theDIBB - Hawaii Honeymoon Oct 18! Day 2

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Friday 19th October 2018

I woke up around 04:00 this morning and spent an hour trying to get back to sleep before eventually giving up. I got up and watched an episode of This Is Us on the iPad before Mark woke up around 06:00. We enjoyed the view from the room balcony, which we hadn’t seen last night as it was dark and took our time getting ready. We ended up leaving the room at 08:00.

I knew we’d be tired today, from travelling yesterday and because of the time difference, so I didn’t plan too much in for the day. First up was breakfast at IHOP, which we always do on the first morning of our holidays to the US. The nearest one was just a 2-minute walk from our hotel. We had to wait a couple of mins before being seated, as it was very busy.

Mark had the Cinn-A-Stack with a regular coffee and I had the new Mexican Tres Leches with an iced vanilla latte. We both enjoyed breakfast, but I felt like I’d gone off IHOP a little bit and didn’t feel the need to return on this trip, which is very unlike me. Total cost was $35.46 plus tip.

From here we walked over to the Ala Wai Boat Harbor and took a wander down the Fort DeRussy Boardwalk, past the Hilton Hawaiian Village and Kahanamoku Beach.

We headed towards Kalakaua Avenue, which is one of the main streets of Waikiki with lots of the designer shops and restaurants. We quickly popped in to an ABC Store for some water, which also looked good for souvenirs, so we decided we’d come back here before leaving.

We continued along until we reached the Duke Kahanamoku Statue (Hawaiian native who popularised surfing) and Waikiki Beach. We don’t tend to spend much time at the beach, unless we’re on a dedicated sun holiday but I still like to take a look and have a little walk along them. The scenery here was beautiful, but it was so busy, and it was started to get very hot and we weren’t quite used to the heat yet. Waikiki in general reminded me of Miami Beach, but much nicer and cleaner!

Next, we headed back to the hotel to pick up the car, so we could drive over to Downtown Honolulu. I had a few places on my list to see but I think some of them ended up being the same thing just with a different name :d: There are lots of multi-storey car parks here, so plenty of choice for parking. We walked over to Iolani Palace, which was the home of Hawaii’s Royalty and Aliiolani Hale, to see the statue of King Kamehameha.

It was then back to the car, to head to our next stop – Ala Moana Mall. We weren’t in Honolulu for long, so parking was only $0.75. The mall was very busy when we arrived, like everywhere in and around Waikiki seemed to be but we still managed to park easily. Breakfast had filled us up but we both wanted Panda Express for lunch, as this is one of our favourites. So, we headed to the food court first and just had a bowl of fried rice and orange chicken with a drink to share. This cost $10.68.

I didn’t particularly like the layout of this mall and found it a bit confusing and hard to find the shops we wanted. It’s also a lot bigger than I thought it would be. I went to the same shops I always seem to go when in the US; Bath & Body Works for hand sanitisers, Victoria Secret for PJ’s and Sephora for some make-up bits. I think Mark only went in to J. Crew, but he didn’t find anything and it was a lot more expensive than on the mainland.

Before leaving, we grabbed a Jamba Juice to share and went to Target to get some water and snacks for the room and I also picked up a couple of my favourite CoverGirl mascaras. We then drove back to the hotel, to get ready for the evening.

Dinner choice for tonight was The Cheesecake Factory, on Kalakaua Avenue, which we could easily walk to from our hotel. There was a 20 min wait for a table but we ended up waiting closer to 30 mins. Mark had the Mushroom Burger with a Coke Zero and I had the Parmesan-Herb Crusted Chicken with a Raspberry Lemonade. I’ve had this a few times and it’s really good. We were too full for dessert but didn’t want to miss out, so we got a Dulce de Leche Caramel cheesecake to take away. We hadn’t tried this one before but it was very tasty, I think we ate it at some point the next day :) Total cost was $55.45, plus tip.

Still feeling pretty tired at this point, we headed back to the hotel and watched a bit of T.V before going to bed around 21:30. I really enjoyed our first day on Oahu, it was nice to take the time to get our bearings and not be rushing around.

Next: Day 3 – Diamond Head, Koko Crater Trail & South Shore