Oahu Part II

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Here are the last of my Hawaii photos! You guys have no idea how hard it is for me to sit down and edit all of these photos and then decide between the thousands which ones I’m actually going to share! You’ll probably see some very very similar photos. That’s because I didn’t want to choose between them all so I didn’t! HA! These were taken on the last few days of us being in Oahu. We went to the North Shore and Pearl Harbor! It was pretty awesome and we seriously wished we had more time to enjoy. Maybe next time….without the kids. {But don’t tell them!}

Starting our day with pastries from The Four Seasons. Holla! Always a good thing. We did try to go to Leonards to get some malasada’s but we just didn’t have the time. Actually, most places that we wanted to go to had zero parking and lines up the wazoo, so we skipped a lot of them. 3 kids and lines longer than an hour? No thanks.

He can’t take a normal picture….sounds a lot like Brooke!

 

This boy likes to steal sips from everyone’s drinks. Rascal!

Do you see? He can’t help himself. 

So, one of the gal’s at the Four Seasons made me an iced coconut tea! It was amazing! I had no idea you could steep dried coconut and make tea! This was surprisingly amazing.

We love love loved the Dole Plantation! It was pretty busy, but I’m 96% sure it’s always busy?!

One of the highlights of the trip: Dole Whip. So so good 🙂

I’m the only one who has ever had Dole Whip in our family, so this was a fun experience to see everyone taste it!

I think he liked it.

Brooke begged for more ‘pineapple ice cream’ but I told her to hold her horses because we were going to get food later.

Sweet sweet Ed, just not impressed at all.

PINK BABY PINEAPPLES! 

Seriously, how fun are these? 

We were suckers and got tickets to ride the pineapple express. We had to wait over an hour, but it was worth it! Within the first two minutes of the tour, our children were squealing with joy, especially Blake. “Mom, we’re ON A TRAIN!!” He had a blast. One thing I learned on that train tour was that when pineapples are picked, they don’t ripen anymore. I’m not sure I believe that, but I thought it was an interesting fact. Thoughts?

On our way to the car, Brooke wanted to get a pineapple necklace with a few gemstones on it. So that was one of the small keepsakes she got from this trip.

We stopped at some food trucks along the North Shore for lunch. Gord got a bulgogi plate and I got the Mexican food below. Details on all these stops and our recommendations are at the bottom of this post 🙂

We really wanted to go to Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, but there was literally no parking and no way to pull into the parking lot because it was so packed with cars and people. The line for food was from the truck all the way to the road {at least 100 feet!} so we skipped this. Too bad 🙁

Same thing happened when we drove over to get shaved ice from Matsumoto’s. Zero parking on the road, zero parking in the lot with cars and people everywhere. Another bust!

There were lots of beaches and rest stops along our very scenic drive, so we stopped to dip our feet in the ocean and saw 3 sea turtles! They were about 10 feet away at their farthest and 4 feet away at their closest. These are the best photos I could get. Plus I was scared to get to close. Apparently, you can touch them if they come up and touch you first? That’s what someone told me, but I didn’t want to chance it because I’m scared. Plus I was holding my baby this whole time too.

He kept his head below the water most of the time, so this is the turtle mooning you.

One late afternoon, Brooke and I were able to do some mommy-daughter spa treatments at the Four Seasons. Seriously so much fun!

The Four Seasons were so kind to us! They helped us find a babysitting service to watch the kids in our room so Gord and I could enjoy a nice dinner together. We tried their new Italian-inspired restaurant called Noe. Everything we had was AMAZING! This drink is called a Chiaroscuro and we had plenty between the two of us 😉

This restaurant was beautiful!

Our pretty view from the table.

The most amazing appetizer: honeycomb with black truffle oil, whipped ricotta, candied almonds and warm pieces of bread. Seriously incredible and so pretty!

This was a pasta course we shared. I don’t remember what these were filled with, but boy oh boy were they good. This was Gordon’s favorite part of our dinner.

Our fun date only lasted about an hour and a half! We had to get the remainder of our meal to go because Eddie is a rascal and wouldn’t stop screaming for the sitter! Womp womp.

We went back to our room, put that baby back to bed and we went to bed ourselves.

The next morning, we were up early to get to Pearl Harbor. We tried to get tickets for months, but none were never available, so we hoped for the best and tried to get there as early as possible. Well, we were there at 7:10 {they open at 7} and there were at least 500 people ahead of us in line. But, thankfully, we were able to snag some of the free tickets to see the USS Arizona Memorial, we just had to hang around for 2 hours which actually went by surprisingly quickly.

A beautiful spot to pay our respects to these men who lost their lives! I was pleasantly surprised how quiet and reverent everyone was, and actually, how reverent my kids stayed once we made our way up to the memorial wall.

Oil still leaks from the sunken ship which you can see floating on the water.

Ed fell asleep flopped over in Gordon’s arms! Ha!

Our kids had a lot of questions about the sunken ship, so it was a good teaching moment for them, Brooke especially since she understood what had happened, way more than Blake.

After our morning at Pearl Harbor, we traveled to Laie to see the temple and look around the Polynesian Cultural Center. We didn’t have time to stay for the luau because it’s dinner and a show which lasts 4+ hours and we’d have to drive back to the other side of the island where we were staying, but we heard great things about it and would probably want to do that next time we head back without kids.

The temple grounds are so so beautiful! Expansive, quiet and peaceful!

Cuties!!

The view looking away from the temple. Seriously just so pretty everywhere you look. Not just on these grounds but nearly everywhere in Hawaii!

Back at the Four Seasons, we had to have a little more beach time before we headed home! This was in Ko’Olina Bay.

Eddie!! 

Blake not so sure about the water.

He’s giving me the side-eye, not quite sure what to think about the ocean water.

Ok, he loves it!

Amazing macadamia nut pie!!

Enjoying his last few hours of luxury at the Four Seasons right before we headed back to the airport.

Until next time, Hawaii. You made us fall in love with you and now, we will be back 🙂

Details about our trip:

Four Seasons Resort O’ahu at Ko’Olina–I mentioned this in our last O’ahu post, but this hotel is amazing! Nothing but good things to say from all 5 of us!
92-1001 Olani St
Kapolei, HI 96707

Noe–Italian restaurant at The Four Seasons. Incredible! Loved every part of this restaurant. Were totally bummed we had to cut it short! Address the same as above 🙂

Dole Plantation–we had a great time here! Loved the train ride for sure, but we did have to wait. Very touristy, which isn’t convenient when you have kids, but there’s plenty of space to run around and explore.
64-1550 Kamehameha Hwy
Wahiawa, HI 96786

Surf & Salsa–Mexican Food Cart at the North Shore. The fajita plate was the bomb.
66521 Kamehameha Hwy
Haleiwa, HI 96712

Hauula Korean BBQ–Bulgogi plate all the way!
54-295 Kamehameha Hwy
Haleiwa, HI 96712

Pearl Harbor–try to get tickets in advance so you don’t have to get in line! If you can’t get tickets, get here as early as you can to ensure you don’t have to wait for a later boat ride.You can pay to get actual tours, but our kids would never go for that. The free tickets we got take you to the Arizona Memorial, across the harbor by boat. They first show a historical video and that made my two boys scream because of the loud bombs, guns and general war sounds. So beware of that. Everything else was great! Our 2+ hours went by relatively quickly.
1 Arizona Memorial Place
Honolulu, HI 96818

Laie Temple–beautiful drive to get here. Lovely way to spend a relaxing afternoon right before you go to the Polynesian Cultural Center
55-600 Naniloa Loop
Laie, HI 96762

Places we heard were awesome but couldn’t make it there because we ran out of time/ran out of energy/didn’t want to deal with parking/didn’t want to wait in line for more than an hour: Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck, Matsumoto’s Shave Ice and Leonard’s.