Oahu Day 2

Continued from Oahu Day 1.


Little moon cakes from Taiwan. Yum.


Living their best life. Jetlag means they wake up extra early and get on their ipads until the rest of us are up and about.


That looks like a fun pool, we’ll visit there later today.


Went to visit ABC Store, again.


Got our rental car. The beauty of getting a Pacifica is that I know how everything works. It’s almost as if I’m driving my own vehicle.


Balls and anus.


Of course, there’s a free standing LV store here on site at Hilton Hawaiian village. Tons and tons of Asians here.


Roaming the resort grounds looking for coffee.


Found, but the line was Waaayy long. Nope.


This was a giant koi, RL put her hand down for size reference and the fish got scared…


Hawaii is very picturesque indeed.


My happy place. Coffee baby. This side of the building is nice in that we don’t get direct sun during the early morning.


Alright, load up everyone in the rental car and off we go. We’ve got a timed entry to make.


Still lots of traffic here in Waikiki.


Look, they actually have the tire pressure set mostly correct, I approve.


RL took this photo, and for some reason…I would have wanted to get a photo of a dump truck in Hawaii too. Don’t ask why.


Even their highway pillars have polynesian art.


Entrance to Pear Harbor memorial…..or not. Apparently, I had picked out the wrong spot on the map and this is actually the entrance to an active military base…they soldiers with gun asked to hold my driver’s license while they watched me make an U turn and handed my id back to me. Oops…


Alright, let’s try again and this time, let’s go to the right place.


CL is feeling carsick and feels like throwing up. We handed her a throw up bag. Poor girl.


Got out of the car, and it took her quite a while to start feeling better again.


They’ve got really strict rules here about bags. No bags allowed unless you’ve got a stadium clear bag. We just put all the stuff in the stow and go in the van instead of paying $7 per item.


On our way to the short ferry ride to the Arizona Memorial. I remember making this trip as a kid some 30 years ago. I was about PL’s age and I still remember it today. Hopefully this means my kids will also remember making this trip as well when they become adults.


We had her sit by the side of the boat in case she needs to throw up. She’s slowly feeling better though.


Just like I had remembered, the oil in Arizona is still leaking out. I asked a ranger and she said that there’s still an estimated 500,000 gals of oil left and it could take over another hundred years for all the oil to disperse out.


Kinda weird to think that instead of extracting the oil out of the tanks, they’ll just keep letting it slowly leak out over time.


Names of all the soldiers who died here, over a thousand of them. Some of them who had survived choose to be entombed here years later when they died as well.


Oh look, a wild sea turtle!


If you look carefully, you can see the sea turtle. Also you can see the big black drop of oil floating up to the surface. I still remember seeing this exact thing over 30 years ago.


So cool, wild sea turtles.


On the way back off the memorial. We were on the memorial not for a long time, maybe 15minutes until the next group came by boat.


I think too young and too far removed from the events to really understand what they just say. But I guess someone could say the same about me as well.


Back on shore and looking through the museum.


That’s one giant artillery shell.


Alright, visit is over. Some souvenirs and then searching for lunch.


Passed by the military base where I took the wrong turn earlier.


Our lunch sushi spot, Mitch’s sushi is located in an industrial area. Recommended to me by my physical therapist who grew up in Hawaii. Would have never tried or found this place without a local’s recommendation.


And as we were trying to park, disaster struck. CL gave us a 10 second warning that she’s about to throw up….and before any of us could get anything, she puked all over the car. FFFFuuuccckkkk….Ahma managed to grab CL’s Meow Wolf bucket hat to try to catch the rest of it. It helped a little, but now the whole car smells like vomit. It was really stressful. We had no cleaning supplies except for some tissues. Fuck.

RL went looking for a gas station looking for cleaning supplies. Ah ma was sent into Mitch’s sushi looking for cleaning supplies. Mitch’s sushi gave us a roll of papertowel and some water. I went to work cleaning…this is a disaster. How are we going to get the smell out of the car?! Shit.


While I was cleaning, RL walked around this barren industrial landscape trying to find a gas station.

Finally, the owner of Mitch’s sushi, Mitch’s son happened to come into the restaurant and offered even more help. Got us a bucket of simple green and some rags. Thank you!!!!


Went looking for the restroom inside the restaurant, only to open the door and be in the back of a warehouse. This sushi place is the restaurant portion of a fish wholeseller.


Inside Mitch’s sushi. I bet the sushi is legit here.


Clean clean clean clean. I originally threw away CL’s bucket hat since it was covered in vomit. She said it was her favorite hat, so I fished it out of the trash can and washed it using a spigot that they had outside of the restaurant. RL put it in a plastic bag….then at some point, one of us accidentally threw away the hat that I just spent some good effort rinsing….Doh. Sigh. It was extremely hectic to say the least.


OK, cleaning finally done for the time being. We are hungry and tired, need lunch.


Love this, no nonsense.


Jetlagged.


Let’s eat!!!


They were fresh, but can’t say these were the best flavors. Still cool to try fresh oysters in Hawaii though.


And the nigiri was as good as I’ve ever had anywhere. Just really hit it out of the park!


Fish chins for ahma. The salmon kama was out of this world. Incredible lunch, only tainted by that long vomit clean up job. Ugh.


The grandparents are jetlagged. They are dozing off in the car.


Took a photo to remember where we parked at in this giant parking garage.


ABC Store didn’t have Febreeze, so got the next best thing to try to clean the smell out of the car some more. Hawaiian Breeze scent, how fitting.


Must get coffee after that stressful vomit clean up experience.


Back to our hotel, rest some then go swimming.


The kids are so itching to go to the swimming pool.


So beautiful. Perfect temperature. Not chilly and not too hot. Hawaii really is as nice as they say. It’s not windy, the ocean doesn’t smell, and it’s just so crisp and clean.


So excited to hit the pool.


It’s not super crowded. We found a lounge chair to put our towels down without too much trouble.


The bar right by the pool is closed, so I had to walk a long way by the beach to another bar in the resort. I guess there are worse walks there in the world.


Doing flips in the water.


I’m apparently still walking to the bar while RL’s been taking pictures of them in the pool.


Drinks! Ordered doubles so I don’t have to keep going back to the bar as often.


Not gonna lie, this is pretty nice. The pool is great for the kids, and it’s awesome that it’s not super crowded.


Kids are loving the waterslide.


The temperature out here is pretty good, but towards the end of the day, it starts to get a little bit cool. Solved that with some time in the hot tub.


Post swim time, I sat on the balcony to do some blogging. While sitting there, I heard really loud jets overhead, and saw these two F22s doing exercises. They are Really Really loud.


Swim in an awesome pool and then get on their ipads, what could be better?


Ah gong takes a turn watching the kids on the balcony.


Dinner spot is another restaurant on the resort grounds.


That’s actually not a bad deal to buy a full bottle of Weller Full Proof.


Of course, volcano.


The best part of teppanyaki is that the kids are entertained during dinner.


Speaking of kids, jetlag has kicked in big time for them. Austin is 4 hours ahead of Hawaii, so it’s well past their bedtime right now.


Nothing left in the tank.


Alright kids, let’s hurry up and finish dinner and we’ll go to sleep.


But, not without ice cream first.


Walked by the ABC store on the way back and saw these interesting pancake mixes.


Visited an island themed Christmas store. The grandparents took the kids to back to the room to put them to bed while RL and I walked around the resort grounds some.


Rainbow Tower. I thought it’s cheesy until I realized that it’s actually a giant mosaic. OK, I guess that’s kinda cool. We are getting tired too due to jet lag, it’s time to call it an early night. Got an early morning wake up tomorrow, but I doubt that’ll be a problem since we’ve all been waking up super early at like 5am.

To be continued at Oahu Day 3.