Aloha kakahiaka - Good Morning

9-20-11
We choose to go on our own walking tour  of Hawaii's statehood.
We began at the 'Iolani Palace. The Palace was built in 1882 and it was the official residence of the Kalakana Dynasty until the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy in 1893. The Palace is huge! The structure is beautiful and has been restored with original royal furnishings.

There are massive trees in the lawn. We took one picture of Kayleigh wrapping her arms around the trunk and i would probably take 4 of her to wrap all the way around the trunk!

Next we stopped by the Judiciary History Center and the King Kamehameha I Statue. It was built in 1874 and today it is home to the Hawai'i state Supreme Court. The statue of the first king of a unified Hawaii stands at the front entrance to Ali'iolani Hale.

Then we stopped by the Kawaiaha'o Church. It is the first permanent Western house of worship on the island, it was built in 1842. Twenty one royal portraits hang in the upper gallery, and the pews at the rear are still reserved for royal descendants.

The Mission Houses Museum - built in 1821, the museum consists of the three mission houses that served as homes and work places for the first Christian missionaries to the Hawaiian kingdom.

Honolulu Hale - houses the offices of the Mayor, the City Council, and several departments for the City and County of Honolulu. The architecture is a mixture of California-Spanish design during 1928.

This is where our walking tour came to an end due to some hunger pains. We paled around town for the rest of the day,and made another trip to yogurt land!

9-21-11
Off to Kailua to kayak!
We really wanted to get there as close to 8:30 in the morning as we could. So we were up at 6:30 and down at the bus stop by 7:40. According to Google maps/directions, our bus was scheduled to arrive at 7:49. Well, 7:49 came and went... the bus finally came, but almost 45 minutes later. We were perturbed. We were on that bus for about 15 minutes when we had to get off and make a transfer. This transfer kept us at the bus stop for over an hour waiting on TheBus that would take us straight to Kailua. We rode on that bus for about 30 minutes and we were finally in Kailua. We walked to the rental place instead of waiting on another bus. We were waaaaaay over TheBus already, and we found our way just fine. The guys that worked at the rental store were very cute, and gave us backrests for free :) There were a couple of guys there that doubted we could kayak, much less in two single kayaks, and were especially doubtful when we told them we wanted to launch on the beach, not the canal. Well we would show them! We rolled our kayaks to the beach, parked our little carts, and made our way to the shore. It was very windy...so that was a bit daunting, but we hoped in our boats ( 1 of us successful on the first try, the other one needed a second go at it :)) and paddles out. It was so much fun! There is no way we could describe to you hoe beautiful the water is ...
We paddled to Popoi'a Island, a protected seabird sanctuary. Here, we spotted a sea turtle at the surface, got rained on (still no rainbow), we walked around and explored, layed out, and went for a dip. On our paddle back, we stopped for a while and just floated around, taking it all in and dodging windsurfers and kite-surfers before we attempted a graceful landing onto shore ( one of us made it to shore in her kayak, the other bailed out early in order to avoid the kayak from flipping :)) We drug the kayaks back to the carts, loaded them (the wrong way), and returned them back to the shop. The guy laughed at us and said, "You know why it was so heavy for you, you had them loaded the wrong way". haha...go figure.
It was a great day!

Now we are off to see what we can get into today!
<3 us!
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