Waikiki, continued…

We figured out what to do with a day in Waikiki. First, the beach. We rented an umbrella and we bought some beach chairs. Best buy ever!

We watched the ocean and the surfers…

We ate lunch at a cool place – Island Vintage. Healthy and very tasty. Then we shopped. I mostly shopped – but so did Steve. He got some new shoes (1 pair) and while he was looking I found 2 pair :-).

We walked and shopped through the Royal Hawaiian Center and got this lovely shot of the top of the old Royal Hawaiian hotel. If only we had $500 per night to spend to sleep, we'd be here….

We walked farther down the beach and took this shot of Diamond Head and the ocean…

We were there checking out a beach-side bar, the Rum Fire. It's in the Waikiki Sheraton. Very, very nice. So nice that we went back later for sunset drinks with Karen and Hunt. (Before that we went to Chinatown for dinner. FYI – Honolulu Chinatown is not really open on Sundays. We ate at one of the few open restaurants and it was OK and thankfully not too expensive.)

We posed for pictures while we waited for drinks at Rum Fire…

Steve drank Hawaiian draft beer and I had a very expensive mai tai made with 23-year-old rum and a kicker of ginger. As the sun went down, I took this lovely picture:

We left after dark. I had to go shop for waterproof mascara – really, some things are just important. The man who helped us could easily pass for Eddie Murphy's son. I didn't mention that to him. Bet he's heard it before.

As we walked back to the hotel Steve made me back up to see this:

The escalators in the foreground are under construction and roped off. The whole area down there appears to be out of commission. Why, oh why, are the naked manequins (some with foam glasses) clustered like that in a lit window? They appear to be milling about, but not talking. They are too big-city cool to talk to each other in a group. They don't exactly look friendly, but they do look like they would wear nice clothes if they could just find them…