Hawaii!

Hawai'i was amazing. Pronounced Ha(vai)i. We arrived on my 20th birthday, it was humid because of the recent rain that day. We made our way to our hotel and as soon as we got into our room a bouquet of flowers and a pair of Lei's shortly arrived!

For those of you that don't know my father has given me a bouquet of flowers on my birthday ever since I was in kindergarden. Its a wonderful tradition if I do say so myself : ) My birthday is usually a school day so its always exciting to walk around all day with a huge display of flowers.

The bouquet!! : )
Upon arrival me and my mother got ready for dinner at Duke's. Recommended by my lovely cousin Victoria. It was all so delicious. And above all we got to see a beautiful hawaiian sunset.

A lovely canadian couple took this photograph after I exchanged to take a picture of them. They were from Vancouver and had humor for days. They told me I should flash the hawaiian symbol for "hang loose" so I did... : )
That night, being my 20th birthday, I wanted to have some fun. But my mother had already gone to bed luckily I had met someone fun on the plane.
This is Tony : )

We had met briefly in the Sac airport and then were coincidentally seated next to one another on the plane. We had exchanged stories and got to know each other. He currently lives in Honolulu and was more than willing to show me around while I was there. So, the night of my birthday I gave him a call and he came to pick me up. We went to his apartment, chilled with his room mate Josh and played a dance game on XBox Kinect. It was a lot of fun.
This is the view from his Pent House. Absolutely amazing. Best birthday in quite some time! thanks tony! : )

The next day me and my mom tried to hike Diamond head but unfortunately the trail was closed that day due to the bad weather. Although that day was especially spectacular. He headed towards Lanikai to lay on a beach as recommended by Tony. Me and my mother drove along the coast of Hawaii in search of the perfect beach. On the way we got fresh coconut by the side of the road.

It was delicious and prepared by a large samoan man. Thanks! We drove the rest of the way to Lanikai and took a dip in the ocean. We started to see a lot of kayakers coming and going to this island about Four miles off shore. So we decided to go for a kayaking adventure which was about 4 miles each way.

Once we got to the island we talked with some of the other brave souls that made it out there. We shared our coconut and tried to swim in the ocean. The reason I use "tried" as our action is because try is almost all we did. We wanted to go swimming in the beautiful blue water but because of the tide towards this certain beach the waves were coming onto the beach from three different sides, at the same time. making it impossible to swim without getting swept away. After getting back in our kayak, which was no easy feat, we headed towards Lanikai.
Once we got back to our hotel we got ready for dinner with Tony and his room mate Josh. They took us to an amazing sushi restaurant called Doraku. We had a great time!
The rest of the trip was full of fun. We took a hike to Manoa falls with tony and got so muddy in the process!

Tony, my mom and I at the Manoa falls and of course it started to rain right as we got there which added to the whole muddy experience. The rest of the trip we managed to see The U.S.S. Bowfin at pearl harbor which was guided by a recorded head set. Tony's was in korean lol
Me and my mom on our last full day there saw Hanauma Bay and then I headed over to Tony's to make dinner. He made delicious chicken and I made my fried rice YUM! : )
Our last day there we decided to be lazy and lay on the beach next to our resort.

Our trip to hawaii was a success! We got tan, we met amazing people and we had a wonderful adventure. So thanks to Hawaii for a great vacation, I'll be visiting again soon! : ) Now I'm back on the main land ready to embark on my adventure to Alaska. Wish me luck!