A few weeks ago, Sergio and I celebrated our 20th wedding anniversary! That’s a pretty big milestone. We felt it was worth marking it as a special anniversary by taking a celebratory trip to Mexico. Wait, what? Isn’t this post titled Hawaii? Yes. That is because when we attempted to book ourselves flights to San Miguel de Allende (our honeymoon destination), we discovered that getting there from Alaska is a MUCH bigger financial and geographical endeavor than we were bargaining for over a slightly extended Spring Break. So we decided the time was finally right to become REAL Alaskans, and you can’t count yourself as a real Alaskan if you haven’t been to Hawaii enough times to have set opinions on which island is the best.
Why are Alaskan’s so attached to Hawaii? Pretty much the same reasons people from the American Southeast flock to the Gulf Coast. It’s close by and affordable. Of course, this is all relative when discussing Alaska. The closest direct flight we can take to anywhere outside of Alaska from Anchorage is a 4 hour journey to Seattle. We love Seattle, but that wasn’t the vibe we were aiming for to celebrate both our anniversary and Spring Break. The next closest direct flight is pretty much, you got it, Hawaii! Six hours, no stops! And while Hawaii is not cheap by any measure, even to an Alaskan that is pretty accustomed to inflated prices, there were some deals to be had through our mileage program and hotel points. I suppose it is also worth noting here that our Borough hosted the Arctic Winter Games this year, and that resulted in a nearly two week Spring Break, so we had buffer time that made a more extended trip possible. There was an exodus of valley residents taking advantage of the break, and at least eleven of my colleagues were in Hawaii at the same time as me. I managed to run into only ONE of them at the North Shore Foodland.
Now, this is where I tell you that Hawaii has always been WAY DOWN my list of travel destinations. I’m not really a bathing suit, sunbathe on the beach, tropical weather kind of gal. While I understood that Hawaii would be pretty, I can’t say that I’ve ever spent much time wishing to go there. I think I kind of always figured that I would opt to go somewhere outside of the US before Hawaii, even if it was for the same geography and weather, just to say I had. I was excited for the trip, but I had less than zero expectations of loving the place. I basically wanted to be in the sunlight, have Loco Moco, Spam musubi, unlimited shaved ices, and basically just chill. Spoiler: We loved it.
When it came to planning, we opted to stay in Oahu. Many people advised against this because they feel other islands are better, but to best utilize our time, we decided not to island hop. We also had a free night and some additional Hilton hotel points to use, so we decided to try out a little resort life for a change. However, knowing ourselves, we also split the trip into two parts and rented an Airbnb on the North Shore for the second half of the trip. In this way, we could determine what type of Hawaii we most enjoyed. The busy, tourist-centric Waikiki Beach area or the surfer-centric, small-town, big wave area. The answer is both. We enjoyed both equally but differently.
The Waikiki portion of our trip centered around learning how to do resort breakfasts in their most optimal way, daily walks to the closest Starbucks, finding the best nearby shave ices, and mapping the quickest beach access. Just about the time we felt we were really getting the hang of it, it was already time to head out! This is our biggest learning experience from our first trip. Don’t over plan, and whatever plans you do have, don’t try to do them during the resort time. There is PLENTY to do right outside the hotel doors. Expansive shopping, museums, and restaurants galore. We went the other way. We looked at it geographically and decided we would do several nearby things while in the Waikiki area, but before we had our rental car. This resulted in feeling perpetually crunched for time, missing some stuff (hiking Diamond Head), paying pretty high prices to get around town (Lyfts and taxis to Pearl Harbor), and just generally using up beach days and resort time for activities that would have been easier when we had our own car (taking Rolo’s first official college tour at the University of Hawaii – Go Bows!). Nothing on the island is so far away that we couldn’t have come back from the North Shore to do these things later.
Highlights from Waikiki are as follows –
Our hotel served miso soup for breakfast everyday. I mean, they served other stuff too, but Rolo was really thrilled with endless miso soup on tap for breakfast.
The incredibly calm, clear water of Waikiki beach that felt very safe for swimming and floating in the sun.
ABC Stores in every direction. Everything we watched ahead of time said not to pay the prices of ABC Stores, but they are 1) conveniently located, 2) chock full of interesting stuff, and 3) probably Rolo’s single favorite thing. We bought snacks, candy, toiletries, SPF shirts, and souvenirs here multiple times a day. Our favorite feature was all of the truly yummy prepared foods available all the time (legit ramen, SPAM musubi, egg sandwiches, etc). While this may feel like a weird time to bring up our favorite thing about Honolulu, it fits best here, I think. Going to Hawaii felt like going abroad minus the challenges that come with foreign travel, and this was especially true right in the Waikiki area. So basically, going to the ABC Store allowed me to do what I would most like to do in Japan which is eat all the cool snacks available in Japanese convenience stores.
Speaking of musubi, there was a musubi-only restaurant across the street from our hotel, and I was able to try more flavors. This is how I now know that I somehow find the Spam ones a wee bit fishy, but I could down about ten tuna/mayo ones in a single sitting.
Despite my best efforts, we only managed two shave ice experiences, but our best of the two was also just outside our hotel (Lahaina). It was just an unassuming window right out the back steps. The portions were huge and light as air and not too sweet somehow. The one in our picture was the child’s size!
We also managed two fancy dinners. The first was Ginza Barin Tonkatsu. We initially chose it because Sergio saw that they offered omurice, which is a dish he’s been very keen to try, but when we got there, it was no longer offered. However, that did not diminish our experience. Truly excellent food and service. Rolo opted out of going to dinner with us the next night, choosing instead to have ABC Store food, so we pretty much viewed the second meal as the one celebrating our anniversary. We had some lovely Italian food at Arancino on Beachwalk seated in the cutest little window seat. Sergio had a carbonara, and I had a bolognese, and even though it wasn’t planned, it really called to mind our early days when our favorite restaurant was a little-known place called David’s in NWA that served an excellent little Italian menu and cemented Sergio’s love of carbonara.
Free resort drinks! And actually, we didn’t really like this as much as you might expect. I’m only bringing it up so that if you also get free drinks from Hilton hotels and can’t do the intense sweetness of the mixed drinks (Mai Tai, Rum Punch, or Blue Hawaii), I learned by the second day that they’ll let you do some variations. Shots (barf) or an alcohol of your choice with a juice of your choice. I opted for tequila and pineapple juice thereafter. When the hotel heard it was our anniversary (they asked if we had any celebrations, we didn’t just offer that info), they gave us a nicer room, a cool tote bag, and extra drink tickets. We weren’t even able to make it through them all!
A visit to Pearl Harbor. We didn’t make an entire day of all the different sites you could visit. In fact, we almost didn’t even make our reservation at all (which is only $1 per person) when we woke up and saw that Lyft surge pricing had the cost of getting there at $150. However, the price had gone back to normal (around $60 one way) by the time we needed to leave, so we went. For transparency, it was about $70 to get back by taxi. The taxi driver was incredibly knowledgeable about the island and filled us up with ideas of where to go and what to do for the rest of the trip. Pearl Harbor is run like clockwork in a joint effort of the military and parks department. A ferry runs to the monument every fifteen minutes. Each group disembarks and tours around before taking the next ferry back. There is a volunteer there to answer questions. I’ve been to a number of somber memorials at this point, but I found this one the most moving. I think it is because it is all just right there. The ship is JUST below the water. The oil still leaks. The shore feels like you could reach out and touch it. And yet so many people lay buried right below you. It’s haunting. We asked ourselves while looking at the names on the wall if any survivors still remained alive, and if so, how old they would be. We got our answer two weeks after getting home when the last crewman died at 102.
Finally, we took Rolo on a college tour. For the first two hours, we were hyped! By this point in the trip, we were all more than sold on the weather (if anything TOO breezy, and if ever hot, cut by a daily rainstorm or two), the nature (just about every building is more outdoor than indoor to take full advantage), and just a really great lifestyle all around. So we were pretty excited to show Rolo a very viable option for college. And then we got to the freshmen dorms. Now, please don’t misunderstand. Sergio and I MET in freshmen dorms. We are absolutely aware that dorms are nothing to get excited about. We were Pre-Honor’s renovation Pomfret Hall residents when our community rooms were just big spaces full of old rolls of carpet, discarded vomit-laden mattresses, and trash bags, so … our bar is low. Please fully understand our meaning when we say that the Hawaii freshmen dorms are deeply sad. Where is all the money going from these tuition hikes if not the student amenities? Where? I’m glad we took the tour, but ending on the dorms really took the wind out of ALL of our sails.
Okay, as always, this has stretched. I’m going to have to do the North Shore portion another day. Here’s a few photos.
Two Somewhat Different Epigrams 