Waikiki Staycation

I still have so much catching up to do on Maui, but life kind of comes and goes. It's definitely different living here than it is vacationing here, so since Stephen and I finally had two days off together, we decided to go on our own little Waikiki vacation!


We were holding out on a waitlist in the hopes that we could get ourselves a room at the Hale Koa, the military-only hotel in the heart of Waikiki. When I called on Thursday to see if there was any chance, I was told they had no openings for that night, but we could go on a waitlist for Friday-Saturday, or we could look into booking at the other two hotels with military rates.

Neither of the hotels looked like what I wanted -- we've done a lot of the AirBnB thing, and since it was only two nights, I wanted to stay in the happening part of Waikiki. Hotwire it was.

The funny thing about Hotwire is that you can't get mad at whatever you get. It's a gamble, or more accurately, it's like Christmas, only better. You choose the number of stars you want your hotel to have, so you already know what quality of hotel you're getting. The fun part is then getting to see where you're going to stay and finding out about that hotel.

Last time we did Hotwire, we ended up with a night in the Omni hotel in Boston.

This time, when our result loaded, we had the Waikiki Parc Hotel for Friday and Saturday, just next to the Sheraton, and right across the street from some of our favorite surf spots.

I had never heard of this hotel, so I checked out their website and saw that they have a Kama'aina Staycation special, which is cheaper than the deal I got with Hotwire. So at least now I know that when we need another staycation, we literally need to search for that!

We were a little later getting into Waikiki than we wanted because, unbeknownst to us, Honolulu has some interesting provisions for controlling the flow of traffic into Waikiki. There aren't many ways to get in to begin with, due to the Ala Wai Canal, but then we also ended up in "No Left Turn" purgatory. So a whole bunch of missed turns and right turns later, we got there, but it was 4pm by the time we checked in.

Pretty posh (and that's a professional stock photo, so it looks extra special). We ended up on the 18th floor with a mauka view (mountains), and while I would have preferred an ocean view, it was Hotwire. At least with the Kama'aina deal, you can choose your room and view. We brought our surfboards with us, and they offered to keep the boards in storage with the bellhop. We just kept them on our car in the garage because it was pretty secure.

We were definitely in Japanland. I should have known! The service was bilingual, with English being the second language. They had a Nobu restaurant attached, which I didn't realize is supposedly a big deal. It meant boku bucks, but it also meant good sushi, and that's what we decided to treat ourselves to.

Because I'm lucky like that, I had come down with some sort of gastrointestinal nasty that gave me some seriously achy joints and left me wanting to be within close proximity of a toilet, so we decided to forgo surfing for the evening lest my bowels act up in the deep blue sea. So instead, we headed across the street (the other street) to the Royal Hawaiian Center, walked around a bit, and sampled all the different flavors of Honolulu Cookie Company shortbread cookies. There was some sort of concert happening in the middle of the center, all in Japanese, with this thing doing some sort of dance and waving its arms all crazy-like every time a kid had his picture taken with it:

I just don't even know.

We just walked around for most of the evening, and then at some point decided it was time to head back, get changed into something a little nicer, and get dinner at Nobu. When we got back to the hotel, it turned out they were having a 5:30-6:30pm wine social, so there were crackers, cheeses, grapes, and some free wine. We were like, "Hey, yeah, sounds awesome, we're going to change real quick and will be back down," but when he said they were only open for 15 more minutes, we decided to stay for a glass.

Since moving to Hawaii, we haven't really unpacked any of our actually nice stuff, but thankfully that is pretty much in keeping with the feel. Stephen donned a blue linen shirt, and I wore Mociute's dress that I've had for as long as I can remember. I thought we looked pretty good, especially considering the lighting because it's a last minute photo!

So we went down for dinner and drinks and sure enough, got there a little before it started getting busy. Neither one of us was particularly up for a late night in Waikiki, anyway. So we ordered several small plates, starting with some amazingly tender beef skewers that I didn't take a picture of. I did take a picture of the bowl of clams steamed in dashi broth (that's the broth base for miso soup) with kurobuta pork. That's the deliciousness happening below. And of course, unlike your cheaper miso soup, this broth was dark and rich. The kid who brought it out told us to make sure we actually spoon it onto the clams because it's the best part, and he didn't steer us wrong!

After that, we ordered their house specialty roll, which came wrapped in daikon radish (if you've ever had a jicama, it's similar in texture, and if you haven't, I can't really describe what it's like except maybe like a radish but without the bite in the flavor) and had a whole bunch of different seafoods, and I also ordered two pieces of uni sashimi.

I read somewhere that uni is amazing, and as I found out, it's hard to come by. I had asked at several different places whether they had uni, and there were days where the answer was, "No, there was a big storm off the coast of Japan so we couldn't get our shipment." I finally tried it a week or so ago at a nicer restaurant in Aiea. I say "nicer," but it's not your mainland-nice sushi restaurant. Sushi here has a fast-food component, also, so when I say "nicer," I really mean "not fast-food sushi." It came as nigiri, with seaweed wrapped around it, and it smelled and even tasted like everything you could ever imagine -- good and bad -- the ocean smells like. It was, let's just say, intense. It also looks like a mustard yellow tongue.

In spite of my warnings, Stephen wanted to try a piece, so we got two in this simple glass. By itself, it tasted, well, like everything the ocean smells like, but without a certain edge that my first experience had. Then we both tried it with some soy sauce, and oh my! Anything fishy and briny about the uni disappeared, and it just tasted smooth and silky, not chewy. I think if velvety could be a taste and not a texture, that would describe this. Somehow, the saltiness cancelled each other out. Now I know what all the fuss is.

Oh, you want a picture of the fuss?

After that, we split a dessert of monkey bread with some dried cherries, macadamia nut ice cream, and an apricot caramel sauce.  All of it was amazing, but as you can tell, the uni was my favorite part of the night.

We just walked around Waikiki at night, and then it was time to get some sleep. We wanted to go surfing!

So the next morning, we got up slowly, had some coffee, and I called Gedi to wish him a happy birthday. Then we went down for their breakfast buffet in Nobu's restaurant area. Because we're in Japanland, the buffet was a combination of Eastern and Western breakfasts.

I ate mine backward. I had a tiny little yogurt, served in a tall square dish with a single raspberry on top (seriously, it was only three spoonfuls -- it was so tiny) and fruit that included fresh pineapple, and then I went to the omelette stand and had them make me a veggie omelette and a side of sausage, and then, just to see what all the fuss was about, I had a bowl of miso soup. You got to ladel your broth into the bowl and then add as much seaweed, tofu, and scallions as you wanted. My stomach wasn't doing so well, so I loaded up on the seaweed.

They also served salad, pastries, eggs, bacon, pancakes, and white rice.

I also loaded up on the coffee and lived to regret that decision. So did Stephen. Instead of going surfing, we went to the Royal Hawaiian ABC store for some Immodium. Yep. And found a store in the Sheraton that sold good reef-safe sunblock.

We spent some time just lounging around the hotel room, drinking lots of water and waiting for the Immodium so kick in, and finally around noon or so we were ready to go surfing.

We took the long paddle out to Pops -- it's a half-mile swim just to get out to that break, but it looked like our best bet.

Diamondhead from the board and through a drop of water

The waves were hitting for a little bit, but there was also a lot of waiting around, chatting, and enjoying the views. I caught one wave pretty well, but I needed a haircut badly, so my bangs flopped over my eyes, I couldn't see, and then when I tried to stand up, well, I couldn't see, so I just fell over. It was so graceful...

Stephen caught a wave just at the right time. It was a beautiful ride. It was the kind of rides the guys who have been doing this forever do all the time, but we're still noobs by those standards, so him getting one flawless ride like that was enough to seal the whole day. Still, we stayed out a bit longer, paddled even farther once the great break moved, and found ourselves trying to surf among a huge school in blue rashguards. Every wave was a party wave, every wave was a disaster, everybody paddled for everything. I had a great ride, a little late catching the wave, and so I ended up dropping in on four other people who were all dropping in on each other anyway, but as it was, I won the ride anyway.

The paddle back to shore

Then I had to paddle back.

Pops really has given me some of the best rides I've had, which isn't saying much, but the rides are so long that then you have to paddle back, and once you've done all that paddling to get there, to paddle back again is to consider just how many waves you're willing to catch. The third wave was going to be my last.

Catching a good ride in is great because it takes away a lot of the return paddle. Unfortunately, we had paddled so far over from our original start point to adjust for the changing break that I think we still had a half-mile to paddle back. It was terrible. I complained the whole way. Stephen didn't want to paddle in straight and then carry the surfboards, but all I could think was that my legs probably would work better than my arms. Nevertheless, we got back in one piece, got showered, and continued on with our afternoon.

We ended up not doing much more. We walked around the main streets of Waikiki, checking out all the schmantzy stores and sampling some more Honolulu Cookies. We ended up in some Duty Free mall where we couldn't read any of the signs and walked around super-confused and clearly the odd ones out, not just due to the sudden language barrier, but because we were a foot taller than everybody else. Oh well.

We were just killing time until sunset anyway.

 We went back to the pier by where we launch to surf and walked out onto the rocks. While we were waiting for the sun to set, we noticed that Diamondhead looked awesome in the background, and the light was flattering, so we took some pictures.

We tried to take some selfies, but then a couple of guys ended up standing right in our way, so Stephen decided to have some camera fun with them.

Whatcha gonna do?

And now a couple pictures of a beautiful, if a bit hazy, Waikiki sunset.

All just beautiful and amazing. I can't believe how lucky I am that we get to live here!

We had a nice leisurely dinner at Roy's, walked around the streets a little more, and then called it a night.

Our third day was just getting breakfast -- miso soup and fruit, since I was afraid my gut couldnt' handle much more -- and heading over to the west side of Waikiki to catch the Browns game with the Browns Backers. There is actually a significant faction in Honolulu, so the one pub opens extra early just for football watchers, and it's always just Browns fans, plus maybe one or two other poor saps who come in and end up with a befuddled "What's going on here?" look. And then it was time for Stephen to get back for marching band rehearsal, which rains on every Sunday afternoon we've had since August. Oh well. It just means I left wanting more and can't wait for another excuse to staycation right here in Hawaii!