Other Honolulu titbits

Some interesting titbits we discovered traveling to this place. Firstly, Hawaii is expensive. Even when you don't take the exchange rate into consideration it's still expensive at face value...and don't forget, there's taxes and tips on top of the price.

We went for a walk along the beach near the hotel and saw this taco foodtruck. $4 taco, awesome. I bought one. It was practically a little larger than cigar sized. I also had to pay 20 cents more for tax. So $4.20. Yeah.

Everything is disposable. In the hotel rooms all cups, utensils...all disposble. Not only that but they also wrap the cups individually in a plastic bag. Each! They serve drinks from the bars in disposable cups. If you ask for a glass of water that's another disposable cup.

All the souvenir shops around our hotel vacinity stocked items made in Vietnam. I should have told them I was too hahahaha.

We discovered a great convenience store tucked away down an alleyway about 500 meters away. I found it on Google Maps and it had a really good rating. Stocked a range of stuff, including 2L of vodka for $15. Oh, by the way, the only thing that is cheap in Hawaii is over the counter liquor.

Cool story - when we came down from Diamond Head we were contemplating walking back to Waikiki. But then we saw the trolley parked up. We ran over and asked the driver how much it would cost to catch a ride back to the beach. He started explaining it was a tour he was doing, if we had booked, and that it was $25 each for the whole day and then $12 for one way...but I guess he got tired of explaining and told us to hop on anyway. So we got an awesome tour on a trolley back to Waikiki for free.

We just happened to be in Waikiki on the weekend of the 76th Annual Floral Parade on Kalakaua Avenue, and we got one of the best viewing platform - right from our balcony.

Jef went surfing. That has got us really excited about summer and going surfing up at Te Arai.

Pearl Harbour

How can we come to Honolulu and not visit Pearl Harbour! We woke up early and caught an Uber out to the National Memorial museum.

We had to catch a bus out to USS Missouri (BB-63). We spent a really long time here looking all around. It was so interesting and moving being here.

The battleship has seen some life, and the USS Missouri has a long history, serving through WWII, the Korean War, and the Gulf War for a 51-year long career. Most famously, the battleship hosted the surrender ceremony of Japan on 2 September 1945.

This is the first time I've seen a submarine. It's getting towed out by the tugboat. Pretty cool!

Aloha

Last week, due to a sudden one off public holiday given to us, we took an inpromtu vacation to Hawaii for a few days. Both Jef and I have been working like crazy and needed some recharge time.

We stayed at the Sheraton Princess Kaiulani on Waikiki beach. For the first couple of days all we did was hang out in the hotel. The surroundings are full of eateries, so we certainly were not limited by choice.

Directly below our room was the International Market Place, an open-air shopping center. It looked spectacular at night all lit up.

One of the things we definitely knew we needed to do was to hike up Diamond Head volcanic tuff cone. It was a beautiful walk up to the top, but also extremely hot!

The view from the top was so beautiful.

Hello from Auckland

Hello hello. We're at home in lockdown since Tues 17th August at 23:59. Back to homeschooling. Back to me working in the kitchen to free up the new study for Kien. Back to trying hard to keep our sanity.

Back to rolling out of bed and being straight into work. Kitchen table and room can't stay tidy for long.

I see myself in photos these days and I look so much like my dad. I've always been under the impression I look like my late mother, but not anymore. Once I surpassed 30 times years of being on this earth my features morphed into my father's, hahaha.

I went for a walk. I finally got out of the house! One week since we went into lockdown. It was lovely.

Again this year, just like last year, we were in lockdown for my birthday. So didn't do anything special. Went to bed early, and that's about it.

Have a good evening wherever you are.