So now, on to the fun stuff.
Getting here was quite the non-adventure. We woke up at 3:45am on Monday to corral the cats and get them down to the airport, since we needed to have the pets checked in at the airport three hours before the flight. Hawaii is six hours behind Eastern time now, so that meant that, in our new time zone, it was... 9:45pm. Epic lose.
The cats got on the flight without any real headaches, and the plane had touchscreens built into the back of the seats, so my flight consisted of Rio 2, nap, The Amazing Spider-man, Frozen, and The Little Mermaid. Stephen's was similar. Amazing how a movie marathon makes a 10-hour flight go by almost pleasantly!
We were picked up by some friends from the Navy Band, got our cats, got a litter box and litter, and picked up about two days of groceries before we finally checked in to the Navy Lodge.
Let me just say that Hawaii is beautiful, as if I had forgotten, and that commissaries on real bases actually have real food. This is definitely a few steps up from our previous amenities in Newport.
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Stephen and I checked in with the band on Tuesday morning and then began the hunt for a house, first by checking in to Navy housing. We were offered one military house, a kinda crummy place near the golf course (okay, that wasn't so crummy in Stephen's opinion), but we agreed that we still wanted to look out in town.
One of the guys in the band was assigned to chauffeuring us around, so he showed us a bit of the "neighborhood" (the whole Pearl Harbor area is kind of huge), and we got some delicious Thai food in a strip mall near the base.
We continued house hunting on Wednesday after Stephen secured us a rental car.
House hunting in Hawaii is a whole different beast. The pet policies are very strict: as in, no pets. It was hard enough getting them here, but it's turning out that while we might find 75 places in our price range in a given location, only 3 of them are pet-friendly. We ended up taking a grand tour of the island.
Our first stop was Aiea, just north of the base, to a small apartment nestled in the mountains. On paper, the distance is bike-able, but in reality, not at all. It would take years of biking for me to handle those hills! Plus with the traffic on the H1 being comparable to the traffic in LA, Stephen was concerned about any commute he might have in to Honolulu. Everyone works in Honolulu. Everyone.
Our second stop was Waikiki, which would be a neat location if you were willing to deal with all the tourists and the fact that Honolulu is a big city on a small island. It definitely has all of its super-built-up shops, super-American restaurants, and super-crowded beaches. It's not necessarily negative. We would have liked the apartment better if it weren't so noisy. Supposedly it's bike-able, but while people will say it's doable, word on the street is you can, but you might die. Those highways and such...
Our third stop was Kailua, all the way up on the freaking windward side of the island. That's the northeast side for those (like us) who aren't initiated to island-speak. It's a "long commute" by Hawaii standards, which means it's about 20-30 minutes from Pearl Harbor, including a drive through the mountains in the middle of the island. The town is gorgeous, like a touristy little beach town. It kind of reminds me of Sanibel. Still, it's a half-hour drive away. So we decided we would keep looking.
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Thursday brought more checking-in to medical and dental, followed by lunch with a colleague at a sushi-go-round in the downtown Honolulu area.
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This is a sushi-go-round. The sushi goes around a conveyor belt. You eat the fresh stuff and avoid the stuff that's gone around a few times, if you know what's good for you!
It was some pretty delicious sushi!
After that, more apartment hunting. We just did some drive-bys for places we had appointments for, and it turns out a lot of them were in skazzy areas. No, thank you.
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Friday involved a trip up to the North Shore of O'ahu, which is surfers' paradise. The whole town looks stereotypically surfer, until it hit me that no, this is the place that every stereotypical surf town wishes it could be. This place lives and breathes surfing. The waves were actually really calm when we were there, but I've been told that in the winter, the waves will be 15-20' and the biggest surfing competitions will happen. We'll have to make another trip.
The other reason we'll have to make another trip is for Opal Thai. We met up with a small group from the Navy Band to try it because one member is about to leave (I'm actually her replacement), and it was on her bucket list. It was pretty much some of the most amazing food I've ever eaten because it was so fresh! I don't want to spoil the fun because I plan on taking some brave visitors there, but just know that it's worth it!
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On Saturday, after a lot of talking with people from the Navy Band, we decided to go ahead and express more interest in the place in Kailua. It turned out that we were the third tenants to submit an application, so he didn't take our background check money. We spent the day on the beach, and this is what we came away with:
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| A couple of random shots at the most beautiful beach ever! |
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| My feets |
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| Stephen's feets |
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| This could be an 8-minute walk from our home. Every. Day. |
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Today we stayed in, hit the gym, took naps (okay, I took a nap), and then we got a phone call that the property manager was going to run the background check anyway. So now we wait with bated breath to see if we are going to be moving to Kailua, oh, in about three days.
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