Waikīkī

For our very late arrival we had a one-night reservation in a timeshare studio for an amazing $56 per night. This was just to fill in until we could check into our 1 bedroom condo at the Imperial Hawaii. In the morning we hauled our luggage down the street about 6 blocks to the Imperial. We're located in the centre of Waikiki just one block from the beach and are very pleased with our accommodation.

Waikiki continues to attract Asian travellers and I'm estimating that they outnumber visitors from any other country, including mainland USA. Everything here is bilingual....English & Japanese. They obviously have money to spend because they are the only ones in the expensive designer shops, of which there are many. In contrast, I've been shopping at Ross Dress for Less where there is always a bargain!

Day one we walked to the Ala Moana Centre, the world's largest open-air shopping centre with 340 stores and 80 restaurants. It was a pleasure to walk by all the luxury shops on our way to Walmart and Sam's Club to restock our food & wine supplies. The 5 km return trip was too much for John so we took a trolley home and he hasn't returned. He did enjoy going for lunch at the Bubba Gump Shrimp Co. where he feasted on 20 shrimp prepared 4 different ways. I've been walking to the Centre daily, mainly for the exercise, and have learned that lugging a bag full of groceries plus 2 bottles of wine 2.5 km is just too much!

Every Friday night the Hilton Hotel has a 5 minute fireworks display that can be seen from the beach.Read more