Paradise Day 1

We left for Hawaii on Thursday. After sleeping on the plane and playing the Bean game (Bohnanza, a German card game that is awesome), we finally arrived. The first thing we did after picking up our rental car was check-in to the hotel. You know those movies that show people deplaning and people putting leis on them after they get off the plane? All lies. We didn't get one until we arrived at our hotel. I bet they just put that in the movies to try to trick people into going to Hawaii. You know, because Hawaii is hurting for tourists.

At the hotel, as MJ checked-in, a Master of Welcoming Guests to the Hotel came up to us and gave us guava juice! A pleasant surprise from the Best Hotel Welcomer Master ever!

After that, we quickly dumped our things and walked a few blocks down the road for some ramen. JL had recommended this small restaurant to us, but we had to keep calling and bugging him and EL because we didn't know if we were at the right restaurant or not. We went in and had some awesome ramen. The broth is a lot thicker than normal and it's really good. After we were done, the cook/manager/owner/head person came out and asked us if this was the first time we'd been there. When we said yes, he said we ordered the right thing. Definitely a good recommendation from JL/EL. Actually, nobody gave us any bad advice for the whole trip.

After eating our fill, we went swimming behind our hotel at Waikiki beach. This is the most touristy beach because it's where all the hotels, and thus tourists, are. This is when we discovered there are rocks in the ocean. Apparently the beach is eroding (as it is really short, take a look at the pics) and there is not enough sand on the ocean floor to cover the rocks. That's the conclusion I just made up. I blame global warming. Everyone please stop driving your cars so we can all enjoy the beaches in Hawaii.

For dinner that night, we had planned to go to Yummy's, a Korean restaurant that served "meat jun", which is just another name for "french toast with meat inside". We looked up the closest one and supposedly it was right across the street in the International Marketplace food court. Little did we know that the food court was closed for renovations. Since we didn't know where the second closest one was, we asked the concierge, who told us we would have to go to a nearby mall. We got to the mall, went inside a Macy's and asked an employee there if the food court had a Yummy's. Everyone we asked gave us this weird look like "Why do you want to goto Yummys?" We thought nothing of it until we got to the food court. Then it dawned on us: driving around Oahu asking people where to find the closest Yummy's is the equivalent to a tourist driving around LA asking where the closest Panda Express is. Not a place you would normally ask for specifically. The meat jun was good and then we had some Dole pineapple smoothy/frozen yogurt/ice cream for dessert.

Then we hung out at Barnes and Nobles.

Then I went back to my room-without-an-ocean-view and crashed.