Hawaii - Day 2

Wireless problems continue to plague me, so I'm not certain I'll be able to add any photos to this post.  The hotel wireless works sporadically when no one else in the hotel is awake, and while I was able to obtain a temporary prepaid SIM card today, the data plan is not working on it, so I'm not able to use my phone for data either.

As I mentioned in the previous blog post, this day started at 4am, when the kids decided to get up, since they were no longer tired.  Stupid time zones.  After hours of playing, watching TV and eating breakfast, it was finally 9am and time to go out and do something, as things were finally open.

We decided to head to the zoo today, so we walked down the beach to the zoo.  Kids love zoos.  Alex took the map and lead us around as we saw a Komodo dragon, some tigers, some lions, a bunch of birds and monkeys and turtles.  The turtles were the biggest hit with Jonathan, as he sat and watched them for a long time.  In fact, one of the monkey enclosures was surrounded by water that had a few turtles in it and he spent the entire time there watching the turtles instead of the monkey.

After the zoo it was lunch time, so we stopped for a quick bite to eat before heading across the street to the beach.  The kids started playing in the water, while I left for a quick walk to try and find a store that sold the SIM card I wanted.  I could not find it, so returned to the beach, at which point Grandma and Grandpa took Bradley back to the hotel for a nap while the rest of the kids played in the water.

The weather has been very nice.  Warm, but cloudy so that the sun isn't beating down on you.  Interestingly, every half hour or so a small rain cloud passes overhead.  The rain is so short and so warm that everyone just ignores it.  Because of the heat, we had the kids keep their shirts on (and covered them in sunscreen), which didn't go over very well with them, but we really didn't want them to get sunburnt on their first full day in Hawaii.  Sandra got burnt a little bit, and I got burnt on my feet, but other than that we survived our first day in the sun.

After the beach, Sandra and I left the boys with Grandma and Grandpa and walked to a mall just outside of Waikiki, where there was a grocery store.  We found the mall easily enough, but it was very large and there was no inside area - you basically walked around the outside of the entire mall to see all the stores.  That made it difficult to get to the other side where the grocery store was, and it took us quite some time to get there.  We bought a few things and discovered that Sandra's membership card at the grocery store, which she signed up for 14 years ago when she first came to Hawaii, was still active.

Upon our return, we went out for supper, choosing to go to a Denny's that was really close, just to keep things simple.  We finished supper with a few extremely exhausted children, so it wasn't long before everyone was in bed.