Hawaii- Oahu

I recently got back from a vacation to Hawaii and I loved it. I didn’t want to leave! We went to Oahu and Maui.

I did not picture Oahu to be like that at all! It was a very bustling city.

We stayed in Waikiki and I highly recommend our hotel- Hilton Hawaiian Village in Waikiki. It was gorgeous and honestly was so big it was a resort. Around the pool they had stores you could shop in not just small tourist shops but legit brand name designer stores. It also is the opening shot of Hawaii Five-0 because of the mural on the side of the hotel. As we were walking through it when we first got there we found that it had pink flamigos and penguins! There were a ton of restaurants and bars right on the beach and beautiful sunsets at night. There are fireworks there every Friday night which was fun and we got to watch a Hawaiian show at the pool our first night. The whole hotel is open like the lobby and the elevator galley. It was very busy the whole time we were there at the hotel and in Waikiki in general, I mean you are in a city. Maui was very different…but another post coming on that soon.

We took a tour of Pearl Harbor and it honestly was so touching and moving. I recommend stopping by there if you ever visit. You take a boat out there and watch a video on what happened. Once you are on there you can see clearly through the water and see the ship below. I was not expecting that. You also can see oil still spilling out of the Arizona that seeps to the top of the water. I have a picture of that below. Apparently there is 500,000 gallons of oil still on the ship. We took a tour of the submarine there as well. That was very interesting because you can’t even imagine living the way they did. If they knew someone was in pursuit of them they would dive lower than they were supposed to and shut off the electricity so they couldn’t be found. They couldn’t see anything in front of them and would just sweat puddles because there was no air flow. They would wait it out until they thought they were safe then turn it on again.

We didn’t go but our guide said if we have a chance to go to the flea market where they have the Pro Bowl. She said you get the best deals there for the exact same thing they have selling in tourist shops for half the price and you can bargain with the merchants too. Also on the tour we went through the original China Town and went by the Kamehameha Statue by the old royal palaces. We also went by Father Damien or Saint Damien of Molokai’s statue.

Molokai is another island in the Hawaiian chain and was a leper colony. They also used Molokai to test military ammunition and there are still live rounds over there.

All in all, I would recommend going to visit Oahu and staying at the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

in the plane landing in Oahu.