Honeymoon: Day 4

On our second to last day in Honolulu, we hiked Diamond Head.  Diamond Head was once part of the island's defense system and when we arrived, we actually saw some military personnel training.  I can't believe they train in all of that gear in the raging Hawaii heat.  They say to give about an hour and a half to get up to the summit, but it only took David and I about 30 minutes.  They have a few stops you can make along the way and look into the crater.

 Here was our first stop...

 Walking out on the ledge!

 It was still early in the morning, but already so warm!

The walk is on a rough trail and gets steeper as you go up.  Eventually, we made it to some very steep, narrow stairs and through a dark tunnel.  I think the older I've gotten, the more closed spaces scare me!  There were a lot of very winded people at the top and I didn't see any AED's or anything.  Just the nurse in me, but I was worried about what would happen if someone had a heart attack up there!  (Although, I'm sure they had some type of equipment at the bottom of the trail...)  At the top was the bunker.  You had to literally crawl out from a small opening in the bunker to get to the rest of the walkway and up to the top!  But once we were at the top, the scene was beautiful!

 Honolulu, HI  from Diamond Head.  If you look closely at the waters edge, you can see a wall in the water that created tide pools.  This is where David and I hung out when we went to the beach!

 This is the other side of Diamond Head...during the winter, humpback whales can be spotted here.  Definitely going to have to go back to see that!

 In the back on the right, you can see one of the bunkers.

 David with the beautiful city of Honolulu behind him!

 Finally, a picture together :)  We made it!

 And just to prove we actually were there....

 We had our pictures made by the sign :)

We had a fun afternoon of a doctor visit and picking up a prescription.  We still have no idea what I'm allergic to, but my chest broke out in a nasty, itchy rash at some point while we were there.  I just ignored it until it started creeping down my arms.  At that point I figured I should probably do something about it.  The doctor figures it was something I ate, but there's no telling what it was.  I ended up with a topical steroid and a prescription for an oral steroid if I needed it.  I did NOT want to go there and luckily I didn't have to- the topical worked in a few days.

Our "before dinner" pictures :)

For dinner that night, we went to a restaurant called Duke's. Duke was a "descendant" of the royal Hawaiian family and an international surfer!  This was David's favorite restaurant.  It's apparently a really hoppin' place because we had reservations and still had to wait 10 minutes to eat!

  

 Waiting for dinner!  You can see how shiny my chest is with that topical steroid...ugh it itched so bad.

 There was a group of women playing Hawaiian songs and they came over to serenade us at dinner!  I was hoping they would sing "Mele Kalekemaka" or "The Hukilau Song" but they didn't.  :(  It's okay because I sang them for David, ha!

 We had a lot of fun staring at our rings, haha!

Before we left on our honeymoon, our neighbor told us that on her honeymoon, her and her husband picked out something special to bring home.  Anytime they look at this, it reminds them when times are hard how much fun they had in the beginning.  David really liked this idea so we were always looking for something special to bring back.  We couldn't find anything we were over the moon about- until this night.  After dinner we decided to walk around the city.  The streets are always bustling with people and performers and the stores are open late.  David had seen this lady earlier in the week and wanted to go back and check her out.

 She had a rock and put different colored paints on the end of it.  She spelled out whatever name you wanted with different drawings that symbolize Hawaii.  There are copies of these things everywhere, but we had her make one that said, "The Bells".  It's meaningful to us and it's homemade.  Right now, it hangs above our kitchen sink- the perfect spot for an everyday reminder of how special this time was in our lives.

The finished product!  My favorite is the second "L" in our last name.  It's a hula girl ;)  Our time in Honolulu was winding down.  We only had one more day in the city!

Honeymoon: Day 2

The second day of our honeymoon we woke up really early, like 6:45am!  We were still getting adjusted to the time change!  The hotel had one restaurant that served breakfast and it was packed.  This is totally just an observation, but there were a ton of Japanese people in Honolulu!  I understand why, there is such a history with Japan.  But they were always lined up for breakfast and the line literally wrapped around the hotel!  We didn't want to wait to get our honeymoon started so we hunted down the coffee shop in the hotel and had breakfast there. :)  It kind of became a tradition in Oahu :)

Honeymoon pictures always crack me up because there are just two people on the trip so you hardly ever see pictures of both people in the pictures, haha!  We have quite a few pictures of us individually!  After breakfast we headed down a few blocks to the Honolulu Zoo.  It was small, but so much fun.

One of the first things we saw was this colorful tree.  It looked like someone had painted it!  This picture really doesn't do it justice, but it was so unique!

We have about a million pictures of your typical zoo animals, but I just love this one.  This elephant was such a ham!  She kept putting on a show and she is just smiling away in this picture. :)

The plants in Hawaii are out of this world.  The colors are so brilliant and bright.  David and I really want to blow up some of these onto canvas and hang them in our house!

We spent about 2 hours walking around the zoo and by this time is was only around 10 am!  We took a little break to share a cherry icee and regroup.  We had so much fun spending time just the two of us as newlyweds. :)

Once we left the zoo we walked a little farther down to the Waikiki Aquarium.  It was really cool and it was very educational and a place I think schools probably take field trips to, but it didn't have big enough fish for us. :)  (And maybe the fact that we had walked so much already had something to do with it...?!)  They had one shark...ONE!  They had a few stingrays and this very cute little fella!

 

He was putting on a show doing handstands and standing straight up in the water.  He was too funny!  We headed back down to our side of the island and just couldn't believe we were experiencing this beautiful place.  The sky was completely clear and the water was so translucent.  It was really just breathtaking!  I honestly have no idea what people do for work around there.  There were constantly people laying out in the parks, kids were skateboarding down the street, and surfers in the water at all times.  When do these people work??!

We ate lunch at little dive down the street from our hotel called Cheeseburger in Paradise.  We halved a hamburger and spicy fries.  Our hamburger had PINEAPPLE on it!  It was so delicious!  I am so glad I've grown out of my "picky" stage because I would have missed out on some great food.

Once we finished up lunch, we went back to the hotel, loaded up on sunscreen and headed out to the beach!  We hung out (or rather, David slept and I people watched...) for a few hours and got some nice rays before we went to dinner that night.  Dinner was at a place called Gordon's Biersch.  It is a restaurant based on german dining and David was so excited about eating there because he works at BMW and speaks pretty good german!  The time change was getting to us again at this point so we were pretty tired at dinner.  We sat outside near a pier and there was a pretty little yacht floating right where we were eating.  The sky was clear and the stars and moon were beautiful--just like everything else in Hawaii!  We always tried to take a picture of ourselves before/after dinner each night and this happens to be the night we went to Gordon's Biersch.
 

I am having so much fun going back through my honeymoon pictures and posting about our days on my blog.  :)  It really helps me remember how much fun we had and David and I just can't wait to go back.  We loved it so much we even said we would be willing to live there.  (Although, we'd love to live on Maui...but we'll get to those posts eventually ;) ) We had a blast on our second day of honeymooning!

Honeymoon: Day 1

(I haven't figured out if I want to do a honeymoon post for each day or not.  I don't want to forget the details  of my honeymoon so I may...or I may just hit the highlights :)  But for now, here is how we spent the first day of our honeymoon!)

We left for our honeymoon on September 26th from Charlotte at 9:00am and made a pitstop in Dallas.  Our layover was about an hour and a half so we grabbed lunch at Au Bon Pain.  (Just a side note- have you ever been in the DFW airport??  That thing is HUGE and they have multiple restaurants and fashionable stores in every concourse!  It was just nuts.)

It took us about 12 hours total to reach Honolulu and by the time we landed, it was already 10:00pm back home.  We got "lei'ed" once we got off the plane and the weather was just beautiful.  It was 4:00pm Hawaiian time and about 85 degrees.

                                               

We grabbed our rental car and headed to our hotel.  Honolulu is incredible.  It's a city with a beach.  There was non-stop traffic at all hours, yet there were always hundreds of people on the beach!  When we got to our hotel, we weren't able to check in right away because our room wasn't ready so we went to the hotel bar to grab a drink and officially start our honeymoon!  We decided to go ahead and have dinner at Shor,  one of the hotel's restaurants.  We were so exhausted at this point we could hardly keep our eyes open, but dinner was absolutely delicious!  We had a lot of fun reminiscing about the wedding. :)

                                     

After dinner, we went back to the concierge only to be told our room still wasn't ready.  What the heck?!  We couldn't believe it.  It had been a busy few days for us, plus a long day of traveling and all we wanted to do was go to bed!  By the time we got into our room, it was 9:30pm and 3:30AM our time!  But half of our hotel fees for the week had already been paid for :)  The hotel was amazing and comped us for having to wait so long on our honeymoon!

Our room was nice, but our view was incredible.  Every morning around 6:00am the surfers would show up to "hang loose" and catch some waves.  David and I enjoyed sitting out on our balcony in the early morning hours and watching them.

We found a spot right across the street from our hotel that had a breakfront with minimal sea life (I'm all for that!) and tiny waves.  It was almost like a wading pool.  This is where we spent our afternoons once we finished our daily excursion.  David would sleep and I would people watch.  We had so much fun in our little spot.

Our day of travel was fun; it was the first time David and I had vacationed anywhere by ourselves and we loved the company. :)  It was, for the most part, uneventful and we have a fun little story to tell about our room.  But we couldn't wait to start the rest of our honeymoon and do all of the things we had planned!