Hawaii Part 2

Seeing the beach for the first time

We arrived about 8:30 p.m. Hawaii time and my friend Rebekka picked us up from the airport and took us to her house. This was so great, since we weren't able to reserve a rental car until the next morning (all those Toyota's recalled really limited the availability of rental cars). William and I were both sick and we had been on that loud plane for six hours and my head felt so fuzzy. It was nice to finally climb in bed and go to sleep.

Friday morning David got us our rental van and we loaded up the car and went to start our vacation. We first headed to the Hale Koa, which is the military resort right on Waikiki. We checked there, but they didn’t have any rooms available, but we stayed there and had lunch and played in the pool and on the beach for a while--amenities available to all military regardless of if you are staying there or not.

We kept checking for other places to stay, but there weren't any cabins available at Bellows Beach to rent or any rooms at Hickam AFB. We checked several hotels, but we would have had to get two rooms since we don't all fit in one room anymore, and that gets pretty pricey. David eventually found us a house to rent near the beach in Kailoa. Evidently the owners of the house had been planning to come that week, but didn't make it, so it became available. However, they were wary of us wanting to rent it starting that night (I mean, really, who comes to Hawaii without a place reserved to stay), so they made us pay cash. This meant we had to find a bank to make a withdrawal, since we couldn't withdraw that much money from an ATM. So while I stayed with the kids at the pool and beach (tough job, I know) David went and found a bank and got out the cash for our beach house. We drove to Kailua in terrible Friday afternoon traffic, but eventually checked into our house and it was fantastic! Three bedrooms, two bathrooms, and huge kitchen and living area and amazing yard with all sorts of beautiful plants and flowers. It was our home away from home for the next five nights.

After we checked in, we drove around the area a bit, and found the beach and grocery store and bought some food for the next few days. We went back to the house and had dinner and watched the opening ceremonies of the Winter Olympics and went to bed early since we were still on Washington time. Of course, everyone was up super early too, so we decided to go to Kailua beach and watch the sun rise. It was a beautiful morning. However, there were a few low clouds, so we couldn’t' see the sun come up over the horizon, but it was still lovely to be out on the beach at sunrise.