I had a relaxing long weekend in Honolulu. It’s nice to have a change of scenery periodically.
It was fairly quiet in Waikiki, as Japanese tourists are still afraid of the swine flu and mainland Americans do the “staycation”. Both the flight on Hawaiian Airlines and the room at the Continental Surf Hotel were quite inexpensive.
I went on a short airplane flight with a female instructor at Flight School Hawaii in a Cessna 172SP.
Blue skies, Kona winds, practise area, a couple landings at Kalaeloa Airport (formerly called Barbers Point), back to HNL 22L.
The 172SP was beautiful except for 1 interesting problem. The magnetic compass had leaked into the Garmin 430 GPS, ruining most of the LCD display. D’oh!
Otherwise I hung out in the hotel or walked on Waikiki beach (quite humid even at night.)
The huge abandoned CompUSA superstore on Ala Moana is still empty, 2 years later.
Duke’s Waikiki was 100% full at dinner time, prolly the only crowded place I saw.
The street performers were even more varied than last time. I hadn’t seen the steel drums performer or magician before.
The Continental Surf Hotel is pretty basic. It has medium-sized rooms with AC and basic cable, coin laundry, a cursory gym (3 cardio machines and a universal machine, no free weights, in a too-small room), and a jumbo flat screen TV in the lobby tuned to a sports channel. Some people rent rooms monthly. There are only 2 small elevators, so if one broke, that could be a problem. Nice view on the roof of Waikiki and Diamondhead.
