We woke up early this morning because we had heard that getting a parking spot at Diamond Head is a real pain in the ass if you aren’t there by 9am.

We walked to Eggs ‘n’ Things, about a 7 minute walk away. All of the runners we saw were not well-muscled men and we theorized that all the smart people ran at 7am when the city was cool, whereas the well-muscled men ran during the day to show off how well-muscled they are. ENT served a delicious mac nut pancake, the first time in a while where Miranda’s meal wasn’t decidedly more delicious than my own. 😛

Packed up our stuff and headed out from Honolulu. It was a super quick drive to Diamond Head! And we got the third to last parking spot, at 8:45am…lathered up the sunscreen, slipped on the toe shoes and started walking. It was about 45 minutes from the parking lot to the top, at our pace, and lots of cool things to see on the way up. The hike up the trail has plenty of spots to stop and turn around and look at the crater behind you. As well, the further up you go, the more of Honolulu you can see rising up over the crater. Towards the end the hike becomes a lot of stairs. At the top you are rewarded with an amazing view of the city, the crater and the surrounding ocean, as well as an older military bunker that you get to climb into and walk up or down the stairs inside. Back at the bottom of the trail we bought shave ice and water, and it was delicious.

We hopped back in our car and drove highway 72 along the coast towards Kailua. This was a nice drive, winding around the mountains. We stopped at a scenic point and took some photos of a bunch of wind swept rocks – very beautiful.

Then we just drove. There was a bunch of places that we could have stopped at, but the further east we went the more the weather turned to shit. Dark clouds and rain. We didn’t want to get out of the car, let alone go swimming, even though it’s still 25C with the warmest water you can imagine.

We stopped for lunch at a place called Fresh Catch in Kaneohe. Miranda got the fish and chips, which were delicious and I got the fried poke. It was a little spicier than I would have preferred, but still amazing. An excellent restaurant!

Our place for the next few nights is about a half hour north of Kaneohe, and we just drove. It’s just up the street from a little beach park, and although the place we’re staying in is really nice, this is the sort of area where there are trucks parked in the yard that haven’t moved for years, and another yard with a giant truck with giant wheels with it’s hood open.

We settled in and then drove back a bit to get dinner at the Shrimp Shack. Miranda had the coconut shrimp (a pattern…) and I had garlic shrimp. SO MUCH GARLIC. Very tasty.

The weather is still pretty crappy so we’ve watched a documentary on the Costa cruise that fell over in Italy and now watching a movie on kittens…it’s a tough life. Played a game of RTTA where I finally beat her, and we have some Yatzhee and Forbidden Island scheduled last tonight.

Tomorrow is up in the air…we have planned a movie tour, and then a few different ideas depending on what the weather is like. We’ll see how it goes…