I tried to blog about our first day in Hawaii on Christmas Eve, but my PC crashed. It was pretty late so I gave up and went to bed. We had arrived in Honolulu a little after noon on Christmas Eve. We rented a car from enterprise, and they upgraded us to a convertible. Cool! We checked in to our hotel, Aqua Bamboo, in Waikiki. They upgraded us to the penthouse. Awesome! We had the whole top floor, 2 BR/2 BA, full kitchen and an LCD TV (see the kitchen on the right).

After settling in to the hotel, we went took a stroll along the Waikiki beach (see picture at the top). The beaches were not as big as I expected. There were a lot of sea walls to limit the inevitable erosion. We walked out on one and were rewarded with a nice view of Diamond Head (see picture on left). We walked around until the sun was setting. The picture to the right shows our first beautiful sunset from Waikiki. It was such a beautiful day and a great start to our trip. For a closing shot, here’s a view of Waikiki at night from the lanai of our penthouse suite. More to come…