First morning in Hawaii : Sunrise in Honolulu

You might know from my Introductory post in March that we took a 13-day vacation to Hawaii from March 21-April 2. We visited the four islands of Oahu, Kauai, Maui, and Kona (in that order), with about 2.5 days spent in each. There are two more islands visited by a few in Hawaii, but Lanai is largely privately owned and Molokai is prohibitively expensive.

We were living next to the world-famous Waikiki Beach in Honolulu (capital of Oahu), and not far from other major attractions. I wouldn’t say Manoa Valley Inn, where we were put up, was one of our best experiences in spite of the good reviews it has. The reasons are – they don’t clean the room every day and breakfast starts at 7.30. We had the worst experience with BnB at Maui – Haiku Plantation Inn – there you have to pay $75/per day for getting the room cleaned and breakfast starts at 8am. This was the 2nd time we went with BnBs in our travel history, so we are really skeptical to go with them ever again. Anyway, the spectacular attractions more than made up for these issues.

Since Honolulu is six hours behind EST (Canada time, and with daylight savings), we were wide awake around 4am for an initial couple of days. Guess what we did, which Saru never did earlier? She accompanied me on my morning ritual, watching Sunrise at the Beach 🙂

We had done a lot of research even before landing in Hawaii, and Sandy Beach (Park) around half-hour away from our accommodation was mentioned as one of the best to view Sunrises. Sure enough, we were there the first morning itself. Being right next to the Kalanianaole Hwy, it was easier to reach there with just the GPS location. It is a long park along the ocean with enough parking. There were a few folks around admiring its stunning beauty, and also what was about to add up.

Hawaii is known for beaches with pristine-sands, crystal-clear waters, stunning landscapes, active and dormant volcanoes, gorgeous coastlines, natural waterfalls, and we saw all of that, and much more.

Sandy beach was close to perfect (I will talk about and show a perfect beach in a later post), and we sure did marvel at its spectacular beauty. Here’s the same for you…Around 7.30 or so we made our way back to the inn for breakfast. We had an interesting attraction coming up after that…something that is quite unique by any parameter.