Waikiki

On day four of spring break, we left Oahu's windward side and moved to Waikiki beach.  Waikiki is a busy, bustling, never-a-dull-moment sort of place; it's been a famous surfing spot for many years, and fortunately a few of the grand old hotels are still in business. This view is from our hotel balcony.

I took this picture in the morning, when the sun first came up behind the mountains and hit the beach.  Before sunrise, surfers were already in the water.  I caught some of them with my zoom:

Because of the shape of the beach, the shallow water and the coral formations, the waves come in narrow and long (you can see a few forming in the photo) and so lots of people can ride the same wave for a long way.  This is part of why people love to surf Waikiki, and why it's an ideal place to learn.

The Spouse was unable to enjoy this view because he was up and out the door every morning at six, working at the FIRST Robotics Hawaii regional, held a couple miles away at the University of Hawaii sports dome.

The boys and I woke later and got ourselves some food.  Because the Spouse stays at Marriott so much, he has Golden Platinum Grand Poobah status, which meant he and the boys got free breakfast, and I got 25% off.  If you've ever unleashed an eight-year-old boy upon a large hotel breakfast buffet, the following picture will make perfect sense.  If you're a dietitian, scroll down quickly.

After eating came swimming.  One morning we started building a sand castle by 8:30.  We finished it by noon - it was a large castle.  Back in the hotel room, we discovered that (1) we could see it from our balcony and (2) nobody stepped on it all day!  This caused me to temporarily suspend my cynical, jaded view of humanity.  (I exclude you, of course, my dear friends, loved ones and readers, whenever I mentally sum up peopledom.)

We also spent lots of time at the pool:

The covered area and blue umbrellas to the left is a restaurant, and imagine your delight if you are, say, eight or ten years old, tired and hungry from swimming, and your mom lets you splash yourself over to the restaurant in your swimsuit, and you can eat kalua pork sliders and chicken salad and lemonade, while the waitress exclaims that you're such a good eater, and how cute and sweet besides. (This, by the way, happened with several waitresses during the week.)

Besides a few shopping and tourist forays, which I'll describe in the next post, that was our Waikiki experience.  I can't sign off without a couple sunset shots, though, because Waikiki is situated perfectly to watch the sun set over the ocean.  At about the same time every evening, everyone on the beach stops and looks.