Hawaii for a few days

5 May, 2016

We arrived in the early morning in Hawaii. Getting through US Customs is always an effort but we are in no hurry to disembark.

We are booked in at the Honolulu Hilton for the next 3 nights at Waikiki Beach. This is where Elvis stayed when he was shooting Blue Hawaii.

We arrived to check in and even though we had prepaid for this hotel with Flight Centre before we left Australia the only record that the hotel has of our booking is the cancellation that they received 3 days ago due to non-payment!  After several attempts at trying to contact Flight Centre (it was very early morning in Oz) we just left their phone details with the hotel to sort it out while we explored the area.

By late afternoon it had been sorted out but I doubt that we will use Flight Centre again after never having had an issue when we’d booked accommodation ourselves in multiple countries over the past 2 years.

Our room is huge and quiet although the view is a bit ordinary. Still, we are at Waikiki Beach!

The Honolulu Hilton is a big complex these days.

6 May, 2016

We have to say we had a swim at Waikiki so on with the togs and hit the beach. This is definitely no Burleigh Beach. The water is calm, the beach is crowded and the ‘sand’ is imported from Australia.

The Hilton and Waikiki Beach.

The view from Waikiki Beach.

Of course, we managed to find lots of American restaurants and had dinner at Tony Roma’s for some serious ribs. Nice…

7 May, 2016

Today we are booked on a tour of Oahu including Honolulu and Pearl Harbor.

At Pearl Harbour.

The Museum at Pearl Harbor.

The USS Arizona Memorial.

Great view from the Nuuanu Pali lookout.

On the tour of Oahu.

The Byodo-InTemple in the Valley of the Temples Memorial Park, Kahaluu, O’ahu, Hawaii.

Stone lamps in the Temple gardens.

We were also taken to Hawaii’s most famous surf beach but even the tour guide had to admit, after I showed him our photos of Burleigh Beach, that ours was better.

Sunset beach.

Now this is a long board.

Next day we headed out to the airport for our flight back with Jetstar. Easy as and we arrived in to Brisbane on time. We had booked a ConXion shuttle bus door-to-door from Brisbane International Airport and we were surprised that we were the only passengers. Door to door for A$98… great deal.