BYOV: bring your own vegetables: Hawaii Trip: O'ahu (Waikiki & Diamond Head State Monument)

Monday, December 12, 2016

Rather than spending a day visiting the Big Island's green beach and another day lolling about and visiting the Mauna Kea Observatory at sunset, we booked a last minute trip to Honolulu using airline miles. It was just two days, one night in a so-so hotel in Waikiki. On arrival day we hiked up Diamond Head State Monument, in an old volcano crater. Rainbows. Beautiful.

Also, we had no phone connection in the crater, which made calling a Lyft to get back to the city an interesting prospect. We just walked along the road until we found signal.

That night (and the next morning) we bummed around Waikiki. It's a super-developed touristy bit of a city with a lovely sandy beach. It could be a nice place to live near, but as a tourism prospect it was a little faster than our usual speed.

We promptly ate our weight in chicken katsu for a beach-side lunch. At night, we discovered that Mai Tai's are likely the only tropical beverage on any of the islands with any actual alcohol in them. Both 'The Edge of Waikiki' and 'Mai Tai Bar' had hula dancers to accompany the live music, but Mai Tai Bar definitely had a better selection of Mai Tai's (no duh). It was interesting wandering through The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, it looked as if it came straight out of a Wes Anderson film.