Waikiki, HI

Thursday 15th Dec 2011

Just a short update today. Lots of relaxing today so, not much time.

Mark and I took our usual morning walk to Diamond Head. We then all went down for a leisurely breakfast. Mark and I had earlier reserved an umbrella and chairs on the beach section of the Hotel for the day at a cost of $50. So, we all headed down there after breakfast and stayed for a few hours.

We then headed out for a quick lunch at Dukes before strolling up and down the main shopping strip. We got chatting to a local photographic artist, Lee Rylee, and Tom ended up buying one of his pieces for his room. It is a beautiful shot of a Kauai waterfall. Mark checked out a lot of the surf shops, we continued the search for Annabelle’s shampoo and had a quick stop at Macy’s.

It was a beautiful day so we headed back to the hotel and back down to our beach umbrella for the rest of the afternoon. The beach section closes at 5.30pm so we moved up to one of the banyan terrace tables to watch the sunset and to have dinner. This hotel is a truly magical place and a complete oasis of peace in the middle of busy Waikiki. There is not other hotel along this strip that can match all of the features that the Moana Surfrider has going for it; grand old Colonial building, magnificent courtyard with its heritage listed Banyan tree, a beautiful beach front location, the wonderful indoor/outdoor Verandah restaurant and the very comfortable rooms in the Tower block with great views. I’ve had a truly awful year but, this was a magical way to see out some of the final month.

We headed back up to our room after dinner and continued to listen to the live music, drifting up from the courtyard, whilst we blogged and relaxed after a most tiring day of relaxing!