Hawaii Day 3: Honolulu Aquarium and Some New Scenery

OK, first I want to start this post with saying that I promise Michel and I are not just sitting around our cottage playing on Facebook and blogging (that last part is only applicable to me). We definitely are doing a ton of stuff (as evidenced by the pictures that I post), but the majority of what we do is during the morning/afternoon hours. We generally are back at our cottage by late afternoon where we go for a dip in the ocean and chill the rest of the night if we don't have any nighttime excursions planned or dinners out planned. It's really nice to take the last few hours of the evening off to recover from the adventure from the day. Plus, I'm also trying to get all of my blogging and picture-posting done while on vacation because once we get back I'll have less than a week before I have to go back to school (BOO!!) and in that time I have to move classrooms, try and get together with a friend for one last pool date at her house, go to the doctor for a regular check-up, and have a get-together with co-workers. So much to do, so little time...

OK, so on to my post - day 3 in Hawaii! Again, for some crazy reason Michel and I found it hard to sleep. We had gone to bed by about 9:30 the night before and didn't have to wake up at any particular time this morning, so I relished the thought of sleeping in and hoped to sleep until at least 7:00 to give me 9 1/2 hours of sleep and make up for the lack of sleep that I had gotten the night before. So, I was pretty bummed out when I woke up at 5:30 and couldn't go back to sleep! So we laid in bed for about half an hour or so before deciding to just get up. It turned out to be a great decision because we wanted to go to Duke's for their breakfast buffet (yes, the same place that we ate dinner the first night on the island), but it was within walking distance and in Waikiki you want to do everything that you can walk to because there is ZERO parking in this city. We did good to find a parking spot at our hotel that we stayed at. Anyways, at Duke's they don't open the buffet until 7:00, but they'll put your name down to be seated whenever you get there, and their ocean view tables go to you in the order that you arrived, so the earlier you are the better your chances of getting a table with an awesome ocean view - and that's exactly what we got!

I was hoping to capture the ocean in the background, but I think my flash glared on it :(

I've never in my life had such an awesome view while eating breakfast! I will say the food itself was nothing special. It wasn't bad at all, but it wasn't something that I'd rave about. However, I would totally eat breakfast there again just to get that awesome view!

After breakfast we went to do a little bit of souvenir shopping. It was our last day in Waikiki and we knew that the touristy shops wouldn't be on the side of the island that we would be finishing our week at. Once we finished shopping we went back to the hotel to pack up and check out. I hadn't taken any pictures of our hotel room, so I also wanted to get some good shots. I should have taken the pics on day 1 before we unpacked and made a mess of it, but oh well...

This was our view from our balcony - nothing special. There are some mountains way off in the distance though. 

There was nothing particularly bad about our hotel itself. It was very clean, nicely furnished, and aesthetically pleasing to look at. One of our biggest complaints was our balcony faced a very busy street down below and each night there was a street concert going on, sirens going off, etc. We would have been fine if we had chosen a nicer hotel that was off the street/closer to the beach, but we were saving our fancy lodging for our beach cottage! Plus, when we booked this hotel we had no idea that Waikiki had such a big-city feel where it's all about the night life.

We had about 4 hours to kill once we checked out of the hotel and before checking into our cottage so we opted to go to the Honolulu Aquarium. We had fun, it was an inexpensive outing, but it only took us an hour to walk through. However, I got some AWESOME pictures from it! Though it was really small, I think I liked it better than the Dallas World Aquarium.

I said this louder than I meant to at the aquarium, but look! It's Nemo swimming in his anemone! (Yes, that is what I said out loud at the aquarium)!

A better picture of Nemo. Yes, I'm 28 years old and I now refer to all clownfish as Nemo :)

And this one reminded me a little bit of Dory. I'm a dork, I know :)

My intention was just to get a picture of all the beautiful fish in this picture, but the way my flash went off against the glass I think this fish in front looks possessed!

A Caribbean reef shark...also looking possessed due to the flash on my camera

They also had an exhibit outside with monk seals. We got to catch the end of an informational/watching seals do tricks for food bit. 

When he realized all of his food had gone away (when the trainer left) he flopped on the rocks and just looked pitiful!

What a life...lying on rocks sunbathing and sleeping!

One last treat for the other seal in the water.

When we were done at the aquarium we decided to head on over to where our cottage was located. It was on a different side of the island - about 40 minutes away. We decided we would find a place to eat lunch and then maybe see if we could check in early. We had researched a lot of places online and one of the places that we wanted to go to was called Teddy's Bigger Burgers.

They were incredibly delicious burgers!! Seriously. I would go back.

After lunch we walked around the shopping center for awhile. There wasn't anything special in this shopping center - it was like the Hawaii mall. There was a Pier One, Macy's, some food places that we have in Texas (Subway and Starbucks to name a few - and btw I have seen more Subway restaurants on this island than ever! It's like the McDonald's of Texas!) I guess if you live in Hawaii you want to eat healthy fast food so you opt for Subway? I don't know that for a fact, just a guess. We also see a TON of people out running and biking everyday. So maybe the island of Hawaii really does try and stay fitter. Anyways, around 1:30 we had run out of things to do and were antsy to get to our cottage, so we called up the owner and she was sweet enough to let us come on out though we were early. 

I was in awe of the gorgeous ocean views that we had on the drive over from the city to our cottage. There were several spots with signs that said "Scenic Point" with a place to pull off the road in case you wanted to stop and take pictures. Michel was nice enough to indulge my picture-taking. We stopped at the Blow Hole, which wasn't blowing so it wasn't anything special, but the views were fantastic! 

We made reservations for this cottage pretty much a year ago. We reserved ourselves a studio cottage (one big room that has a small kitchenette, queen-sized bed, and bathroom), but it had a great ocean view! We got a call on Wednesday (our first day on the island) saying that they had accidentally double-booked our exact cottage and asked if we would be willing to take a different cottage. We were assured that it would be an upgrade at no extra cost, so we agreed. Our studio cottage was upgraded to an upstairs, 2-bedroom, 1 bathroom cottage with amazing ocean views, a full kitchen, and a huge lanai (the Hawaiian word for porch/patio)! We were THRILLED!!

Our kitchen

Our living room

The amazing view from the living room

Bathroom

Bedroom

Amazing view from the bedroom

Our awesome lanai!!

 Yeah, I'm pretty much in heaven while staying in this cottage!! It's AMAZING!!