Hawaii Day 2: The Early Birds Get the Beach to Themselves

With our internal clocks still on CST, we woke up very early on Monday! Luckily, there was a great 24-hour coffee shop right by our hotel. After an early breakfast, we explored the resort some more. We stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village. It was huge, but perfect for our family: right on the beach, 5 pools including one with waterslides, a lagoon, and a menagerie of animals on the property including penguins, turtles, and flamingos.

Since it was so early in the morning, we virtually had the beach to ourselves. We planned to take a walk down the shoreline, then go back and put on swimsuits later, but the kids couldn’t stand being so close to the water and not getting in. They both got soaking wet before the end of the walk!

We spent the rest of the day going back and forth between the beach, the pools, and the lagoon.

That evening, we walked down to the busiest part of Waikiki – the shopping district. Let me just say, there is a lot of money spent every day in Waikiki. Most of the Japanese tourists were loaded down with shopping bags from Coach, Hermes, etc. I felt a little low brow carrying around my kids’ leftover cold cut combo in a Subway bag. ; )