Surf’s Up!
After our all you can eat American ‘boofay’ breakfast, which included a vast array of yummy treats, hot and cold – you could get just about any breakfast food there was to have – Adam and Ross sussed out surfboard rental prices, trying to get the best deal. It turns out there’s a big discrepancy between hirers. To hire a board for one hour right on Waikiki beachfront it was going to cost us $25 but the boys stepped off the beaten track a little, going a few streets away from the beach and managed to snavel us a deal where we paid only $25 per board for 2 days! It was worth the walk (although Adam and Ross seem to have longer arms now after lugging two mals each back quite a few blocks to our hotel!) The hotel has a special storage area where we can keep them overnight.
Humming “Surfing USA” under our breath we grabbed the mals and hit the beach Gidget style. It was a perfect Waikiki day and the sun was beating down on us. The waves were only fairly small but were fun for all of us and it was a decent paddle out to the reef where they were breaking. There’s just so much activity on the beach! To start with, there were 3 massive catamarans parked on the shoreline and a few outrigger canoes as well. As you walk along the beach passing all the hotels that back onto the sand, you see people in banana chairs sipping cocktails, Hawaiian bands playing, solo singers crooning to their crowds and a great variety of vendors renting everything from beach umbrellas to sunscreen. One hotel has a huge pool with a wet edge that looks straight over the beach. As you walk past you see a great line of bronzed tourists sitting on inflatables with their toes poking over the edge! In the water between the shore break and the reef there were loads of swimmers floating around on inflatable mats and rings, bobbing up and down in the gentle waves. It was like Pitt Street! There’s not too much room between towels that’s for sure!
The walk out into the surf is littered with little pebbles and once you get past those, there are randomly scattered sharp-edged rocks and jagged pieces of coral underfoot. If you’re not watching where you’re going and are not used to it, you can hurt your feet pretty easily. Toby fell victim to a piece of coral when his unsuspecting big toe trod on it, which really wedged in and wouldn’t budge. Ross took him to the lifeguard up in his Baywatch tower but he was no help at all and told Ross he wasn’t allowed to touch people. Not sure how that goes if you’re drowning? Ross trekked home with a limping Toby and heroically tweezered out the offending piece of reef.
The sun was noticeably hotter today and even though we’d all lathered up appropriately with 30+ we all seemed to get a bit much sun, Molly and Maisy particularly. (I feel like a neglectful mother when my kids get sunburnt but they did have sunscreen on I promise!) Sambo rolled his shorts up for a bit of an all over tan but he is now looking quite lobster-like on his legs too!
Maisy made a new friend, a little Australian boy named Samuel, who she had fun building sandcastles and volcanoes with. When we asked him where in Australia he lived, he said “Canley Street”. Not too sure which suburb or state that’s in! Quite accidentally but very fortuitously, we had parked ourselves right in front of the Moana Surfrider Hotel (how gorgeous is that place?!) just as lunch was being served. They had a fantastic solo singer entertaining their guests with his beautiful mellow voice and amazing acoustic guitar playing. There’s nothing quite like being able to lie on the beach and read a book with cruisy live music playing as the soundtrack! It was SO nice!
After everyone had had a surf we decided to leave the heat of the beach and head back to the hotel pool where we could cool down under one of the many shady umbrellas and have the novelty of ordering lunch poolside! The kids thought it was pretty awesome to be reclining in a banana chair and have a waiter bring your food and drinks right to you. It was fun. The pool was great and the kids had a ball swimming for most of the afternoon.
Rossco had booked Molly and I in for a poolside massage which was such a treat! Molly was nursing a bit of a torn muscle, a Wet’n’Wild injury, so he thought a massage might be just the thing she needed. Lucky me got to come along and keep her company! The massage tent was set up just next to the pool and there was some relaxing music piping through the speakers. The masseuses were a mother and her teenage daughter, whom she’d obviously imparted all her smooth massaging skills to because despite her tender age, she did a g-o-o-d massage! They used pineapple oil which smelt divine and it was so relaxing! As usual, I let out some raucous laughter when she got my ticklish bits (most of me really!) and this particularly amused Maisy who came and perched herself right under where my face squished through the hole in the massage bed! She was scrutinising my face and asking lots of questions, hardly promoting tranquillity but it was very cute. She was so fascinated with the whole massage process that once Molly and I had finished and had been thoroughly prodded and smoothed and feeling so relaxed we were nearly asleep, the masseuse offered to massage Maisy for free! She looked very cute lying on the table, hardly taking up any room, but lying perfectly still and getting the full treatment! She loved it. Hope we haven’t created a monster!
Embassy Suites have a signature ‘Manager’s Reception’ at all their hotels which is really just Happy Hour with free snacks and drinks every night from 5:30pm. We loved it in San Diego and so we’ve been looking forward to experiencing it Hawaiian style! After a quick nanna nap, we ventured downstairs to the pool deck for our free drinks and bowls of nuts and chips. We were dazzled by some pacific island dance displays from local kids and the atmosphere was great!
Today is NRL Grand Final Day and of course we were eager to see the big game. We knew of two bars that were showing it in Waikiki but neither of them would take a booking, leaving us feeling a bit nervous! With so many games of NFL being shown we were really hoping we could get a table somewhere with the guarantee of being able to watch the game. A sports bar/restaurant downstairs from our hotel, the Yard House, agreed to put us on the waiting list for a table since we were such a large group but the throw away line the waitress said when we were leaving – “we’ll see you back here for the rugby, yes” – had Toby in a cold sweat! He was panicking that she thought we meant Rugby and not Rugby LEAGUE! Adam, Sam, Toby and Ross went and sat at the bar with plenty of time up their sleeves and scored a perfect table right under our very own big screen showing, to Toby’s great relief, the Rugby League! Sam was fully decked out in his Manly gear and met a couple of fellow Eagles’ supporters. The place was full of Aussies, most barracking for the Doggies but a few Mexicans raising a cheer for the Storm. Being the patriots that we are, we sang the national anthem loudly and proudly along with the players making us feel a twinge of home sickness. Chelsea and Georgia were flagging by half-time (it was 9:40pm after all) so they retired early while Maisy just had a nap right at the dinner table! Our food was delicious there although my “Blackened Chicken Thai Salad” chosen carefully from the SOMETHING LIGHT menu, going from past experience on portion sizes, was enough to feed the whole family and then some! Our waitress, Jackie, was obviously on a trial and was being closely monitored by her supervisor, the stern and non-smiling Walter. Walter was a harsh critic and we thought Jackie was fabulous! She seemed to disappear later in the night and we were hoping Walter hadn’t sacked her!
We fitted in a walk through the main street of Waikiki tonight too and it is just magic in the moonlight. There are fire torches on every corner, fairy lights winding around all the palm trees and a warm, perfumed buzz in the air. All the streets are paved and there were buskers drawing big crowds, balloon-animal makers and full sidewalk restaurants, overflowing with chatter and the clinking of glasses. There was a Hawaiian band playing on the grass and a booth selling fresh frangipani leis. It reminds us a bit of the Gold Coast but has a very unique Hawaiian feel, though so different from the feel of the North Shore. We feel like we are experiencing a whole new side of this delightful island now. It has so much to offer!
