Day 7 – Sunrise photography Tour, iHop, Pool time, Fireworks, Dinner and Shopping

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I was up at 4:20am after barely any sleep. I got ready, grabbed my camera and my granola and was waiting out the front of the hotel at 4:50am. I was waiting only a couple of minutes before Alex (the owner of O'ahu Photography Tours) got there. He is originally from Florida but came here in 2004 on holiday and never looked back. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />We picked up a few others from various Waikiki hotels then made our way up to Sunset Beach to take sunrise photos. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />This is where we photographed the sun rising from. There are all these cool little rock pools that the light and reflections bounce off. We left there at 6:25am and made our way to the Makapu’u Lookout. We took some photos here briefly then made our way down to Makapi’u beach where Baywatch Hawaii was filmed. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />We stayed here for about 30mins as we were able to walk around taking photos of the bright green plants with the contrast of the bright blue water and the black lava rock. We then got back in the van and drove past the house used in the TV show Magnam PI and continued on to to Waimanolo Beach Park. This park is beautiful. Its 3 miles of sloping white sand, hundreds of towering ironwood tree and perfect aqua blue water. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />Alex explained that they used this beach in the filming of one of the Hunger Games scenes. This tour was like doing a movie tour as well.<br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />We then moved on and stopped at the Ko'olau Range for photos briefly, and left there about 8:25am. We then stopped in at Kalapawai Market in Kailua. This sweet little shop has been round since 1932. We all hopped out of the van and ordered our breakfasts off the extensive menu, I got a breakfast bagel and an OJ. It was the first bagel I’d had since I’ve been here, and it was delightful. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />After breakfast we went to a little waterfall to take some photos. As it turned out it was actually in the same street as they used in the George Clooney movie The Descendants. We stayed here for about 30mins and left just after 10:30am to head back in the direction of Waikiki.<br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />We all couldn’t believe that we had got so much done already and it was only 10:30am! Crazy!<br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />I got dropped just up the road from our hotel and walked back to meet Marnee and Bec to then head down to iHop (International House Of Pancakes) for lunch. It’s very similar to Australia’s Pancake Parlour but somewhere I’d never got a chance to eat at in all my visits to the USA. I got a ‘Summer Stack’ that had banana and banana custard. It was very nice. We then walked back to the hotel for pool time where we stayed for many hours.<br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />Eventually we went back to the room, showered and left the hotel just after 6:00pm. We headed on foot down to the shops so Marnee could get pizza at Sbarro. At 7:30pm we headed down past the Sheritan Hotel to see the Friday night fireworks. The setting was amazing. The sun hadn’t completely set so the sky was a lovely purple blue colour. The fireworks are put on by the Hilton Hotel so it was still quite a way down the beach but this was a really good viewing spot. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />After the fireworks we headed to Victoria’s Secret, Sephora, Macys and Forever21 for some final purchases then met back at Sbarros for Marnee to have more pizza, Bec got pizza also and I got a bahn mi roll from a Pho chain they have here. It was very tasty. <br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />Marnee then went back to the hotel with our purchases and Bec and I walked the 30mins on foot to Walgreens to get a couple of things. We then walked the 25mins back to meet Marnee at a place called The Big Kahuna but they were charging an entry fee and I was exhausted from being up since 4:30am so we went back to the hotel to pack. This was a fairly slow process but was done by just after 1:00am and I went to sleep straight away.



Total steps for the day: 26,155<br style="line-height: 21.77px;" />Total kms for the day: 18.15

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