Hawaii – Waikiki (Saturday, Day 3) – It's a Wonderful Life!

Another early morning today. Between our 20 hour day on Thursday, flying in to Honolulu yesterday and all our activities, we both died last night. Bob died earlier than I did but when I did I slept hard. So both of us were awake pretty early (considering the 6 hours time difference that’s not difficult the first few days) and we were up, dressed, grabbed a couple of breakfast sandwiches to go and were on our way to the lighthouse around 7am. Even with several scenic stops we were at the Makapu Lighthouse Trail before 8am. There were already a ton of cars there.

It’s a fairly easy paved hiking trail that gains about 500′ elevation over about a mile. It was already warming up nicely but the breeze helped (for a while). Thankfully, it was overcast – we even felt some raindrops from time to time – and it was still early enough it wasn’t unbearable. The views were gorgeous! We tried taking some selfies. Can I just say how badly we suck at selfies? Seriously, it’s bad. I ended up begging some passerby to snap a shot or two for us. Trust me, anything they took was going to be way better than our selfie. They’re pretty hilarious.

Some views along the way …

These are at the point where the lighthouse stands …

We met tons of people coming up the trail as we descended. Buses of them. And it was standing room only in the parking lot – so to speak. Cars just idled waiting for a spot to steal. On the way out we stopped at couple more scenic overlooks and took even more shots of this beautiful shoreline.

(Above – Look closely on the left side of the mountain and you can see the lighthouse where we just were.)

One of the places we stopped was Hanauma Bay – for the scenic overlook. Just for kicks, we had to take a look at the beach where the supposedly awesome snorkeling is. Huh, it didn’t look that crowded! At least not like we thought it would be. Certainly there were people on the beach and in the water but there was room for us too! LOL Sigh … So now we’re trying to figure out how to get that in before we leave too. If we had stuck with our original plan and gone this morning … but then we wouldn’t have done the lighthouse. Oh well, we’ll figure it out.

The Pearl Harbor Arizona Memorial was high on our bucket list while in Waikiki. It took about 45 minutes to navigate our way there and we found ourselves driving around the parking lots waiting for a spot to steal. I knew this would be sobering, I just didn’t realize how much so. They make everyone watch a 20 minute movie before boarding the shuttle out to the memorial. The movie is well done and very educational about the events of December 7, 1941. Even Bob learned a thing or two. I learned a lot. It’s a humbling experience. We spent a good couple of hours looking through the museum and reading about events leading up to that day, the day of and then recovering from the attack.

We were supposed to knock out Diamond Head on the way back to the hotel. That was the plan. The plan changed yet again. We were done. Honestly, going back and chilling by the pool with something cold in our hands sounded much more appealing. So we started scheming on how to cram every thing else in tomorrow before heading north. Looks like another early morning, imagine that. Hoping for a late checkout.

Finally up by the pool chilling with a cold one (Bob with a beer and I caved and ordered a Blue Hawaii – when in Rome, right?) we decided to have an early dinner and beat the crowds.

Between the early morning, light lunch and all the walking and sweating we was hungry! I was craving pasta so Bob found an Italian restaurant (Arancino) about a quarter of a mile away from the hotel that specialized in Asian Italian seafood dishes. Yummm! We were able to sit in the outside dining area and enjoy the breeze while the sun was going down. A couple of glasses of pino Grigio, some bruschetta for an appetizer and pasta for dinner had us waddling out of there.

Then guess what we did? We went Pokemon hunting!!! There were a ton of stops and Bob was out of balls. LOL Along the way we were treated to a surprisingly gorgeous sunset. It was so cloudy I really didn’t expect there to be much to see. Boy was I wrong. The colors were amazing! We ended up doing more photographing of the sunset than hunting. And that was ok. Chalk it up to another fun filled productive day.