Stop by Walmart for some chocolate, fill up gas, drop off rental cars, check in to United Airlines for flight home. Arrived home at might night!
Category: Oahu
Honolulu – 4th Day
Church at Waikiki beach, Pearl Harbor
Honolulu – 3rd Day
The plan for today was visit the famous Ho-omaluhia Botanical Garden and Byodo-In Temple. After that we had lunch at the KFT in the small shopping center near by and headed to the Kailua beach.
Honolulu – 2nd Day
Today highlights would be riding the Maitai catamaran for 1.5 hour and Kuloa Ranch’s Hollywood Sites tour.
This day marked 1 of the most terrifying moment in my life: we lost William while walking from hotel to the Maitai catamaran departure point. I was not sure if we headed the right direction so I left William with Tim to go asking for directions. When I came back I asked Tim, where’s William? Tim looked around and there was no sign of him around! Tim said, “He was just here looking at the sign!”. Tim ran back toward the streets, I looked at the beach but I did not think he’d go there by himself because he’s always afraid of the waves, so the only direction he’d go is to go back to the hotel. So Tim ran that way, I followed. After 10 minutes walking, we met a couple and they said they saw a boy was running and calling “Dad! Dad!”. Someone already stopped him when Tim caught up with him. Poor little guy, he was crying so hard. Lots of thanks to those nice people that stopped him, otherwise we could not catch up if he kept running.
Maitai Catamaran: William at first was excited when we got on the catamaran but later he felt asleep, he only woke up that last 15 minutes. Not sure if he was seasick or not. It was a beautiful day to spend the day with family: nice music and clouds and view of the Waikiki beach and Diamond Head. At some point it was rough that the ocean water was splashed into our boat.
Kuloa Ranch: the tours at Kuloa ranch sold out fast 2 weeks in advance so I could only book 5 tickets to the Hollywood Movie sites tour. We were supposed to check in 1 hour before the tour time but we got there late because it took almost 1 hour to get there from the hotel. They called us right on time when we just got to the ranch entrance. They took us around the ranch on a open window bus. It’s a very beautiful ranch where they shot lots of famous movies like Jurassic Park. But in my opinion it’s not a must to visit.
Hawaii Here We Come – Aug 2021
Thursday 8/12 – Monday 8/16.
Our summer vacation this year was Honolulu, Oahu, and we were staying for 3 nights at one of the most beautiful hotel on the island, the Hilton Hawaiian Village Resort. William is 7 years old now, he’s old enough not to cry and he loves to fly! The only issue during our flight from LAX – Honolulu is that he kept standing up on the chair and touched the lights on the ceiling and often times pulling down/up the food tray so strong that would shake the seat of the person sitting in front of him. Lucky for us it’s Danny seat so we were not yelled at. He did not want to watch any movie, all he wanted was looking at the map.
William only slept for about 30 minutes; United airlines did not serve lunch; I brought 1 lunchbox from home so that was William’s lunch. We were late because we had a bit of issue getting the pre-approval of covid-19 so did not have time to buy any thing for lunch; lucky for us aunt Eliza gave me a croissant, which I shared with aunt Julie.
We arrived at Honolulu airport around 11:00 AM, it took so long for the luggage to come out. Then we headed to the Budget rental car to pick up 2 minivans to fit total of 12 of us. Then we headed to Pho Que Huong at China town for lunch; the food here is good. After lunch, we stopped by Costco on the way to the hotel for some water and snacks. Aunt Eliza bought William a set of Beach toys! William enjoyed his churros while looking out the window: it’s his first time here at Waikiki.
Check in at the hotel took so long: about 1 hour! I already checked in via Hilton Honors app, otherwise it’d take longer because the general check in line was so long. It took so long because they required EACH adult to log in to the Safe Travel web site and show them the trip details.
But then when we got to our room, the view was spectacular; it was worth all the hassle! After a short break, we headed down to the Hilton Lagoon, William loved it here! We got lucky that someone gave us 3 floats because their trip ended today.
