Vacation is Over

 I am at the Honolulu Airport waiting for the WestJet check in desk to open, so it seems like a good time to update. I had a nice week in Honolulu, I thought I would like to go and see somethings while I was here, but in the end, I went to the beach and did a lot of walking around. I easily got 10,000 steps per day. I found a nice beach about a 15-minute walk from my place. It was a lot quieter than the Waikiki beach and according to the blurb popular with families. Waikiki was a lot closer and way more crowded, I did walk down it and was pretty glad that I found the other beach. 

My place was quite nice, on the second floor of a walk up building so not too many stairs to climb. The building seemed pretty quiet. I had coffee every morning on the lanii.

The road next to the Waikiki beach has changed a lot since I stayed there before I went to Australia, forty years ago. All the stores are very high end, Saint Laurent, Hermes, Tiffany. I did find the Nordstrom Rack and looked at a few things there but did not buy anything. When I was here before the International Marketplace was more a place to buy souvenirs and kitschy things. Now there is a t\Tesla store on the corner, and it is surrounded by lots of high-end stores. The only thing that looks the same is the great big tree at the entrance.

I found food to be quite expensive even going to the Safeway. Some of the prices were the same as in Canada except it was American dollars. I also found the milk tasted different. 

I also found the beach I used to go to, which is at the other end of the Waikiki, it had changed too, lots more big buildings around it and very busy.

Since today is Sunday, I saw lots of families setting up tents in the park, with bar-b-ques and it looked like at least 10 people with each family, lawn chairs, lots of coolers. 

There also seems to be a lot of homeless people with their shopping carts full of all their belongings. 

Two of the taxi drivers I had here, thanked me for coming to Hawaii.

Waikiki Beach

Diamond Head from the beach.

I upgraded myself to 1st class, I only have about two hours from when I land in Vancouver to catch my flight to Calgary, then only an hour before I catch my bus to Edmonton, so hopefully my luggage gets off the plane first and I can make the connections.