This weekend was extremely exhausting! Possibly the only negative side of dating a photographer, hehe :P
Saturday B's cousin got married. I've only gone to a couple Chinese weddings in my recent past, but before I only attended the reception. Since I was with one of the photographers (he wasn't the main photographer), I had to be there just about every step of the way. We started the morning off in Ontario at 9AM for the tea ceremony for the bride's side. A few hours later, we headed over to the groom's side for another tea ceremony. By the time this was over, it was about 2PM and we headed over to
San Gabriel Mission to witness them exchange vows and take more pictures. It was so cold that day, and it rained a bit! Around 4PM, we headed over to the Capital Seafood in Monterey Park to help setup for the reception. This restaurant looks shabby on the outside, but the inside was so beautiful! The rest of the night is kind of a blur, but I know it consisted of food, slideshows, dancing, etc. We called it a night at 11PM. We were exhausted. I'll post a few pics once we sort through them.
Sunday started off late. It consisted a lot of errands, but we did manage to watch
Smokin' Aces with Mouse and Jimboz. The movie was not bad, however I was expecting a little more scenes of action. Don't get me wrong, there was plenty of action but I felt that it was too concentrated in certain scenes. I was expecting a little more of a shoot 'em up movie, but I was surprised to learn that there was much more of a storyline. It also doesn't hurt that I got to gaze at Ryan Reynolds most of the time. *sigh* Hehe! Not disappointing, definitely entertaining.
Finally, my Hawaii 2006 Trip update... :)
Saturday (12/16/06):
We arrived before noon in Oahu and got situated with our rental car and hotel room. We were thrifty and stayed at
Hokele Suites Waikiki. It was too early for check-in so we had lunch at
Zippy's, and then had malasadas for dessert from
Leonard's Bakery. Mmm, yummy! B seems to love malasadas even more than I do :P
After settling into our hotel room and relaxing for a little bit, we decided to keep the first day low key and just walked around the
International Market Place and also shopped the fancy stores along Kalakaua Avenue.
All the walking exhausted us so we relaxed for a bit at the hotel before heading out to dinner at
Ono Hawaiian Foods. It's sort of a hole-in-the-wall type restaurant, but it's very well-known. Here we had very "authentic" Hawaiian food including kalua pork and laulau, pipikaula, lomi salmon, haupia, and poi. It was my first time trying poi, and my reaction was the same as any other haole: "Eew..." Poi is a ground up taro root that I think is definitely an acquired taste.
Sunday:
Sunday morning we had brunch at the
Rainbow Drive-In. The food is decent and fairly cheap. A good "local place" to go.
After that, we went shopping for cheap souvenirs at the swap meet at the
Aloha Stadium. We bought a bunch of stuff for some people and especially for ourselves :) Souvenirs are much cheaper here than anywhere else in Waikiki, so try not to buy souvenirs at the International Market Place or the ABC stores!
That night, B reserved a romantic dinner for us on the
Oahu Navatek Royal Sunset Dinner & Cocktail Cruise. The food and drinks were great, but unfortunately we didn't get to see too much of the sunset. It was sort of cloudy that day :( The cruise was really cool because they provided lots of entertainment. A big hawaiian guy was singing and playing instruments while we ate (I'm so drawn to these guys, but not in a sexual way, LOL), and he also provided the music when a lady came out to sing for the rest of the night. There were a couple Polynesian dancers as well. It was definitely worth the steep price :)
Monday:
We grabbed breakfast at Leonard's again. B was hooked on those malasadas! Shortly after, we had to head back to the Aloha Stadium because I had to get stuff fixed for my mom. We stopped by
Pearl Harbor to take some pictures, then headed to the
Dole Plantation. We ate some of the pineapple yogurt and took some more pictures.
I wanted to show him a little more of North Shore so we stopped by
Waimea Bay and hung out for a little. On the way back home, we stopped in
Haleiwa to eat some real food. We ate at
Haleiwa Joe's Seafood Grill. It was pretty good. Before leaving the town, we had to of course complete our meal by stopping by
Matsumoto's Shaved Ice. I didn't get to visit this place last time I was in HI, so I made it a point to stop by this time. It was yummy!
After this long day, we headed back and rested for a little bit. B still wanted to go out and do stuff so we stopped by
Ala Moana Mall, shopped a bit, and had dinner at
Bubba Gump. We were so full at the end of the day.
Tuesday:
We started the day off eating breakfast at
Seaside Bar and Grill, a local restaurant, for $2.99 breakfasts. After breakfast we took a boogie board into the water and then laid out on
Waikiki Beach for a little while. It was near the end of our trip and we barely go to lay out at this time! It's ok though. I'm not too much of a beach person anyway. I hate tan lines :P
We spent the rest of the day at the
Polynesian Cultural Center. I was looking forward to this because I didn't go to this last time I was in Hawaii. The drive there was serene. We passed by a bunch of somewhat secluded North Shore beaches. It was beautiful! The beach shores were to our right, the green mountainside on the left. Next time we're in Oahu, we'll check the beaches out. At the center, we watched shows, demonstrations, and attended a luau there. Did you know that in the Hawaiian and Samoan cultures, it's the men who cook and serve the women first? Hmm... what an appealing aspect of their beautiful culture :D There was so much to do there! We made little origami fish out of leaves, and B tried to start a fire with wood (unfortunately, unsuccessful despite the smoke, hehe). We had a great time at the luau. It was B's first luau experience and he highly enjoyed it. After the luau was the final grand finale show. It was awesome! Luckily, we reserved some decent seats :) Next time I go there, I'm going to plan better for the PCC. They have deals where you could return within the next few days!
Wednesday (12/20/06):
Sadly, our last day there. Before grabbing some food, we shopped down Kalakaua Avenue again and B picked up his mom's Christmas gift as well as mine at Coach and Gucci, respectively :X Thank you, honey, for my Christmas gift!
Before leaving, we had lunch at
Sam Choy's. A friend of ours suggested it so we had to give it a try before leaving. The food was pretty good, and it left us pretty stuffed for the trip back home.
This trip didn't seem long enough. We were busy just about every moment of each day, yet we still didn't manage to do everything we wanted to. A couple things we missed were
Diamond Head and China Town. Maybe next time... although we hope our next trip to Hawaii will be to Kauai!
(Possible) next trips: Japan (I haven't been back since I've left, and it's B's first time), Alaska (via cruise), NY, Europe, Australia (my choice, of course :P), Thailand...
I haven't been able to update about my trip to Hawaii, but I have started the post and it's almost done. Unfortunately, it's been difficult to finish because work's blocked Blogger, and I've been real busy when I get home these days. I'm actually cooking a lot more, so it's a good reason why I haven't put in so much internet time lately. Not to mention I've been playing the Wii when I'm not doing chores ;)
Anyway, this weekend was a busy one despite it being a short weekend. Saturday was packed with parties and get-togethers. We started the morning/noon with a party in Irvine for B's cousin's surprise party. It was greek-themed so we had to wear togas. I wasn't too happy about having to wear a toga, but I tried my best to be ok in it. Later on that night, we went out to Mulligan's for Mouse's birthday celebration. Lots of video games, eating, and laser tag! We left a little earlier than everyone else and made it to my coworker's place in LB for some late night poker. I didn't actually play (maybe next time, hehe), but he has a Wii as well so I played with everyone else in the losers circle :P We called it a night at 3AM. Amazing how we managed to stay up that late considering we woke up at 8AM! Maybe it was all the soda...
Today we bought a new game for the Wii:
WarioWare: Smooth Moves. It's so much fun! It's just like Touched! for the DS, but of course Wii-like... if that makes sense, hehe. We'll be playing this a lot for a while! But Wii Sports is still a lot of fun :)
Well, tomorrow night I have a hockey game to look forward to. I've always wanted to go to one so when this came up, B and I decided that we should go. Good thing for us, one of our coworkers has tickets to the Kings and hooked us up :D Look for us in the
first row!!!
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