Traveling Again – need recommendations

| Life | By Shawn Parker

Lucky me! I get to go to Hawaii at the end of February. On top of that my birthday present from Puddles, a Canon EOS 20D, will be here early so I’ll not only have it for the trip I’ll have time to familiarize myself with the camera before we go.

This is the part where I need help from my faithful readers – or whatever is left of you after I took my long break. I need recommendations of non-touristy things to do on Oahu.

We’ll be staying in Waikiki, aka: tourist hell, but we’ll be at super nice hotel, the Moana Surfrider. We’ll be there shortly after the Pro-Bowl so hopefully the bustle will have calmed down by the time we’re there.

We do have a couple of plans already, one of which I don’t know if it’ll be able to happen or not:

  1. We were recommended the Sharks Cove Inn for dinner since its a nice place to much and watch the sun set. Its not too far up the coast from Waikiki so it won’t be to hard to get to. Hopefully it won’t be to hard to get into to eat.
  2. We were also recommended Hanauma Beach, a wildlife preserve that has prime snorkeling close to the beach. I could see me getting swept 3 miles down beach before realizing that I was even lost. Hanauma Beach is a cove so it’ll be hard for me to get lost.
  3. The must do trip is to head up to the North Shore for sunrise, which shouldn’t be too hard since we’re gaining so much in time difference. From there head back around the island and hopefully round the east side of the island in time for the sunset. We hope to find hiking somewhere along the way to fill the day.
  4. The Haiku Stairway, aka: The Stairway to Heaven. A stairway that heads a few miles up a ridgeline to finally overlook Honolulu. The trip looks to be staggering and will probably be a full day to get up and down but the view will be well worth it. You have an unobstructed 360 degree view of the island.
  5. If we have time we’d like to do Diamond Head – but we’ve heard its a total tourist trap so we might not get to that one.
  6. Pearl Harbor. We only really have interest in the USS Arizona – the rest of the stuff they have there isn’t really anything that you can’t get from a book – we want to be in and around the areas, not stand around and read about it…
  7. ???

So this is where you guys come in. If you’ve been to Hawaii I want to hear about your experiences and what we should or shouldn’t do…

Oh, and did I mention that I’m not paying a dime for this trip? Yeah, something about me working hard or something like that – turns out that putting in a hard days work and being helpful actually does get rewarded. Who’da thunk it?

So, that said, I’d better get crackin’ on writing a gallery script. Between this and my dad’s racing season coming up I’ll need it in working order fast.

Tagged as: 20d beach canon harbor hawaii north oahu pearl shore travel waikiki

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