Whenever I’m on vacation at the beach, I like to start out every morning with a sunrise walk. Because of the time change, we didn’t do as many sunrise walks as we intended, but we still got out there a few times. I think we were on the wrong side of the island for a really good sunrise; there was a mountain in the way or something. But it was still beautiful.
On our second full day in Hawaii, we hiked up to Manoa Falls. It was supposed to be a super easy hike, so we wore flip-flops.
We didn’t realize it would be the Hike Of Mud.
Beautiful though. Incredibly beautiful.
I love to hike. It’s one of the things I hate most about living in texas (specifically dallas) – there is nowhere to hike that has mountains, lots of trees, hills, or beautiful scenery in general. Plus it’s always too hot or when it’s not hot everything is dead.
So I was super excited for the chance to hike through the hills/mountains to a waterfall in Hawaii. As an extra bonus, we later found that several scenes from Lost were filmed in the area.
I tried to organize everyone for a group photo before starting on the hike. It didn’t work out that great…
Second attempt was not much better…
Mr. Uncooperative wanted his picture taken more “candidly,” I guess:
He was very excited about passing through the gate:
I love the banyan trees; they are so cool:
I also love all the green:
Sometimes people get in my shots:
I posted the black&white version of this one awhile ago – I love the light; the way the sun was coming through the trees was amazing:
DANGER:
I was just shocked when we got there, I guess:
The waterfall:
Ah, boys…
Darek shows off his modeling skills:
Darek shows how big the trees and sticks are:
Rawr…
I mentioned that our Gold status got us free breakfast every morning. I LOVE when hotels feed you for free. It’s especially fun when you get to go in the special VIP area – something we have never done before.
People were looking at us weird when we were taking these pictures, but that made it even funnier.
Breakfast was nothing fancy, but it was still awesome. I can’t tell you how much it thrills me to start the day with fresh pineapples and pineapple juice. The muffin was a bonus.
Darek, enjoying his morning coffee:
A different day:
We very much wondered what these were:
Eating breakfast with a view like this = how I want to start every day:
The aquarium:
Toward the end of the trip, we finally walked around the grounds and found all sorts of cool stuff around our resort:
Flowers:
Flamingos:
Penguins:
Turtles:
Penguins and turtles:
A blue bird:
A red bird:
Other people taking pictures:
And a Darek:
I decided to post our Hawaii pictures categorically rather than chronologically. I thought that might make more sense. And I’ll be posting them in several chunks instead of all at once. For your benefit as well as mine.
I figured it made sense to start with the hotel. But first, some back story:
About 5 years ago, we got a Costco membership. But Costco only accepts American Express, so we got one of those too. I did lots of research and decided to go with the Hilton Honors one. We’ve always loved Hampton Inns (part of the Hilton family) for their consistent quality, free breakfast, and free internet, so earning points to stay at those for free sounded good (yeah I know that sounds like an ad, but honestly, I recommend them all the time. We are that pleased with them). We started putting all of our purchases on the AmEx, big and small – bills, groceries, gas, home repairs, car repairs, surgeries, etc. (I realize this is potentially sounding bad, so I’ll state right now that we have ALWAYS paid off the balance every single month, so we have never paid interest on any of it. I do not believe in credit card debt, AT ALL. So we don’t have any.)
But, 5 years of large and small purchases added up to a lot of Hilton points, and our goal was always to save up for 6 nights at a Hilton resort in Hawaii. We actually made it to that goal a few years ago, but couldn’t afford the airfare (seriously, you could almost fly to London for what it costs to fly to Hawaii). Then our photography assistant decided to get married in Oahu, the same island of one of the 2 Hiltons we had the points to stay at for a week. And I could write off the plane tickets as a business expense. So, after 5 years, we were finally getting our Hawaii trip! We could barely believe we were finally going after so many years of planning but not being sure how to pay for the rest of the trip.
By this point we had made our way up to Gold status with our card, so upon check-in we were upgraded from the back of the very large resort to the front, with an ocean view instead of a view of the city. SO EXCITING. It also got us free breakfast every day. This was all a pretty big deal for us, because this is not how either one of us traveled growing up or since then.
And that’s the story of how we could stay here, at the Hilton Hawaiin Village resort in Oahu, Hawaii.
This is the very front of the resort. As I mentioned, it was huge. It took about 10 minutes to walk through the whole thing.
The grounds were very well designed and maintained:
This is the tower we stayed in (though we were on the other side) on the 15th floor:
Another view of the hotel and the one(s)(?) next to it, from the main beach:
The front of our tower (left) and another view:
Our room was nothing special, but it was nice enough:
We were super excited to be able to watch the series of finale of Lost on the island where it was filmed, with a view of the marina where several of the scenes were filmed, no less. Darek got us all set up with pizza and chairs for the big event:
It made me laugh:
Our view from the balcony. This is the marina where several Lost scenes were filmed:
Me conducting business while enjoying the view:
The hotel had a lagoon but we never made it down there. Looked like it was mostly for little kids and people learning to stand-up paddle board:
More views from the balcony:
We really loved the balcony. Can you tell?
This is the beach in front of the resort. We really weren’t impressed. Again, I think it was more for families with young kids. There weren’t any waves. We only spent an hour or two there one day.
One of the pools, which we only went to once:
The windows in the elevator area:
Darek in the elevator:
We have more pictures to post from around the hotel, but I think this is good for one day. More later!
Hawaii is far away. You could fly to London in about the same amount of time. The difference is that they actually feed you on the way to London. Lesson learned.
waiting at the airport:
we visited heather & daniel at the other end of the terminal:
riding the monorail tram thing is fun:
early in the journey (before the hunger):
first view of Hawaii from the plane:
since our first plane was broken, we got 2 guava juices:
we got a free upgrade to an ocean view because of our fancy credit card status:
darek:
the view at night:
we could see the evening luau across from our room:
Next: the Wedding Day
I’ll be posting lots more Hawaii pics, but for now I’m starting with these.
may 20: the night view from our balcony
may 21: one from the wedding we shot
may 22: the trail we hiked
may 23: the temple we went to
may 24: sunset through the palm trees
may 25: a drink at our fancy dinner
may 26: bride on the rocks
The last batch before Hawaii pictures start.
may 14: argyle
may 15: the tiniest cat I have ever seen
may 16: trying to squeeze through the crack
may 17: spokes
may 18: i was way too busy getting ready for the trip
may 19: the cats’ food and water for the week
may 7: light at dusk
may 8: bluebonnets
may 9: croquet set
may 10: willow
may 11: guess i missed it. no idea why.
may 12: darek’s daily veggies
may 13: baby bunny in our backyard
I’m working my way up to Hawaii pictures…
may 1: um…it’s an abstract…yeah…it’s art-y
may 2: cashew in the catnip
may 3: the cats late at night
may 5: a leaf late at night
may 6: alien from toy story
I really have been keeping up with my pictures of the day, at least for the most part. But it’s one thing to take a photo, and another to give it a quick edit, upload it, and make a blog post. And these past 2 months have been some of my busiest ever. But I’m going to try to catch up (eventually). I’m going to get to Hawaii pictures soon, but these are already done.
Also – still working on sizing – how does the size look on everyone’s computers? OK? Too big? Not big enough?
april 22: ok, bad start; I actually took a picture but it sucks, so I’m not sharing.
april 23: our irises after it rained (I was actually kind of proud of myself for this one…)
april 24: willow with the fisheye lens
april 25: willow with the fisheye lens the next day
april 26: my super sweet sister brought me flowers
april 27: I convinced my sister it’d be a good idea to do some of her bridal pictures in a field. I was so totally right.
april 28: a shot of the bouquet we got for her pictures. I think central market did a great job!
april 29: our tomato plant
April stats: 30 days, 27 pictures
Not bad.
