Day 7: Beach Mochi Ice Cream and Noodles

So we got up on this fine Christmas Day and headed down to the hotel lobby for their free breakfast by the pool. We found out quickly that there were a whole lot of people in line around 8:30am or so. Literally everybody and their kid was there.

Everybody needs breakfast, I guess.

Luckily, while standing in line, you could hear the dulcet tones of a dude singing Christmas songs with a Hawaiian twist with Hulu dancer accompaniment.

While eating, there were a whole bunch of birds that seemed to be keenly interesting in the crumbs we were leaving behind. Funny enough, I finally got a clear shot of one of the honeycreeper birds that I’ve been trying to take a picture of this whole trip:

Honeycreeper creeping on my breakfast

After breakfast, we got into the car (from the valet no less, first time I’ve ever used a valet service) and tried to head to a swap meet at the Honolulu stadium. Unfortunately, they seemed to be closed for Christmas.

We also tried going to visit Pearl Harbor, that was also closed:

Pearl Harbor, closed off

Then, we tried to head to the Diamond Head trail nearby which is a crater/hill that overlooks Honolulu. That place wasn’t closed, but it was so full of other tourists that there were no more spaces for us to park. So… screw that.

We ended up driving around most of the eastern part of Oahu, you can get an idea in this map (our route in red):

Day 7 Route

Along the easternmost peninsula, we stopped by Halona Blowhole, which is apparently a sanctuary for humpback whales:

Halona Blowhole

This lookout has some great views, as you’d expect being on the edge of the island, like some ridiculously blue water:

Lookout to the edge

This place, too, has a huge amount of people:

Lots of people at the blowhole

In fact, there were so many people there that the parking lot for this lookout was full, so my sister and I actually parked at the beach parking lot a ways away and walked along the road back to the lookout (after dropping off my parents at the lookout first). Along the way, we saw this spider, which looked tropical and therefore poisonous:

Probably deadly.

The beach we parked at was also packed. I wonder if it’s because it’s Christmas Day today, so a lot of the normal stuff is closed, so people go visit more natural sites since they’re open?

Lots of people at the Sandy Beach

We tried to drive to a nearby lighthouse, but that was also packed so we passed that one on by. We stopped at another lookout, called Nu’uanu Pali Lookout

Nu’uanu Pali Lookout

This place had an interesting parking system where residents could park for free but non-residents had to pay $3. They had a machine that would take your license plate number and credit card to handle that, which is actually really similar to parking machines in Pittsburgh.

The place also had a bunch of other tourists about, looking at the view of the whole valley and the city nearby:

Photo op at the lookout

On the bottom right of that picture is a group of Japanese girls taking a four-person selfie with an iPad, kinda cute.

It was also really, really windy, to the point that hats were coming off and hair was flying into peoples’ faces.

Windy Valley Lookout

On the way out, we also saw a wild chicken, just chillin’ in the parking lot and not caring.

Wild chicken don’t give a-

We headed back into Honolulu for lunch at this ramen place called Tenkaippin Ramen:

Tenkaippin Ramen

The name reminds me of the Tenkaichi Budokai in DBZ, which means that this ramen place is clearly the strongest.

I had a black tonkotsu ramen with some gyoza and a side order of pork kimchi, all of which was amazing. Although Pittsburgh has a ramen place, they don’t serve ramen with a really thick tonkotsu broth like this place does.

Black tonkotsu ramen :9

Afterwards, we circled around Honolulu a bit more and headed to a place called Bubbies Ice Cream to get some mochi ice cream:

Mochi Ice Cream @ Bubbies

There were a whole bunch of different flavors, I had a White Russian and a Chocolate Espresso for example, the Chocolate Espresso being a chocolate-flavored mochi covering espresso ice cream.

Bellies full, we headed back to the hotel to regroup and rest up. My sister and I at this point decided to head out into the beach part of Waikiki Beach as people are wont to do in Hawaii.

The beeeeaaaaach~

As seems to be the theme here, the beach was also packed, as you can see here:

Packed beach is packed

Since carrying a camera around is hard while in beach-going-gear, I didn’t take any pictures of girls in bikinis the beach, but it was really fun to just play in the sand and waves. I’m fairly sure, given what I’ve learned about how the island is lava-formed, that the nice sands of the beach are manufactured. So, there’s actually a whole bunch of rocks in the area, especially a few yards away from the beach. That makes it pretty hard to swim out without water shoes or a flotation device or something.

After playing around for a while, my sister and I got back, showered and changed and walked around the shops a bit. We headed to a musubi place called Iyasume that was pretty close.

Iyasume Musubi Shop

Musubi is a Hawaiian thing that’s pretty similar to a riceball. In fact, at Iyasume, I just got a spicy tuna musubi/riceball.

Canned coffee and musubi

We wandered around randomly for a bit and then walked back, happening to catch the sunrise:

Sunrise @ Waikiki Beach

(Also happened to see a homeless dude puking in front of a McDonald’s, for obvious reasons I didn’t take a picture of that).

We then gathered up the parents back at the hotel and headed to a famous udon shop called Marukame Udon that ironically happened to be right near where we just were.

Marukame Udon

At this place, they actually make all their udon in-house, which is amazing.

Makin’ Udon

They also have an amazing line:

Marukame Line

I think the four of us were waiting for about… 45min or so outside? The place though is super-efficient, choosing to go with an assembly line-style:

Inside Marukame

How it works is that you pick what kind of udon you want, then you pick toppings and what tempura you want on the side:

Tempura Selection

Also, I can’t quite describe the joy you feel when you finally get in the front of the line. I also can’t quite describe the despair when you have to wait right at the start of the line because there are no tables open quite yet.

Despair @ Marukame Udon

I ended up getting a whole lot of food: large udon with an onsen egg and meat on top with a shrimp tempura and a soft-boiled egg tempura. I couldn’t finish the soft-boiled egg, it was too much. But, everything else was amazing. The udon noodles were especially firm and delicious. Usually, whenever I have udon at other places, it’s way too soft and overcooked, these were just right.

Seriously delicious udon :9

The four of us as a family then just wandered around for a bit and headed back to the hotel. Tomorrow, it looks like we’ll be moving to another place. We seem to be staying in Kailua, which also happens to be where President Obama is staying for his Hawaiian vacation. So… things might happen to us. Hopefully not. We’ll see.