My Dave Tires: Hawaii, Days 1-3

My Dave Tires: Hawaii, Days 1-3

September 18, 2015 0 Comments A+ a-

My Dave Tires? Don't ask. Autocorrect gets the best of us sometimes.

I came back from Hawaii only five days ago, but I knew I had to share my adventures with you. Be prepared for a trilogy of very long posts, bear with me--there are pictures!

This was my first trip to the islands of Hawaii, and I don't intend for it to be the last time I visit! Hawaii was truly beautiful, I went to the island of Oahu for ten whopping days with my boyfriend and his parents.

I know, you've heard how beautiful Hawaii was so many times, but seriously--take my word for it, go and visit at least a couple of times in your lifetime. The culture, food, and lifestyle is so different than the mainland United States. I will mention those later in the post!

The view from our hotel porch! Thank God for oceanfront rooms.
DAY ONE, September 5: T and I arrived very late on Friday night, I had to wait the entire day waiting for T to get off work and head to the airport. I think I deserved a treat for all that waiting, the treat came next morning when I woke up to an oceanfront view of the lagoon and the Pacific Ocean.

I was ready to hit the beach, so we all headed out to the lagoon at the earliest we could...this was at 9 am. Remember, 9 am is Noon in the West Coast. We all went snorkeling and looked for fishes in the lagoon, it was too murky thanks to the waves that were coming through--but we still saw some awesome fish in the reef around the lagoon. I also got the chance to look around the resort we were staying at and stayed at the Koi pond for a little to watch the Koi fish swim by.

I take this in pride, we aimed to eat local food throughout the vacation, and we did it! My first lunch in Oahu was at Loco Moco. It was a very unique Hawaiian thing to have a Loco Moco (I decided to pass on this) which is "a meal in the contemporary cuisine of Hawaii. There are many variations, but the traditional loco moco consists of white rice, topped with a hamburger patty, a fried egg, and brown gravy." Thanks Wikipedia!

T's parents wanted to head into Honolulu to pick up some Mochi candies usually named Chi Chi Dangos in Hawaii. I'm not a huge fan of Mochi, but if you're in the area--the locals rave about the Nisshodo Candy Store.

We drove through Waikiki munching on Chi Chi Dangos, it was a very rich area as there were literally hundreds of brand name stores, here I learned that Japanese tourists adore designer brands--hence so many designer stores. I've never seen them up close so my eyes were glued to the window! We passed some locations, and T looked up where we could crash a Hawaii 5-0 filming location (we did't find any, but we found something even better--stay tuned for this).

T, being a Hawaii 5-0 buff, wanted to see some locations that was featured in a couple of episodes, the first location we both thought of was visiting the King Kamehameha statue front of the Supreme Court of Hawaii building. Right across it was the Iolani Palace, which served as a palace for the royals residing in Hawaii a long time ago.

The Iolani Palace, it was very beautiful and grand.
King Kamehameha statue front of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.
After this, we had to get another local delicacy at Waiola Shave Ice! At this point the day was already humid and hot, so I welcomed anything cool to eat. T and his family swears shave ice in Hawaii can't be replicated in the mainland, my goal is to prove them wrong. If you have a shave ice location in the Seattle region, let me know and I'll try it!


Enjoy the very brief video I did originally for Snapchat.

After gulping this down and getting a couple of brain freezes along the way, we headed to T and his parents' family friends' (who taught T a couple of times in Seattle) house for dinner. We had some delicious BBQ ribs and cornbread that left us all raving for the recipe. After dinner, the hosts taught us how to make our own leis! I wish they would have stayed alive forever, the smell of it was incredible. I hung it in our hotel room for a couple of days!

I enjoyed mocking T at how slow he sewed his lei, I did mine in a couple of minutes, the flowers were freshly picked from our hosts' backyard.


End scene. This was only the day one!

DAY TWO, September 6: Waking up early was becoming a norm for all of us as seeing it was already later in the day back at home. I wasn't complaining, when I woke up I didn't lag in bed, I was always ready to start the day in paradise! Today we planned on a couple of things to do--first it was to go to the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet, one of the biggest swamp meets in Hawaii. It was right around the University of Hawaii football stadium, so it was a long trek looking at tents. Did I mention how HOT it was? No? Well, it was super HOT and super humid--it was very hard to walk into tents, they were like ovens. We only made it a little more than 1/2 way before cutting through the stadium back to the car with A/C!


Did you know the definition of Hawaiian A/C? Well, it's your windows down. We didn't do much of Hawaiian A/C because it was still too hot for us!

After lunch at Zippy's (aka McDonalds of Hawaii), we decided to go to the Pearl Harbor memorial since it was a couple of blocks away, and I was so excited. If you know me, you'll know the Pearl Harbor movie is one of my favorite movies ever, I love the history behind the movie and the attack of Pearl Harbor. This completed a life-long dream of mine. It was still scorching hot when we arrived, I sweated so much I think I lost a couple of pounds that day.

The Pearl Harbor memorial was so beautiful and tastefully done, I took pictures, but I didn't take too much out of respect to the memorial. I have a thing against taking selfies at memorials, but taking some gorgeous photos is okay at a level, IMO.

USS Arizona remains and the memorial.
Standing in the heat for this amazingly gorgeous memorial was worth it, T's parents mentioned that most of the memorial around us were recently renovated in the last couple of years--so it was very tastefully done!

After the memorial, we all knew we had to get some shave ice to cool ourselves down, so we looked up on Yelp and came across Baldwin’s Shaved Ice & Snack Shop. In my opinion, this was the best tasting shave ice of all the ones I went to in Oahu. The ice itself was more gritty than Waiola (it was very smooth and melted perfectly in your mouth), but the flavors were limited at Waiola. Here I was able to get a Piña Colada flavor! The three flavors I picked was a perfect combination.


When we got back to the hotel, we were just in a time for a Hawaiian sunset! T and I took a walk on the lagoons and took pictures. So worth the walk.



DAY THREE, September 7: I had breakfast on the porch with some incredible Portuguese sausage and hash browns (literally our breakfast everyday, it was that good).


T and I wanted to explore the new resort next to us, the Disney Aulani resort, and we were amazed. It was so...I can't even find the words to describe it. AWESOME. It was clearly targeted with families with small children, but I consider myself a tiny human sometimes so we were slack jawed at almost everything at the resort. New bucket list: Stay at Aulani one day for at least one night!

A small sneak peek of how many pools they have! The dark spot is their own personal snorkeling reef.
After salivating at the lucky little children who stayed at Aulani, we met up with T's parents to check out Haleiwa, north of Oahu, for lunch and maybe some turtles! The drive was about 45 minutes, but we took a countryside detour and saw a chocolate/coffee factory. We came in for some free tasting, totally worth the pit stop!

For a very late lunch we had some incredible rotisserie chicken at a food truck that sold whole chickens. We ate in the car before heading to Laniakea Beach to watch for some turtles. The waves were pretty rough today, so we didn't all have a clear view of the turtles, they didn't come up on the beach either--but I captured an amazing gem of a photo!

Can you see it!?
We were pretty tired and wanted to hang out at a beach, so we decided to go to Turtle Bay to watch the beginning of the sunset on a bunch of rocks. We didn't go swimming because we had a long haul back home, and we didn't want to do it while wet!


I don't know how much more tourist-y you can get with this photo. Maybe if you added a fanny pack?
We rode back to Waipahu to grab some Malasadas from Leonard's Hot Malasadas Truck. From my perspective, it's Portuguese puff pastry aka donuts without holes. You could get it stuffed with Haupia (coconut), chocolate or custard. I opted for a plain and a chocolate stuffed one. The plain was coated with sugar, and I loved it more than the chocolate stuffed once. For once I understood the definition of too much chocolate!

My stomach went to bed happy, and so did my heart. Thanks Oahu!

Part two coming soon.
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