Waikiki

Our hotel, the Aston Waikiki Beach Hotel, was not in itself an amazing hotel but it was in an ideal location for us. We were across the road from a beach that was perfect for a toddler, with nice sand and no waves. We were also just across the road from the honolulu zoo! And within walking distance of yoghurt land (which I think we managed to have every night for dessert).
On our first day in Honolulu, after checking in at 9am, we all fell asleep pretty quickly and woke up in mid-afternoon. We decided to just have a walk up and down the beach, find some dinner and plan the next few days. On this walk Rhys bought some "flip flops" and we had dinner at "Cheese burgers in Paradise" which was just the start of Imogen's 2 week long junk-food-a-thon (we tried our best to order her fruit and water and she never drank soda, but in that two week period she had more nuggets, pizza and burgers than I care admit.)
On our first full day in Hawaii we took Imogen to the zoo.

At Honolulu zoo

  Honolulu zoo was lovely. Imogen fell asleep on the walk from the hotel to the zoo and I congratulated myself on sticking to my guns and bringing her Stokke pram and not a dodgy little one that would have been easier to travel with but a whole lot less comfortable. Going to the zoo with Imogen just gets better each and every time. At Honolulu zoo, when she finally woke up, her excitement was infectious! She spent a good couple of hours running from animal to animal, pointing and telling her daddy and I all about it (in mostly gibberish, or Imogenglish).

 

Family Selfy

Going to the beach was so easy! You could just see Imogen's confidence build as it became evident that these waves, unlike the waves back at home, were not out to kill her.

At Waikiki Beach

 

On the balcony at the hotel

Our introduction to Shave Ice



Waikiki Beach

We spent the next 3 days either at the shops (SO MANY BARGAINS), eating or at the beach. We did a nice drive to the North Shore, apparently the views on the way back to Waikiki were amazing, both Imogen and I managed to sleep through it.

From our day at the shops

At the Cheesecake Factory

SHOPPING!



No boy or girl nappies, just diapers

We did not bring a lot of baby supplies with us thinking that we could just buy as we went. Which was maybe a little bit of a mistake. Our first problem was formula, we had 8 serves with us, which Imogen polished off in record time. We thought since S26 is not an Aussie brand that it would be in Hawaii. WRONG. What followed was 3 days (and easily $100) on trying to convince her to drink ANY of the American formulas. She wouldn't have a bar of it. Eventually we just gave up on formula and she drank water and juice for two weeks. And hit the bottle hard when she got home. :)
Thte other thing we didn't bring a lot of was Aussie nappies, thinking that Huggies are Huggies everywhere, right? No! The American Huggies are terrible! First off they don't do girl or boy nappies! It's all uni-sex (which in itself is fine, I always suspected that was just for marketting) BUT then the "diapers" are so thin, and not as, er, reliable as Aussie Huggies. We ended up using a different American brand, which were ok.  

As we were there in December, a photo with an American santa was a MUST and I was not disappointed.

My big goal in Honolulu, my Must-Do, was to get a photo with an American Santa. It was Imogen's second photo with Santa, and she did crack up when we put her on his lap alone, but look at the photo we ended with! I absolutely love it! It's so different! And the lovely ladies taking the photo got her from devastated to a smile, what miracle workers!

Me!

Well, so far so good! We'd already fallen in love with Hawaii after our stay in Waikiki. Next stop Maui!