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The day after our wedding, Calvin and I took off to Hawaii for 2 weeks! We spent 5 days on Oahu….and considering I took a ridiculous amount of photos, I figured why spoil it and share them all at once. So this is part 1 of our honeymoon on Oahu!

I’ve been waiting on sharing them, because in lieu of a traditional wedding registry, we chose to do a honeymoon registry. With that, I decided that I wanted the guests that contributed to our honeymoon to be able to share in all of our experiences. So, I’ve put off posting these publicly until I sent thank you cards out that included photos of the activities we took part in! I’ll save my full review on the honeymoon registry for a Wedding Wednesday post, but for now, I’ll just say…it was the best decision for us and I definitely do not regret it!

On to the honeymoon! 🙂

Our first morning in Waikiki!  On our flight in the night before, as we were boarding the plane and came to our seats, the nicest Filipino guy jumped out of his seat to let us into his aisle.  I immediately noticed he was barefoot and had to smile. This probably sounds weird… For those of you who don’t know, my dad was in the Coast Guard, so I lived in Hawaii in middle/high school. Hawaii’s lifestyle is so laid back…and not wearing shoes is pretty much the norm. So it was nostalgic for me in a way. Ha. So as we sat on the plane and Calvin chatted it up with him about what it was like to live in Hawaii….I just got more excited for finally landing in Hawaii and living that life again…even if it was just for two weeks.

Our hotel’s balcony with a view of Diamond Head.

The view from the top of Diamond Head. SO in love! Whhyyyy can’t Virginia Beach look like this?!

Our attempt at visiting Pearl Harbor!  Unfortunately, we weren’t able to take the boat over to the USS Arizona because they were booked solid…so instead we took a quick trip around the grounds and the museum.

This was a torpedo they recovered from the water that was used during the strike on Pearl Harbor…

On our way to the North Shore, I spotted a sign to a botanical garden. I love botanical gardens just about anywhere, but right in the middle of a small town in Hawaii?  I knew it’d be gorgeous!  So of course, we took a little detour! 🙂

Oh and the obligatory stop at the Dole Cannery… The grounds are just beautiful there!

Then on a stretch of road as we circled the island, we drove past this massive wooden marlin. We immediately agreed we had to go back and check out his stuff (if you’ve been to our house, you’ve seen we have too many fish displayed…so part of me feared coming home with a massive lawn ornament. haha) This was one of the coolest little spots though! This guy, Maile Niu,is set up right on the side of Kamehameha Highway where he displays all of his beautiful work. And there was no shortage of it. Everywhere we looked around his house was another beautiful carving. Thankfully, we don’t have the massive lawn ornament, but with Maile’s help, we convinced Calvin to buy me a sea turtle….MY favorite sea creature. 🙂

The gorgeous mountain ridges…

We did spend one evening at our hotel to see a Cirque/Luau show…it was fun to just sit and relax! Until a man named Mystic who referred to himself in the third person crashed our party….but that’s a long story. 🙂

The photo on the right is especially for my friend, Brandi, who has a little celebrity crush on The Rock.  I found her Hawaiian Rock! 🙂

We decided the water in Hawaii looks like Glacier Ice Gatorade.

One afternoon I made the mistake of taking Calvin to Zippy’s. For the rest of the trip he asked if we could goto Zippy’s for the spam musubi. Thankfully he left his newfound love for SPAM in Hawaii, because I have a hard enough time cooking real meat! ha

Our favorite spot on Oahu! I think we went there 3 times in our 5 days on Oahu…at least!

Our last day, I was determined to do something instead of waiting around for our plane. So we decided to go on a hike. It was a gorgeous day out on the beach, but as we got closer to the mountains, it got cloudier and began sprinkling. I’d say this is pretty typical, but we definitely under estimated just how wet it would be!  There was barely a sprinkle, so we decided to man up and stop acting like we were going to melt…

The view was SO worth it!

Then as we got further along the trail, we noticed people coming down who were COVERED in mud! Calvin and I both had new shoes on, but decided we weren’t going to let that stop us! When else were we going to hike through Hawaii?  We can buy new shoes. So to say goodbye to my nice, clean shoes…I of course had to get a picture…

Once we got to the top, there was the nicest Australian woman who offered to take our photo! AND SHE GOT US IN FOCUS!!

The gorgeous Waimea Falls. 🙂

Oh, and the after of the shoes. I don’t know how, but I got 10x dirtier than Calvin. Apparently I should have been following his route instead of taking my own. Oh and one suggestion, if you ever find yourself going hiking in a wet area….bring a hiking stick! I can’t tell you how many times I almost wiped out! 🙂

 

I hope you’ve enjoyed a few of our honeymoon photos! 🙂 I’ll share the photos from our Maui trip later in the week!