Day 2 - Atlantis Submarine, Waikiki

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Today was going to be our first day in Hawaii, we were looking forward to getting out of the hotel and exploring. We got up and I took a few pictures of the marina and ocean from our room.

Breakfast

We decided to have breakfast at our hotel today, it was a buffet breakfast. Now when I see buffet, I eat like there’s no tomorrow. They had an American section and a Japanese section; I stuck to mainly the American section as the Japanese section was mainly seafood. I must have got up seven times to get food. With drinks (included in buffet prices here, NOT like England), they had fresh guava juice which looked interesting so we tried it, it didn’t taste as sweet as the Rubicon juice we expected but it was nice. The buffet cost us $47 including the waitresses tip.

Hotel Concierge

After breakfast we decided to book our excursions for the next few days in Oahu so we can then plan our days around it. We decided to book a submarine excursion ($224), a nature hike ($101), and a visit to the Polynesian Cultural Centre ($255). This set us back a whopping $580 on our first day and we hadn’t yet left the hotel.

Ala Moana Shopping Centre

A two minute walk from our hotel was the Ala Moana Shopping Centre, which happens to be the world’s largest open air shopping centre. It appears to cater for Honolulu’s tourism with its exotic palm trees, Koi fish ponds, and major designers. This place was huge, over 4000 car parking spaces, 300 stores, including our favourite, Macy’s. If you are looking for bargains whilst shopping in America, visit the Macy’s sale.

There were a couple of stalls which sold “wrap dresses”, these dresses could be worn in about 20 different ways. Avani was obsessed with these dresses, they were $80 each, we kindly refused at that price. Although it was a good idea, end of the day it was just a rectangular piece of cloth so we walked away and didn’t fall for the tourist trap. We did a bit of shopping ($82) and grabbed some lunch ($10) and headed back to the hotel as submarine tour was due to depart soon.

Atlantis Submarine XIV

We had booked an excursion on the Atlantis Submarine which took us into the ocean to view the reef and marine life. This is the world’s largest passenger submarine, taking 64 passengers. We were getting picked up from our hotel at 12pm in a Hawaiian style trolley. They have hundreds of these in the Waikiki area, and can be used similarly to a hop-on-off bus in London. It’s similar to a bus without windows and running electrically. We were the first two people on the trolley but we went to other hotels to pick up other passengers. From one hotel there was a party of over 20 Japanese tourists with an interpreter. She was their tour guide and she was giving detail information about all the tourist attractions, the only problem was it was all in Japanese so we didn’t know what was going on.



After about 40 minutes we arrived at our destination, the hotel next to our hotel which we’re sure we could have walked there in 10 minutes. We got off the trolley and boarded a boat which was going to take us to the middle of the ocean where we would then board the submarine.

We boarded the submarine through what looked like “the hatch” in ‘Lost’, we climbed down the ladder and sat down with a view of the ocean, and began to descend to 100ft. I took lots of photos here of the reef, the fish, and we even saw a shark.



As we got off the submarine we were approached by some people stating they were from a coral museum and they offered to take us there for a free tour. We knew that nothing comes for FREE, but we decided to go check it out anyway.

The museum was called Maui Divers Jewelry (this is how they spell jewellery in America). Unfortunately we weren’t allowed to take any photos here. We learnt about precious coral (black, gold, red, pink) and how people lost their lives trying to extract it from reefs 200ft under the sea. To ensure the future of Hawaiian Black Coral, they adhere to the strict guidelines that prevent harvesting of immature colonies. Black coral is the Hawaiian State Gem Stone. For more information click here.

At the end of the tour we were taken to a massive jewellery store where they would try and make some sales, this is the reason they gave us a free tour. Now being a Honeymoon couple, they showed Avani lots of beautiful jewellery and started with some sales pressure on me, the husband. Now Avani knew exactly what they were trying to do and she kindly refused everything. They started by trying to sell us $2000 rings and gradually showed cheaper goods to the value of $200 which she kindly refused. They eventually gave up and we were on our way out of the store when we read, “Pick your own pearl for $10”, this sounded interesting. We had to pick an oyster shell and cut it open and whatever pearl came out would be ours to keep.

We got our pearl and they started the sales pressure again, saying its bad luck to take a pearl on its own. We could have it as a ring, earring, bracelet, eventually we settled for a pendant, a plumeria flower pendant in sterling silver ($50).

The Plumeria is the Hawaiian flower of welcome and can be found all over the island. These flowers are used for making Lei’s (I will explain these later) and are worn by women in Hawaii, and symbolises perfection.

Waikiki Beach

Avani loves going to the beach, so we decided to visit the famous Waikiki beach. This is the beach that every tourist comes to, but we knew there were better beaches in Hawaii. We spent a little time at the beach. I got quite bored, as I find great difficulties in ‘doing nothing’. A couple of high school kids came to the beach to raise money for their school football team by selling Lei’s. Now Lei’s are the garlands of flowers that you see on TV all the time when people arrive in Hawaii. Traditionally, they are made of Plumeria flowers. We decided to help them out thinking they would be a dollar or two. But they were TEN DOLLARS, we got one as Avani liked it. We later found out, that they weren’t traditional Lei because they were made from a different flower. We’d been hustled by a 15 year old.

Hawaii’s International Market Place

We then headed for the main tourist area of Waikiki, the International Market. We mainly browsed, there were hundreds of stalls and we saw lots of the “wrap dress” stalls but all of them charging $80-$200. I have linked a video so you know what I mean. We decided we would get one, but we thought we’d shop around first as we were in the main tourist area in Hawaii.

Cheese Cake Factory

It was getting dark now and we were getting hungry, we saw the “Cheesecake Factory”. This is a popular franchise in the states, there is always a queue and you cant make a reservation. They also do starters and mains, not just cheesecake. We waited for an hour and finally got a table. We ordered two mains and of course chocolate cheesecake with ice cream. We should have stuck to one main and one starter as we couldn’t finish the food. Our total came to just under $40, so we left them $43.



We walked around for a bit and then decided to head back to the hotel, our total was $13 including the drivers tip. Yes you also tip taxi drivers too, they must make a lot of money because tips are tax free. Tomorrow we look forward to our waterfall nature hike.

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