Honolulu

After flying out of Brisbane at 7pm on November 25th, I arrived in Honolulu at 7am on November 25th! It was a pretty weird experience to live the same day twice! My layover in Honolulu was originally supposed to be 6 hours, but I wanted to take advantage of being in Hawaii (my first time there), so I decided to make it into a 24 hour layover! Despite being by myself, it was a really fun day, and it was nice to ease into being back in America by still getting to adventure, and enjoy some warmth despite the fact that it was now late fall rather than the spring that I had been used to. It was definitely really strange hearing so many American accents around me, and it was also hard for me to get used to walking on the right side of the sidewalk again. But I did really enjoy the cheap American prices! The fact that one of the most touristy places in America had much cheaper prices than New Zealand or Australia really says something about the prices there...

The first thing I did was hike up to Diamond Head, a short but steep walk up that ended with some gorgeous panoramic views of the beach, city, and surrounding mountains.

Honolulu and Waikiki Beach from the lookout point.

Next, I went to a cafe and got this guava-stuffed french toast with coconut and strawberry syrup! Even from the short time I was in Hawaii, I could tell that they are super big on different fruit flavors there.

Walking around town and along the beach.

After stopping for a pretzel and smoothie (SO nice to get a giant smoothie for under $5, since in New Zealand all the smoothies are relatively small and always $6-7), I wandered into a random hotel and found that they had a really nice infinity pool overlooking the ocean, so I dipped my feet in and watched the sun set (also cool to be able to finally watch the sun set over the ocean again, since in Australia and most of the time in New Zealand I was never on the west coast to be able to do this)

Walking along the beach after the sunset back towards my hostel.

While walking back, I happened upon this fun and informative hula performance!

Early the next morning, I made my way back to the Honolulu airport and flew to the Kahului airport in Maui, where I made my connection to finally return to California.