Settling Down for the Night in Waikiki

Hawaii April Travelog #2
Waikiki, Honolulu, HI - Fri, 8 Apr, 2022, 11pm

Our trip to Hawaii was mostly uneventful, just long. Flying to Hawaii from California is as long as flying to New York. The flight was 5½ hours. It wasn't bad, it was just a bit long. Fortunately I had wifi for part of the trip and napped for an hour at the end. It's a time change of 3 hours to Hawaii, so our 8pm-ish arrival felt like 11pm already.

We picked up our rental car. We had a choice of 7 or 8 convertibles in the garage. There were a few Mustangs and several Camaros. Two of the Camaros were SS models— meaning big engines. I was about to grab one of those, planning to have some zoom-zoom fun this week, but then I remembered that the Camaro convertible has a comically small trunk. We took a more practical Mustang instead.

It was an easy drive in late evening traffic to Waikiki, where we pulled up to the Holiday Inn Express Hotel.



The hotel's tall format and our assigned room on the 36th floor gave us hope of a good view. Alas, it's a view back over the city, not toward the beach. And the room is comically small.



Like seriously, if you walk in the door too fast you'll bang your shin on the bed. "This is like Japan," Hawk quipped. "Yeah, or New York City," I added. Though the small rooms I've gotten in NYC at least had a desk. This one just has that blue thing.

The room's disappointing. The lack of space is really going to cramp us. There's no balcony and the windows don't even open, so we can't even enjoy fresh air. In the Hyatt we stayed at in December we had a much larger room and a balcony. I'd say we can't complain as we're getting this one on frequent flyer points (actually their kin, free night certificates)... but we stayed at that Hyatt on points, too.

Morning in Waikiki

Hawaii April Travelog #3
Waikiki, Honolulu, HI - Sat, 9 Apr, 2022, 8am

We awoke easily this morning, even before my alarm rang at 6:45am. Hawaii doesn't observe Daylight Saving Time, so by 6am the sun was blazing through our windows facing east and south. I lazed just a little longer in bed before pulling on clothes and heading downstairs to the breakfast room.

The breakfast room at this hotel is huge. We'd seen that last night. Fortunately, also, it has 4 or 5 serving lines to help keep everyone moving quickly. And at 7am it was already busy. I presume lots of people are interested in starting the day early, as we are. We grabbed some food then sat at a table outdoors on the patio beneath the shade of several palm trees.

Back up at the room on the 36th floor I grabbed a few pictures before we headed out for the day.



This picture (above) is the view southeast across Waikiki. You can see the ocean on the right. In the distance at the center is Diamond Head.



The view northeast across the mountains (above) is interesting, too. They're covered by clouds as they usually are. It's interesting how with the sharp changes in elevation on this small island you can really see the microclimates. Hopefully we'll remain in sunny & clear ones as we head north to Ka'ena Point today.