Our experience in Waikiki was a HUGE difference between when we were there in May. Here are some (ok, a lot) of pictures I took during our walk to the restaurant from the convention center. We walked down Honolulu’s version of Newbury street, Kalakaua Ave. I won’t bore you with a million photos of expensive stores, but here are a couple.
There are opportunities to cut through to the beach along the way and plenty of board storage we are assuming is public.
We walked by a lot of fancy hotels, including the Surfrider.
Boston has the Emerald Necklace, and Hawaii has the Lei of parks.
The Whaling Wall mural
You can learn some Hawaiian by reading the paving stones
And the road essentially spits you out at the beach and runs along side it.
I wish I could do a better job of summing up just how many people were here… but here’s a video to maybe help.
There’s a statue of Duke Kahanamoku (olympian swimmer who popularized surfing) and Jonah Kūhiō Kalanianaʻole who did a lot for the Hawaiian people.
This post is getting to be very lengthy, so I’ll break up Tiki’s and walk back into a second post. I’ll end with this quintessential picture of Waikiki. First of all, these trees are the coolest. Banyan trees can walk. The cars are meant to give you perspective to just how big it is. Second, you’ll see kids in the back of a pick up truck. In Hawaii, Hawaiians can travel in the back of trucks. Third, this is a roundabout of sorts, and you’ll see people packing their boards on top after a day of surfing. And last, you can see the hoards of people walking to the beach (Still… at 5pm on a Saturday.)
