Hawaii Day 1-- Waikiki Beach

We recently had an awesome 5 day trip to Hawaii! It wasn't awesome because we left Mark and Dax home with Grandma Daniels-- though that certainly helped, it was awesome because it was a celebration of our ten year anniversary! Yup, 10 years! Okay, well, technically we were married a little over 8 years ago, but we got an early start on the 10 year anniversary. Next year, we plan on having a baby in the summer. So when our real 10 year anniversary rolls around in October of 2012, we'll (hopefully) have a 4 month old (not to mention the Mayans recommended that we get our vacation in before 2012). So, we planned our vacation for October '11, but, I have time off in the summer, so we moved it up to June or July of '11. Then, we realized that was peak tourist season, so we moved it up to April 2011 over Spring Break. Anyway, Happy 10 Year Anniversary to us!

We left on Monday and arrived Monday around 2pm. It is a pretty long flight-- about 6 hours. After sitting in traffic in Honolulu for about an hour to get the 5 miles to our hotel on Waikiki, I'd decided this may not be the vacation I'd hoped. We really wanted to go to Pearl Harbor that first day, but it, and every other attraction in Hawaii closes at 5 o'clock, so we spent the first day walking around on Waikiki Beach with a sneer on our faces. Amazingly, you couldn't even hike Diamond Head after 5:30 pm! It was a pretty bleak start for an anniversary vacation.

Randy at Waikiki Beach--see his sneer?!

That's Diamond Head.  We hike to the top of that tomorrow.