Hawaii

Kris had meetings in Hawaii in March and of course I decided that I needed to go along. We had wonderful time once we got there. We missed a connection in Chicago and ended up in Los Angeles for the night. I was pretty bummed and was disappointed that we wouldn't get to see everything we had hoped. Turns out it, we were fortunate, we were in LA for tsunami that hit Japan and then hit Hawaii. There was little damage to Waikiki where we stayed, but we got to miss the scare and evacuation.

We had a wonderful time and squeezed everything in that we wanted to see. Some of the highlights:

1. Loved the clouds over the mountains 2. La'ie Point, just beautiful 3. Laie Temple, it was recently remodeled and it was wonderful to go to the temple, I especially loved to see the diversity of the people there. There were people from all of the world. 4. Polynesian Cultural Center, we had a fun group, but we were the youngest couple by far, the rest of the couples were empty-nesters. 5. Luau, we couldn't go to Hawaii without going to a luau. The real highlight was the night show, where we couldn't take any pictures. 6. Valley of the Temples - the temple is a replica of Buddhist Temple in Japan. 7. Diamond Head from a sunset catamaran cruise, we even got to see some whales. 8. Kris at the top of Diamond Head. 9. Pearl Harbor - we planned on going the morning we didn't get to Hawaii (due to our missed flight). Turned out we wouldn't have been able to go even if we had made our original flight. All harbors in Hawaii were closed due to the tsunami.

This was our first trip to Hawaii, definitely didn't have a enough time to see even touch the surface. My favorite thing we did was snorkel in Hanauma Bay, we only had a couple hours.

There were all kinds of tropical fish just swimming around the reef. I would have loved to spend hours there. I totally "borrowed" the photo above from a friend Amanda. The guide books had me paranoid about break-ins, so I left my camera back at the hotel.

We had a wonderful time in Hawaii and it was hard to go back to reality and cold weather, which we are still experiencing 2 months later. I want summer or a tropical beach.