Monday, October 15, 2007

My Hawaiian Adventure ... Part I

Mahalo once again! Thanks for coming back to my blog. I know I have been gone a while, but the break was just what the doctor ordered .. and it exposed me to a brand new world: Hawaii. What I thought I would do is show you my tropical trip in three stages. Here's part one.

Sharon and I finally arrived last Saturday night in Honolulu after traveling some 20 hours to get there. We flew from Las Vegas to Phoenix to Honolulu .. and thanks to the airlines ( I won't mention which one ) .. what should have been a 6pm arrival time in Hawaii became a 10:30pm landing. By the way, Hawaii is about six hours ahead of us.

We finally arrived at our hotel off Waikiki Beach, just two blocks from the beach. The picture above is the view from our room on the 27th floor. To give you some idea of where we were, Honolulu is on the southeast side of Oahu and Waikiki Beach is just east of the city.
We spent three days on what could only be described as Japan meets America. The main street that runs along the beach was packed day and night with a mix of beachcombers, tourists, surfers and shoppers. While the beach culture was on one side of the street, high-end shopping and dining could be across the way. It looked like Rodeo Drive meets Muscle Beach.
We spent three days in Honolulu, before taking a jet to the island of Maui. Above is a picture of yours truly driving along the coastal highway in Maui with a three-day old beard in tow. It's about $60 round trip to fly to Maui .. and takes about 20 minutes. From there, we drove to our resort hotel in Lahaina which is on the western shore of Maui. Here's the view from our room ... which of course overlooked the golf course. We were in Maui three days and took a drive along the snaking highway that goes along the mountains. As you can see from here, there are various places to pull over and look at the ocean. Here's one such stop we made - and Sharon decided to take in.

Finally, it was back to Honolulu for two days to finish our vacation. We stayed at the same hotel downtown and that's when Sharon did her shopping at some of the markets along the beach. Check out the dress she bought one day ... and then decided to wear while wading in the water.

We left Saturday night but out flight did not depart until 10pm. Enough time to race to the western half of Oahu - and a place called Ewa Beach - to do something rare: Be among the last people in the United States to witness the sunset. After all, Hawaii sees the sun set after everyone else ... some six hours after it leaves the skies of Western Pennsylvania.

That's it for today's entry. I'll be back with more adventures from the island tomorrow. Also, I'll be back on the air Wednesday morning as well.

For now, Aloha!

Posted at 2:37 PM