Honolulu is not a beach
We visited O’ahu Island for the first time (definitely won’t be the last time) for an extended Labor Day weekend. Luckily, there are a few airlines offering direct flights between Seattle and Honolulu.
Hawaii always seemed like an exotic but unreachable destination before we moved to the west coast. It takes us a little over 5 hours to fly from Seattle to Honolulu, so imagine how long it would take to get to any of the Hawaiian islands from the midwest or the east coast. But after spending 3 full days in Honolulu, I would say those 5 hours are totally worth it.
It’s not just a beach destination.
We loved Honolulu because seriously when you go on a tropical vacation with littles, how many days in a row can you sit on the beach and play with sand without feeling under-stimulated? We are not just speaking for the adults in the family, Freddy is a sensory-seeking kid who enjoys new experiences everyday. If your littles are like ours, Honolulu would be your perfect tropical getaway. We stayed at the Marriott Hotel on Waikiki beach and had easy access to both a world-class beach as well as a safe and clean downtown with some of the best malls and eateries we have ever experienced. Honolulu gets a lot of Japanese tourists so I think the downtown malls are very much catered to them—I kept on telling Gabriel how the malls remind me of malls I had previously seen in Japan and Singapore — there is so much to do inside, you can easily spend the whole day there and even the food courts have amazing quality foods.
Of course, apart from shopping malls (I’m really becoming American can you tell), you can hike, visit Pearl Harbor, check out museums, sail, scuba dive, go see the filming location of Jurassic Park, and so much more. On my instagram, we posted about our hike along the Makapu’u Lighthouse Trail—the pictures don’t do justice to the place—it’s just so gorgeous and the paved path is definitely a plus (ain’t nobody got space to pack their dirty hiking boots).
As you can probably guess, there are countless beautiful beaches in Honolulu and all over the O’ahu Island, we did stick to Waikiki this time around because we love how calm the waves are at one section of the beach. The developers did such a good job by building a long wall in the middle of the water along one side of the beach so it creates a natural pool where even littles can swim around without worrying about big waves and unpredictable currents. On the section of the Waikiki beach where there is no wall, you see surfers chase the perfect waves from sunrise to sunset. I think Waikiki beach is a great example of how Honolulu is for tourists—everyone can find something they are looking for, and leave this place dreaming about when they can return.
Now I have visited Hawaii, I can say with confidence—there are two kinds of people in the world, the people who have never visited Hawaii, and the people who continue to return to Hawaii. Is that why “Aloha” means both hello and goodbye?
