Monday March 22nd, Day 1 of Hawaii

Tommy and I arrived in Honolulu after our 10 hour flight around 7:15pm last night. We got our rental car and sleepily navigated our way to our rental house 45 minutes away on the fabulous North Shore. We were greeted by our sweet "landlord", Bart Smith, who opened the gate and gave us the grand tour of our spacious apartment, which even included 2 elephant statues in the kitchen (I'm home!) He even supplied us with fresh fruit and some food he cooked up that day. In our delirium, Tommy and I followed Bart around the apartment with a few head nods, jumbled sentences, and questions that we probably couldn't remember the answers to the next day. We fell asleep a half hour after he left. It was the equivalent to 4am New York time for us.

This morning Tommy woke up literally at the crack of dawn. He patiently waited until 5:30am to wake me and says "I found the coolest thing you have ever seen in your life. You have to come check it out right now!". So I excitedly climb out of bed. Birds are chirping, roosters are crowing, and light is starting to burst through the entire North Side of our apartment, which is covered in huge windows and sliding glass doors.

We climb out onto our lanai (porch) and Tommy leads me to the side of the house where the driveway is. There, he points to the biggest, blossoming avocado tree I have ever seen. Actually, I haven't seen many to begin with, so this would have been exciting if there was 1 avocado on it, however, there must have been 100. What a way to start our day!!

Then we put on some clothes and walked out onto the edge of the beautiful lawn which overlooks the town below and the ocean just beyond that. We saw whales breaching in the ocean and their blowholes sprouting water here and there. An amazing sight.

We made a breakfast of papaya, apple bananas, and cereal and by 9am we were on our way out the door (my mom would be shocked). We drove Northeast towards Turtle Bay Resort (which when we saw it, we were sooooo glad we didn't stay there). On our way back we stopped at a few beaches and finally planted ourselves down at Bonzai Pipeline (known for its world famous waves). Day 1 in the sun, and I was plastering sunblock all over Tommy and I (again- my mom would be blown away by this fact). For lunch, we drove west to the cute little town of Haleiw'a.

For lunch, we ate at a Mexican Restaurant called Cholos. For dessert, our afternoon would not have been complete until we had the renowned Hawaiian Shave Ice down the road.

After an amazing first day that started bright and early with the roosters crowing, we were content at that point to go back to our apartment and enjoy the rest of the day from there.