This is post #8 in my series all about our honeymoon! If you haven’t already, make sure you read the other posts first – they’re listed chronologically here 🙂
DAY 8 – SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10
After our first full day on Oahu and at Aulani yesterday, we were ready to get going on more adventures and were up early this Saturday morning! Our destination today was something not necessarily in my comfort zone, but we were both excited about it. We were heading to Diamond Head State Monument for an early morning hike!
Diamond Head is a “volcanic cone” in Honolulu that’s a pretty big tourist attraction. The view from the top is supposed to be the best in Oahu, looking out over the city on one side and the ocean on the other. You may know by now that I’m not exactly an outdoorsy person (as I wrote about in my day 5 post), so I wasn’t really sold on going on a hike for our honeymoon, but it seemed pretty interesting and fun and the “hike” didn’t seem too challenging. And again, I was drawn in by the supposedly great views from the top! Chris loves outdoorsy things, so we agreed to do it one day we were on Oahu. And that day was today!
We headed out bright and early and I was very sleepy!
Diamond Head isn’t too far from Aulani, we left around 7:10 and with some light traffic we arrived around 7:45. Everything we read said to get there early to avoid the major crowds of tourists that arrive later in the morning. Our destination was hard to miss:
After quickly parking, we were headed out on the hike! I made note of the times because I wanted to see how long it took us to do it – we started the hike at 7:52.
There were a surprising amount of people there for being “early”! But they didn’t keep us from appreciating the stunning scenery all around:
The hike ended up being not bad at all – it’s only about a mile. I wouldn’t call it hard or anything but it did get kind of steep at parts, and the 99 (!) stairs at the end were kind of treacherous!
In my research I read that some locals do this hike EVERY DAY which was just unbelievable to me – but I could see why once we found the amazing views from the top…
It was SO beautiful!
LOOK at that water like are you kidding me??
We took some time to walk around the top as well – there were some cool things to look at as Diamond Head was originally built to be used by the US Army, so there were some remnants of that up there:
Once we had our fill we headed back! The walk back down was obviously much easier and I was surprised when I checked the time to see that it only took us about 25 minutes to get to the top! The whole thing took us less than an hour to do and we ended up back at the bottom at 8:44. At the bottom we also found this, which I thought was funny:
Of course they have a gift shop haha! I got a tote bag for my mom and we were on our way to our next stop, which was…
The Aloha Stadium Swap Meet! I was so excited to check this out – it’s basically an open air flea market held a few days a week at the University of Hawaii football stadium. There’s lots of cool souvenirs and things to look at, and I was excited to check it out. This seemed like a popular tourist destination as well with a lot of typical Hawaii souvenirs – t shirts, floral dresses, etc. It’s also a cheap activity as it was only $1 per person to get in!
There were lots of little stands set up with cool things:
There were a lot of weird or interesting things, like these Obama bobbleheads:
This one had all ukeleles!
They also had a lot of booths selling fresh fruit, and even coconuts! I ended up buying a coconut to drink milk out of because I’m a tourist and I felt like I was on Survivor haha
The only other thing I ended up buying was a floral dress which is super cute and summery!
We didn’t spend too much time here because it was mostly all the same things after a while. We also didn’t have room for too many souvenirs, but it seemed like a great place to do a one stop shop for every typical Hawaii thing you’d want.
Once we’d finished up looking around, we decided to head on back to Aulani. The rest of the day we had no plans until dinner, so it was really just a lazy, relaxing day! We went swimming again for a while and again, we absolutely LOVED the adult pool areas. Our favorite on this day was the adults only infinity pool which was so relaxing and pleasant!
We also had lunch at the poolside lounge-y area.
He’s so cute 😍 that’s my husband 😍
Also in that pic you can see Chris’s pool bracelet, which they give to Aulani guests. The resort sits on a public beach area and also anyone can always walk in off the street to look around, so this is how they make sure only registered guests are using the pools. On this day they had a pretty sparkly pink color!
Anyway, we had a burger, chili cheese fries, and pork quesadillas (which were so good we came back for them later in the week!)
After lunch we headed back to our room for a nap! I know, this day was so eventful and exciting lol
After our nap we saw they were setting up for the luau right outside our room!
We got cleaned up since it was getting close to dinner time. The sun was about to set so we headed down to the beach to walk around.
It was here that we found some of the AMAZING Aulani photopass photographers who seriously worked magic for us in the photos they took! They had a bunch of photographers walking around on the beach right at sunset, doing tons of cool poses for guests. I am so happy we stumbled upon them!
Those are just a few of the ones we got and honestly, these photos are what convinced me to buy the photopass CD at the end of our trip. They turned out so beautiful with the sun setting in the background and all the photographers took their time and had fun taking as many photos as we wanted. I was seriously so impressed with how much effort they put into getting good shots and how they took so much time with us! They were running around in the sand!! It was wild!! It was so much fun and I’m so happy that we have these photos to remind us of our honeymoon.
After our photoshoot it was time for dinner! Tonight our restaurant of choice was Makahiki, which is a buffet of various Hawaiian foods.
The restaurant itself was decorated really cool inside:
And the buffet was great! It had tons of variety and everything I tried was amazing. Get ready for some buffet photos (click to see bigger):
So much food!! I tried to sample a little of everything but there was SO much, I had to prioritize! There were salads, sushi, various pastas, vegetables, fish, pork, chicken, steak, fried rice – it was a lot of options.
And those photos didn’t even cover dessert:
And…I also tried to sample one of everything here:
After this meal we were STUFFED. My notes here say “we had to go upstairs and think about our lives a bit.” LOL
So we trucked upstairs and we saw they were doing the luau again – from our balcony!
It was so cool! We watched the end of it again and leisurely got ready for bed. We were pretty tired after this full day of activities! Once the luau was over we pretty much immediately passed out 😴
And that’s all for our 8th (!!) day of adventure! I get sad every time I write one of these posts because we’re getting so close to the end, but it’s so nice to remember all the fun we had on our honeymoon. I hope you’re enjoying these posts as we get closer and closer to the end – I know I am 🙂 thank you so much for reading, as always <3
xo,
PS: I just organized all of my trip report-style posts and made a brand new page to keep all of them sorted and together. If you like reading about trips in a day-by-day format like this, you might enjoy reading some of my other past trips as well! You can check that out here 🙂
