Oahu on Friday morning. Our plane landed early (gasp!), which gave us plenty of time to pick up our rental car and get to our hotel, the Hilton Waikiki Beach, before lunch. The Hilton is situated on the beach and offered beautiful views of Diamond Head from our balcony.

The property featured an outdoor shopping center, multiple pools, a kid’s cove, bars and restaurants, and a great lawn, which was home to a few parrots and a pond with turtles.

David and I spent our first day soaking up the sun on Waikiki Beach, before walking to Lulu’s for a casual linner (lunch/dinner) of fried shrimp and beef teriyaki skewers.

Every morning in Oahu, we woke up extra early to take part in the Hilton’s sunrise exercise classes on the great lawn. It was really easy the first couple of days with the jet lag, where waking up at 6:00 felt like sleeping in until 11:00. However, it got more difficult as our bodies adjusted to the time change.

On Saturday morning, we took a yoga class, which was really relaxing. The next day, not so much… I thought I had signed us up for Pilates, but our instructor had other ideas. She kicked it into high gear and kicked our butts. David did not take part in any sunrise exercise classes after that…

After yoga on Saturday, we drove to Pearl Harbor. Tickets for the USS Arizona memorial had been sold out online for weeks, but the Hilton concierge told us that a certain number of free tickets are distributed every morning at 7:00 before the park opens. Since we were up early anyway, we made our way through Honolulu to the base.

Pearl Harbor is still a working base, so there are only certain sections open to tourists, with cell phones and photos restricted in some areas. We made it to the visitor’s center and claimed our two free tickets to the Arizona, and purchased passes to board the USS Missouri.

The USS Arizona was destroyed by Japanese bombers on the morning of December 7, 1941. 1,177 men were killed when the massive explosion sunk the ship. As we began to approach the memorial by boat, we were overwhelmed by the stench of oil. We could see it sitting on the surface of the water. More than 70 years have passed since the attack on Pearl Harbor, and the Arizona is still leaking oil.

The harbor is shallow enough that it was easy to make out the enormous ship in the water below us. As the memorial is a protected area, there is a reef growing on the twisted metal. Even with the oil on the surface, we were able to spot schools of fish feeding off of the reef, and a sea turtle swimming nearby.

It was a very moving site, made even more so by the fact that there are still 1,102 men inside the ship. The Arizona acts as a massive gravesite for those that were trapped inside when she sank.

From there, we visited the USS Missouri.

Japan signed their surrender documents on the deck of the Missouri in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945.

From the bow of the Missouri, we were able to see the start of the war with the view of the Arizona in front of us, and the end of the war, standing on the deck where Japan surrendered.

As we left Pearl Harbor, David and I realized that it was still only mid-morning and we had the entire day ahead of us. That’s what happens when you wake up early, I guess! (David and I are not early birds, so we wouldn’t know.)

We returned to Waikiki and decided that instead of relaxing on the beach, we would hike up Diamond Head. Diamond Head is a saucer-shaped crater formed from a massive volcanic explosion 300,000 years ago. On the advice of my parents, who’d visited Hawaii in June and done the hike, David and I decided to walk from the Hilton down Waikiki to the top of Diamond Head… What were we thinking?

I gifted David that Yoda backpack for Christmas last year. He had been wanting it for years, and Hawaii was the perfect time to use it. Yoda was a hit on all of our hikes. People loved him, and even asked if they could take pictures with him.

It was so dang hot that afternoon, that by the time we reached Diamond Head Market & Grill for snacks, we had already drank both bottles of water we’d brought with us. The marketplace filled them up for us with ice water, and we bought a couple of salads and taro chips for lunch. We also purchased a huge blueberry cream cheese scone for dessert (they looked too good to pass up).

The last flight of stairs before reaching the top!

Onward and upward! We made it to Diamond Head Park and paid a reduced entry fee as we were arriving on foot. From the base of the crater, the walk to the top of the ridge was easy, a quick 45 minutes up and back down. But by the time we got back down, we’d been walking in the heat for hours and couldn’t imagine spending another hour or so walking back to the Hilton.

Yoda pointing out the Hilton to us

So we were a couple of wimps and cabbed it back to the hotel, where we spent the rest of the day playing in the pool. We felt like a couple of kids going down the waterslides in the family pool.

The next morning, after our hellish workout, we rewarded ourselves with Portuguese donuts from Leonard’s bakery. Those little balls of goodness come in three different varieties – plain, coconut, and cream filled. We got a few of each and ate them on our drive to Hanauma Bay.

Much like Diamond Head, Hanauma Bay is a crater created 32,000 years ago. Waves eroded part of the crater walls, filling the hole with water and creating the curved bay seen today. The bay is protected from the rough seas, which makes it the perfect home for a variety of colourful fish. The water is also very shallow and clear, so it’s a perfect spot for kids and beginner snorkelers… and us.

After snorkelling for a few hours and then taking a quick cat nap on the beach, we began our hour-long drive across the island to the North Shore. We hadn’t seen any sea turtles yet, besides the one at Pearl Harbor, so we were determined to find one on Laniakea Beach on the North Shore. The area is nicknamed Turtle Beach because of the multitude of sea turtles that eat the algae off the rocks in the ocean there, and then come onshore to sunbathe.

As we were driving to the North Shore, following my iPhone GPS, I noticed Dole Plantation signs along the road. And a few minutes later, there it was right in front of us! When we were planning out our days in Oahu, I had originally put the Dole Plantation on my list of things to see because the pineapple maze is the largest in the world. But as our days started to fill up, we realized that we wouldn’t have time to do everything and the plantation was scrapped.

Since Dole happened to be on our way to the North Shore, though, David and I decided to stop in for a light snack. We weren’t able to do the maze (we could’ve gotten lost in there for hours!), but we did order a couple of pineapple whips (pineapple ice cream blended with fresh chunks of pineapple and juice). We also bought a couple of fun Christmas ornaments, per tradition, and then headed on our way.

We found Turtle Beach, but the water was so choppy that we were sure there were no turtles around. David ventured out into the waves, and when I saw that he was doing fine, I joined him in the water. As I was walking out to David, a large wave came up behind him and in the wave, I could see the dark outline of a huge turtle! It was literally the biggest sea turtle I’ve ever seen. I yelled, ‘There’s a giant turtle right behind you!’ and then ran out of the water to grab the Go-Pro and David’s snorkel gear.

Well, that turtle was wicked fast so there was no chance we were going to catch it on video. Instead, we ran down the beach as it swam parallel to shore. After a few minutes, it had reached a shallow area filled with algae-covered rocks. There, we noticed about a dozen sea turtles swimming around, having their algae lunch.

There were conservationists on the shore, ready to guard the turtles if they decided to come out to sunbathe. None did, though, which was unfortunate because we’d never seen a sea turtle out of water before (that is, until our recent trip to the Dominican where David rescued one)!

After our adventure on Turtle Beach, we had lunch with the locals at Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck. We ordered the favourite – scampi served with rice loaded with garlic. For dessert, we had shave ice from Matsumoto’s down the street.

Before flying out of Oahu the next afternoon, we ate lunch at Morimoto at the Modern Hotel next door to the Hilton. Morimoto is owned by the Morimoto from Iron Chef America. I had the lobster melt sandwich with miso mayo, salad, and wasabi fries, while David had the special plate – ishi yaki buri bop. His meal consisted of yellowtail mixed with Asian flavors and cooked tableside.