Continued from Oahu Day 2.

Early morning wake up. Good thing we are jetlagged and we naturally wake up early. Not so much for my parents though, they are jetlagged the other way around from Taiwan. Got an 8am reservation so gotta get in our rental car and get our move on.

Yeah…the car still smells faintly of vomit. We’ll need to get more cleaning supplies to do a second and third round of cleaning. Sigh.

Where we are headed, Diamond Head Crater. Only a short 15min drive or so from Waikiki.

Single lane tunnel into the center of the crater.

Inside the crater. The kids see a large grassy field and immediately are running around on it. Look, they’ve ever found a big stick.

Alright kids, let’s slow down here. We’ve got a long hike ahead of us, let’s save some of that energy for that.

Everyone complained about how the sun was in their eyes.

Everyone went potty, now time for hike.

PL is such a sweet girl, she’s helping push ah ma up the hill to make her hike easier.

From paved pathway into rocky pathway. Ah gong did not come on this hike with us, and that’s a correct decision. It would have been too tough of a hike for him.

The view gets better and better as we get higher and higher.

He keeps wanting to do parkour on the rocks. I don’t think he even knows what parkour really means. He just hops around all over the pathway.

Really sunny this morning. Everyone has trouble opening their eyes to the sun for the picture.

Lots of houses built up into the mountains here.

Stairs. Ah ma had to rest here for a bit before making the climb.

Oh man, that’s a lot of stairs. Fortunately, there’s another way to the peak. But we’ll be taking these set of stairs down from the top.

Sweet girl helping ah ma up the incline again.

CL getting tired of the climb too. With that said, all the kids are doing great energy wise on this hike. No one has complained about being too tired.

Pretty awesome views up here.

$$$$$$$$$$ houses down there.

Made it to the very top. Success. Took us about 40 minutes to get up here from the base.

Sun so bright.

Photobombed by PL.

One last look at Honolulu from here, then down we go.

I guess this used to be a military bunker.

Inside the bunker.

Down some spiral stairs.

Then down the long set of stairs.

Down the tunnel.

Down the switchbacks.

A little rest.

Kids are getting older. I don’t remember anyone complaining about how tired they were on this hike.

Now to the base of the trail where we met up with ah gong. That was a great start to our morning. Just a challenging enough of a hike to really feel great. The view was spectacular too!

Now, it’s time to find something to snack on.

Out of the tunnel and out of the crater.

Through a neighborhood in Honolulu.

Another recommendation from my physical therapist.

There’s quite a bit of free range wild chickens here in Hawaii.

Loco moco and pulled pork plates. Had to get these while in Hawaii.

No bird, you can’t have this.

CL has a had a sinus infection since we left Austin. I kept on giving her the nettie pot hoping that it would clear up, but it’s not getting the job done. We had been prescribed antibiotics for it but left them in Austin since they were three big bottles of liquid. Anyhow, messaged her pediatrician and had another prescription sent over to a pharmacy here in Hawaii. The pharmacy I picked ended up being on Kalakaua road, a busy shopping street in Waikiki. Well, I thought that I could at least find some temporary parking, but it was a no go. RL got dropped off while I circled around the block with everyone else in the van.

After a few circles, I went on a larger circle and found this quiet spot that I could wait for a little bit. That’s kinda stressful, especially since my Apple Carplay all of a sudden stopped working with the car. Maybe a glitch in the infotainment or something wrong with the cable?

The pharmacy took forever, but we did get the med. RL also picked up a bottle of Febreze so that I can do a deeper level of cleaning for the vomit smell in the car.

Well, while we are on a busy shopping street, we decided to park at a mall and eat some lunch. Only RL and I ate the food from Rainbow Drive In, everyone else is still hungry.

Lunch spot.

All the kids love escalators.

Let’s eat! In my case, let’s eat again.

Damn you nonworking Apple Carplay. I don’t believe this van has built in GPS, so without carplay, I’m just relying on RL to tell me directions off of the phone. Blah.

I do enjoy these types of garage spiral drives though.

After lunch, returned the car to rental agency. We are staying here one more night tomorrow, but we don’t plan on driving anywhere so won’t be needing a rental car.

Dropped my key off at the drop box. Then 30 minutes, Ah Gong realized that he had left his tablet in a seat back pocket. Doh! The agency on the hotel grounds is only open until noon, and won’t reopen until 8am the next day. My plan is to drop by the agency at 8am tomorrow to see if I can get the tablet out of the car.

As it turns out, about a couple of hours after dropping off the car, I get a call from Enterprise that they had found the tablet. It’s being kept at a different Enterprise rental office just a few blocks from our hotel. Cool, I guess I’ll just walk over and pick it up.

Found.

Success.

What’s up with all these free range chicken in Hawaii?

We promised the kids that we’d give them ice cream. So might as well get them ice cream before we go swimming. At least they can work off the sugar.

They wanted to check out the beach, and then they wanted to check out the lagoon, then they wanted to check out the pool.

My job was to get drinks. Doubles for us please.

The water has perfect clarity. It also has no ocean smell.

The ocean looks much more blue than this photo would suggest. We also noticed that people on this beach are much more fit than the beaches in Texas. In fact, I think the people on this beach are more fit than the general American. It’s mostly whites and some Asians over here.

Diamond Head in the distance. Kinda cool we managed to hike up to the tallest point there.

When I went back for another drink at the bar, not too long after finishing my first double vodka soda, this couple were impressed by my drinking prowess. I told them I had three kids so that I need some drinks to help with being a more calm parent. They decided to buy me a shot of vodka. Cool, thanks guys.

The kids swimming in the lagoon now.

Three little monsters in the lagoon.

They weren’t the biggest fan of the lagoon. They thought the water was stagnant so wanted to go swim in the pool now.

I told them I’d get in the waterslide with them today 3 times.

Always fix my hair like this.

And that’s the third time.

Now we can relax just a little bit while the kids go down the slide a million more times.

Swimming done, shower done, time for dinner.

Another restaurant in the shopping area of the hotel complex.

This coconut was good.

Our cheapest meal yet. Does the job.

Then after dinner, the girls wanted to go shopping a little.

They loved their new dresses. Even ah ma got a dress for herself.

While the grandparents put the kids to bed, RL and I decided to head out for some extra drinks and snack food.

Which means the Uber brought us to a strip mall.

An izakaya inside a strip mall.

Oh yeah, let’s do this. I wish Austin had more true izakayas.

WTF is this? Some sort of sardine fish sauce? I’ve never seen this before and I forgot to ask.

Yum. I’m already full, but I couldn’t resist ordering some more food.

Time to go back. It started raining. So tired. It’s been really exhausting vacationing with the kids. Goodnight.

To be continued at Oahu Day 4.