EandF
LIF Adult
Member since 11/11 1674 total posts
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Hawaii Review - Part 1 Oahu
A few months ago I posted on here asking for Hawaii recommendations. I got some really useful info so I wanted to post a review and hopefully help some others out.
I'm going to break it up into 3 parts, Oahu, Maui, and Kaui, because I am very wordy, we did a lot, and I know it can be hard to read too much at once.
DH and I got married last October. We took a very short mini moon to Bermuda because we were both in new jobs at the time and couldn't take a long trip. We went back and forth for a while on where to go for our delayed honeymoon/first year anniversary trip. I wanted a week in the Carribean, easy to get to, and not to spend a ton of $$. I didn't get any of that. Lol. It's the end of hurricane season in the Caribbean and we didn't want to take the chance of bad weather. I guess this is something we will always have to deal with since our anniversary is in October.
DH suggested Hawaii because he was in the military for many years and laid over in Oahu quite a bit for deployments. He hadn't been to any of the other islands and thought it would be great for both of us and that I would love it. I was hemming and hawing because I didn't want to travel that far. We actually discussed going to Europe, particularly Paris, where we've both been individually but not together. We ended uo nixing that becasue I knew I would go crazy trying to see and do everything. We really needed a relaxing beach vacation. I give kudos to DH for his persistence on going to Hawaii because I loved it! It was amazing and we had the best time. There's a reason you never hear anything bad about Hawaii.
We spent 11 days in total - 2 in Oahu, 6 in Maui, and 3 in Kauai. I'm going to review things pretty much in the order of when we did them.
Oahu
The main and pretty much only reason we went here is because I wanted to go to Pearl Harbor. DH had been before and obviously understood why I wanted to go.
1. Hotel - Aqua Waikkiki Wave. This was our budget hotel. We splurged for the hotels in Maui and Kauai, so we didn't want to spend a lot of $ here. We only stayed in Oahu for less than 48 hours. It was fine, no frills. Our room was very large and we had 2 balconies, which had pretty good views with the ocean in the distance and the Royal Hawaiian hotel. It was actually in a great location. We were able to walk to shopping, restaurants, bars, etc. The International Market PLace was also next door, which is an open air market with all these vendors where we picked up souvenirs.
2. Duke's Waikiki - famous restaurant and bar on Waikiki, known for its Mai Tai. It's located at the Outrigger Waikiki Hotel right on Waikiki Beach. There are locations all over Hawaii and there's even one in Malibu, CA. DH had been here before and wanted to bring me. We went right after getting in so we were pretty tired. We sat at the bar, got some food and Mai Tais and it was the perfect way to start vacation off. The Mai Tais were fantastic and I also highly recommend the Lava Flow. This started off my quest to find the best Mai Tai and I had quite a few. All in the name of research of course!
3. Pearl Harbor - the reason for our stay in Oahu. We did an organized tour that included Pearl Harbor and then a city tour. The tickets are free but by the time we got there, there weren't any available until about 1:30p because it was a particularly busy day with 2 cruise ships in town. The tour driver asked the group if we wanted to do the city tour first since there was so much time but DH and I opted to stay at Pearl Harbor the entire time. We figured we wouldn't miss much since it was just driving around town with the driver speaking.
We bought tickets for the USS Missouri battleship and did that first. They have organized tours of the ship and we took it. It was great. Before you get on the ship, on the dock, there was a statute of the famous pose of the sailor kissing the nurse on V Day and we stood in front of it and this lady was gracious enough to take a couple of pictures. It's literally one of my favorite pictures from our entire trip. 
Then we went out to the USS Arizona Memorial. It was fantastic. You watch a film first and I very much appreciated that the park rangers told the group to be solemn in rembrance of those that lost their lives. DH was in the military for 12 years so it was very emotional for me. We took a boat out to the memorial and DH got great seats so I was able to take some pretty good photos of the white, rectangular structure that is famous and we have all seen so many times. You are not allowed to stop and take photos when you get off the boat, you must go right into the memorial. It's not particularly large, it's open air, and at one end there's a wall with all the names of those lost that day. The groups don't spend a lot of time in the memorial. I think we were there for about 15 minutes or so.
It was completely worthwhile and I'm so glad we did it.
4. Royal Hawaiian - this is the famous, pink hotel that is quintessential Hawaii. I had looked into staying here but it was very expensive and we just didn't want to add to our budget for it. After Pearl Harbor, we got off the tour bus and went directly here. We went to the Mai Tai Bar at the back of the hotel, right on the beach. We got a couple of drinks, split a mahi mahi sandwich, and people watched, which was great. We were lucky enough to be here as the sun was setting so we took some fun pictures on Waikiki Beach. We then walked down one of the main streets back to our hotel, doing some shopping.
Oahu Overall - it's very commercialized and we were in the middle of it, so it was a bit difficult to get a feel for Hawaii here. I am so glad that we did it though and I got to go to Pearl Harbor. I also loved the few places we were able to go to. I got a lot of recommendations to go to the North Shore of the island, which is supposed to be very different and watch the surfers and eat from the shrimp trucks. Hopefully, we'll be able to do that one day.
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JDubs
different, not less
Member since 7/09 13160 total posts
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Re: Hawaii Review - Part 1 Oahu
So sorry to hear, I hope your dad feels well and my thoughts are with them as they recover from the storm.
We were there over two years ago, but we enjoyed USS Arizona on Oahu as well, we also took a bus tour which took us up to the north shore of the island, we didn't stop there although it would have been nice. Its funny because it was so different than the city-like feel of Waikiki. We also stopped at the Dole Plantation... Oh and my DH also loved the malasadas at Leonards Bakery.
At Maui we stayed at the Hyatt in the Kaanapali (i think?) area, hung out in Lahaina a lot, we also did a tour to Hana (my DH would have never wanted to drive that road!)
I am glad we went on our HM because there is no way we can afford it now with all of the expenses we have (house and now kid!) We hope we can eventually go back one day!
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I know it gets tedious reading a long review with no pics. Thanks!
