Two days after packing up my stuff and moving it all back home, I packed up again, this time headed for Hawaii and California! My parents were nice enough to take me and one of my best friends and college roommates, Randi, on a trip to Hawaii for graduation! We had a great time!
The trip started for my parents and I in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. My parents had been there once before on their honeymoon but it was my first time on that island. I have to say, I was not as wowed as I thought I would be. Don't get me wrong, the setting is beautiful, but Honolulu is just a big city. It has its problems just like any other place. Some of the worst traffic I've ever seen was in Honolulu.
We did have some good time there though! We stayed with a cousin on my dad's side, and it was great to see him again! While we were there we went to Pearl Harbor, Waikiki Beach, and climbed to the top of Diamond Head crater! It was really interesting to learn more about Pearl Harbor and I'm glad I got to appreciate the various memorial sites. Views from the crater were, as expected, spectacular.
Then we got on a plane and headed for our next island, Maui! We spent the rest of our trip there, in a condo in Kihei. I'll let the photo below do the talking for me. GORGEOUS.
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| The view from our lanai, or patio. |
Randi met us there a few days later. We did a lot of fun stuff while on Maui, including parasailing, snorkeling, and ziplining! Not to mention a lot of sitting on the beach working on our tans (ahem...burns). The weather was great the whole week.
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| Randi and I 500 feet up! |
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| Bye boat! The island in this picture is Lana'i. |
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| Ziping through the trees! |
When it was (sadly) time to leave Hawaii, Randi and my parents flew directly home but I got off the plane at LAX for a 4 day detour to Orange County to visit Shiri, one of my close friends who graduated college a year before me. She has spent the past year teaching English in Austria and it was SO GREAT to see her again! You can read all about her year abroad
here.
Some highlights of my time in California are my first trip to In-n-out Burger, meeting up with my aunt and cousin for lunch, and my first trip to Disneyland! We made an all-day trip out of going to the parks, and we had such a great time! Everything was so cute and the rides were really fun. I think my favorite was the Radiator Springs Racers ride in the new Cars Land in California Adventure. The lines for that ride were crazy long so Shiri and I decided to split up and try out the single rider line. I highly recommend this; we waited 20 minutes while everyone else waited 2 hours. I ended up going in a car with an adorable family with three little boys who were SO excited that our car was Lightning McQueen. The mom was also pretty excited about that.
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| It's hard not to be excited when Mater's around. |
After a great visit with Shiri and her family, I headed home for good. Since I've been home, I've been getting settled all over again, slowly but surely unpacking all my things, and getting ready to head to Spain in a few months! I'm working on getting everything ready to apply for my visa, which has been a job and a half, but I'll save that lovely story for another post.
