Day 8 was another lazy day (which is the whole point of a holiday)…we slept in until lunch time, and found a place to eat called the Royal Hawaiian Food Court. I can’t remember what we ate, but I remember the bill only being $7 between the two of us. That included two meals and drinks! I remember saying to the girl are you sure your not missing anything? I guess we still weren’t used to how cheap food can be compared to Sydney. After lunch we spent more time at Waikiki Beach, swimming and soaking up the sun. Knowing it is winter back home in Australia, we we’re making the most of it. After a swim and a sleep, we went back to our favourite Japanese BBQ restaurant, Kaku-Gyu. As always, the food was as good as ever, and all washed down with Sapporo Beer and Melon Aloha cocktails.

Day 9) Today we we’re booked for a 9:45am tour called the “Outrigger Aquatic Eco Tour”. These tours leave from Waikiki beach in a large catamaran. There was a group of about 15 people. Basically the Tour took us out to some of the reef areas off Waikiki beach. They also supplied Snorkeling gear, drinks and a life guard for our safety. This turned out to be a great day… we managed to swim up close with many turtles. There we’re also a good variety of colourful fish. If you get the chance, I highly recommend heading out on this tour.

This would be our last morning at the Sheraton Beach resort. After the tour finished we grabbed our bags, and hopped in a taxi which took us to the Kahala Resort. My first impressions of the Kahala was wow! We had actually booked a Dolphin room which gives a view of the lagoon. But unfortunately (or fortunately) the Dolphin Rooms we’re all booked out, so they upgraded us to an Ocean View room. Everything about the Kahala is beautiful. From the resort and its interior, to the tropical grounds and the man made lagoon. The Kahala is not cheap, costing around $1000 a night..but well worth the money!

That night we had dinner at Plumeria, one of the many Kahala Resort Restaurants.  Great food and Berry Melon Cocktails was a nice way to end a very pleasant day

After a buffet breakfast at the Kahala Resort, we picked up a Corvette we hired from Hertz. Hertz has an office inside the Kahala resort which made the process easy. The bright yellow Corvette was parked out the front of the resort waiting for us to take it Being a guy, I could not get rid of the smile on my face. That was until I got into the car and realised I needed to learn quickly how to drive on the right hand side of the road, and sit in the left side of the car to drive. It took a little getting used to, but by the end of the day it was almost autonomic. We drove to the North Shore of the Island covering the coast line. What a beautiful drive! The island landscape and weather was constantly changing.  We stopped for lunch at a place called Pizza Bobs. We also stopped at a few beaches, one which had numerous giant turtles feeding on the shore. The north shore of Hawaii felt a lot hotter than Honolulu. We got a little lost on the way home, but had the car back at the Kahala around 6pm. Alicia was not feeling so well that evening, so we decided to stay in tonight, order room service and watch the Olympic Games.

At 10am this morning, we we’re booked in to swim with the Dolphins (Dolphin Quest).  I booked this more for Alicia as she has always wanted to swim with the Dolphins. Basically we had 60 minutes to learn about and swim with the Dolphins. The dolphins are very intelligent, very well trained and looked after by the Dolphin quest girls. Having the opportunity to swim, touch and play with the dolphins was an amazing experience, but it was also quite expensive. It was over $600 for the 60 minutes, plus another $40 for 3 photos. Is it worth the money?? Alicia would tell you it was worth every cent.

After swimming with the Dolphins, we had lunch at Cabanas Seafood Grill. Cabanas is another one of the restaurants attached to the Kahala Resort. We basically spent the rest of the day swimming at Kahala’s private beach. The view from the beach is absolutely amazing. I recall looking down the coast line from the water. The view was that of a post card picture, with palm trees bending over the clear turquoise water and white sand. We spent the rest of the day swimming sun-baking and sleeping.

That night we had dinner at Hoko’s, another restaurant within the Kahala resort. Being our last night, we decided to order the Seafood mountain and a nice bottle of white wine (from New Zealand of course)…After dinner it was time for us to start packing, as sadly tomorrow morning we would be heading back to Honolulu airport, then back to Sydney Australia.