Sunday, April 22, 2012

Here's a couple more from Oahu - I guess this should do it for that island. I'll get cracking on the rest from Kauai soon.

We stayed in the Waikiki Beach area, so here are some shots from that. We visited the beach to try to catch some nice sunsets over the ocean.  I hear (from my mom) that we didn't see the best sunsets there. But nonetheless they were nice.  Here are pictures from two of them.
It was a pretty busy beach, very commercial area with lots of hotels. These palm trees in the picture to the top left were kind of the back side of the beach and you can spot all the hotels and shops just on the block behind.  So many expensive stores! I couldn't believe it.  And an ABC store (a small convenience store) literally on every block. Worse than Starbucks!  And I bet we bought something from at least 5 different ones!  There is this famous statue Duke Kahanamoku statue - some famous surfer. Also, some colorful surfboards on the beach.

And of course, who can go to Hawaii without taking pictures of the beautiful flowers everywhere! Here are several hibiscus flowers, a tree with some really knarly roots that I thought was cool, a pineapple from the Dole pineapple plantation, a bird of paradise, and some other stuff that I have no idea what they are. Oh  - and the trunk of a rainbow eucalyptus on the bottom right. Really real colors, not painted on, just for the record!



Saturday, April 14, 2012

Well, already I'm doing a pretty poor job getting around to practicing my posting skill.  So finally here's another one!  But its not going be my last year in Iowa review as mentioned before.  Instead, I thought I'd post some great pictures of Hawaii.  My parents and brother and I went on a family vacation to Oahu and Kauai. We had quite a great time and managed to fit an awful lot into about 10 and half days.

So, I have so many pictures, I got sort of overwhelmed with what to post.  So I had this great idea to do some sort of picture collages of similar places together. Some idea about fitting in more pictures in less space or something. . . Yay- fun with photoshop! of course this has taken me some time. . . I have made 4 in one week. So, I had hoped to do one big Hawaii post, but I have realized if I'm ever to post again, I'd better do several small ones. So here goes!

Here are some pictures from the 4 days we spent in Oahu. In no particular order.

We visited Pearl Harbor. We went to go to the Arizona memorial. As the memorial is built over the battleship, still resting where it sunk that day, a boat is needed to take the visitors to and from the memorial in the harbor. Very humbling to think of all the lives lost on that ship when it sunk - lives given to protect our country. Some photos from the memorial. 


We also went to downtown Honolulu to see Iolani Palace (top), built by the Hawaiian King Kalākaua when Hawaii was still a monarchy. We took a tour of the inside, but no pics were allowed. Across the street from the Palace is the Aliʻiōlani Hale (bottom), some kind of government building. Outside this building is a statue of King Kamehameha, who united the Hawaiian islands under central rule.



We took this really cool Circle Island Tour on Oahu, which meant that we got on a little tour bus and spent 8 hours or so driving all around the island of Oahu. Recommended, because then you get to see so many things you may not have know existed or would be hard to get to! We saw a lot of stuff on the tour.  Here is a picture (top left) of Hanauma Bay, a really beautiful beach on Oahu. We had to see it from above and did not get to go down. Hear there is good snorkeling though!  Next is the Byodo-In Temple (top right), a replica of a Buddhist temple somewhere in Japan, I believe.  It is a beautiful building. Then we saw Sunset Beach (lower right), on the north shore of Oahu. Famous for its surfing.  Although there weren't great waves when we were there. And finally, we hiked in the rain (we bought ponchos - more like garbage bags with hoods that said Aloha!) to hike (well really it was walking. it was paved) through a pretty park to get to the Waimea Falls (lower left). I'm sure that little pool below was freezing cold, but still people were swimming in it. The park was great - full of great flowers, but I think all those are for another blog post :).



Lastly, but what we actually did first, are some views from our hike (really a hike this time) up to Diamond Head. Great views!  Lots of stairs! Anybody else need to get in shape for their family vacation?  or is it just us? If you look really close at the top right pic on the mountain, you can see a tiny tiny white thing.  That tiny white thing is the white structure you see on the bottom left picture. That's where we climbed.



Okay - I promise more soon!