Our first days in Hawaii were spent in the state capital - Honolulu, on the island of Oahu. We arrived at the airport pretty early in the morning, and after our 9 hour overnight flight all we wanted to do was sleep. We felt pretty lucky that our fancy hotel on Waikiki beach had our room for us already at 9am. We didn't want to waste too much of our honeymoon napping, so we set the alarm on Claire's phone for noon.
The afternoon was pretty relaxed, we just wandered around the nearby shops and beach taking in the warm Hawaiian air (~23 degrees, in the middle of their winter, in summer it gets no higher than 28). Turns out I hadn't packed many pairs of shorts, so buying some more was on the agenda. Stuff is actually suprisingly cheap over here! I got some nice shorts from a surf shop for about USD$40 (*1.25 ~ NZD$50), and Claire managed to find some for USD$17! Girls always get them cheaper.
On our travels we encountered a restaurant that doubles as an aquarium, so we went there for the buffet (said boo-FAY) dinner. From our table we could see the sharks and manta rays and other little fish being fed by a diver. We also shared a smoking pineapple cocktail. Naturally.
Day 2 we didn't need to board the cruise ship till about 4pm, so we booked ourselves on the Honolulu Screamer. This was a great ride, and very reasonably priced, much cheaper than a similar tourist activity in New Zealand. Essentially the boat goes out into the ocean a little bit and does 360 spins and other splashing-everyone-on-board kind of tricks.
When it came time to get to the cruise ship we decided to order a taxi from the hotel. Expecting a standard taxi to turn up, we were greeted by a stretched limo at the entrance. My first thought was "Cool!". My second thought was "How much more will this cost?". Turns out it didn't cost any extra at all. Sweet.
Boarding the ship wasn't all that different from boarding an international flight. Our luggage was scanned and we needed our passports, although the whole process was over in under an hour. As expected our room on the boat wasn't huge, but it did have a nice port side balcony, and who plans on spending any time in their room on a cruise ship anyway?
The cruise ship was great! All of your food is paid for with your ticket, so once you're on the boat it feels like free food! And the boat has about 10 restaurants to choose from, some of them buffet eat-whenever-you-like style, others where you sit down and get a served a 4 course meal by a wait person. That night we tried the Grand Pacific restaurant, and while the food was really good I was initially put off by the unfriendly waitress. Turns out she was the exception on the trip though.
Day 2 ended with us drinking cocktails at one of the many (10+) bars on the boat. This is a common theme for most nights on the boat in fact. So long as you aren't drinking water, on-board drinks are also very cheap. For a properly mixed cocktail we'd pay between USD$5.25 for a simple Mai Tai to USD$10 for a Long Island Iced Tea. And the staff are really generous with the alcohol, Claire claims she was pretty much gone after 2 and half of the cheaper cocktails. I claim she wasn't walking straight because the boat was leaving port.
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