Aloha Oahu

Josh and I have been saving our money for a vacation for a while and after long negotiations and discussion we decided that Hawaii would be our destination. After further discussion and weighing logistics, Oahu became our island of choice. The adventurous side of both of us REALLY wanted to go to the Big Island, neither one of us have been there before and there is so much about that island that appeals to us. We went to Maui on our honeymoon and while we weren't opposed at all to going back there, it ranked lower on our list. Kaui was mildly interesting to us as was Oahu. Oahu is however, the easiest island to get to from San Francisco. Our biggest determining factors were price of ticket and how many stops we would have to make. As airlines have cut down their services it is increasingly difficult to get to an island directly. For example, to fly to the Big Island, we had to make at least one stop, sometimes two (one of the stops was in Salt Lake City...uh I'm not going east before I go west). So...Oahu it was. As Claire gets older and we aren't worrying about how a baby is going to do with multiple stops, perhaps we'll be more adventurous.

Next on the checklist was where to stay. I found some great vacation packages courtesy of my old friend expedia (used it to book our honeymoon). Upon further research and a HUGE tip from my mom, I looked into VRBO.com ****warning**** this sight is super addictive so browse at your own risk. It stands for vacation rental by owner. You can find a place to stay just about anywhere in the world on this sight. I loved it. We found a little one bedroom condo to stay in a lesser touristed part of the island. The place was exactly as it had been described on the internet. It was like 30 yards from the ocean - on the beach. Sunset pictures in previous posts were taken from our lanai. Let me put it to you this way, we had to turn up the radio or TV to hear it over the crashing of the waves - heaven. The lady who we rented the place from even found us a pack n play to use while we were there so we didn't have to lug Claire's across the pacific.

Get this, our fullsize rental car was $95 for the entire week. Yep, $95. To give you perspective, I even had a discount for Las Vegas and our rental car there was $80. The rental car we arranged through priceline and what a deal it was.

The final detail of the trip, who do we trust to take care of our other "child", Lola. She was a serious consideration in arranging this whole trip. A dear woman that Josh works with allows Lola to hang out at her house and run around with her dog Katie two days a week and she graciously took care of Lola for the week.

So, after a couple months of preparation we were off.



We arrived on Oahu at 11:20 in the morning. Plenty of time to enjoy the rest of the day on the island. After retrieving our luggage and picking up the rental car we were off. We spent a little of the afternoon at the beach, showing Claire what the warm part of the pacific ocean felt like. Josh even got in a little snorkeling.