Vacation 1-Oahu

Well, the flight is pretty long to Oahu, about 6.5 hours. We took Hawaiian Airlines, and it was pretty good service as airlines go these days. A totally full flight.

We arrived mid-afternoon, with the time change, and grabbed our rental car and headed to our hotel, grabbing a Subway sandwich on the way in. Somehow, the breakfast burrito on the flight just did not cut it. We stayed at the Ala Moana just outside of Waikiki, and I am so happy we stayed there, as I will explain in another post.

But we were bushed and so spent the afternoon just getting to know our immediate environment. First of all...we needed some supplies. Honolulu has some good restaurants I am sure, but it is not known as an eating mecca, like New Orleans, so we were going to cut corners, since we had a fridge, and have some food in the room.
Luckily the hotel adjoined a mall that is famous for its international food court. So we headed there, and wow, sushi, dim sum, Japanese noodle soups...pretty much anything you could want. There was also a Japanese department store, and like in Tokyo, it had a great fresh food area on its top floor, so we loaded up on stuff there too. So we stored up for a couple of lunches and breakfasts, and also stopped at an ABC store to get some wine and other alcoholic delights for in-room festivities.

Going back to the room, I knew I needed some real drinks, and again to the mall. Yes, the mall! An outdoor tiki bar, featuring live music every night, and some great drinks. A lot of locals hung out here. And I could see why. A great happy hour, not mobbed with tourists acting like jackasses, and passion fruit mojitos that are to DIE for, at $4 a pop only, thank you very much! So we chilled there, talked about how to spend our days, got a little food later in the evening, listened to some music. Warm breezes filtered through the place and we felt relaxation coming on. This was going to be a very good trip.