Hawaii – the Christmas 2018 edition

We’ve just returned from our annual Hawaii Christmas holiday, and as always I’m updating the posts from previous years so I have an easy reference point for anyone who asks for our Hawaii tips.

All of the usuals were in play, staying at Royal Hawaiian, surfing with the team at Waikiki Beach Services, but this year we were a much bigger Ohana than usual, at least for part of the time.

It’s been 3 and a half years since all of my family have been in the same place at the same time – we’ve seen plenty of each other, but just not en masse – so it was great that they were able to join us.

It also provided a fantastic opportunity for an additional ‘matching outfit’ photo shoot, which the kids couldn’t have been happier about!

We still had our traditional Christmas Day Ugly Xmas rashie pic, both at our Yoga Floats class and for our Christmas morning surf session, but by the time everyone arrived late on Boxing Day I had managed to source 13 matching outfits in a variety of options that catered for everyone’s needs, reinforcing my ‘Queen of Procurement’ family status.

We didn’t try and add too many new activities in on this trip, instead focusing on introducing the rest of the family to the things that we’d discovered and enjoyed previously.

https://www.hawaiiactivities.com/en/hawaii/oahu/a/110961

https://www.waikikibeachservices.com/

That said, there are always a few new experiences that come up over the course of the weeks.  Tears were shed when Morimoto closed down his restaurant at The Modern a couple of years ago, as it was a real family favourite, but we knew the new location had opened up during 2018 and couldn’t wait to try it out.  With a beautiful lanai with ocean sunset views it definitely didn’t disappoint – as evidenced by the fact that we found ourselves there three times over the course of the holiday, with the lure of the popcorn shrimp proving too strong!

Speaking of strong lures, the opportunity to set off your own fireworks on New Years Eve was too much to resist for the rest of the family, so they headed to the Big Island while we stayed on Oahu.  We weren’t in the zone for a big party, and had the perfect night on a catamaran sailing off Waikiki for a couple of hours before midnight before mooring by the fireworks barge for a spectacular start to 2019.

I went out on the same catamaran a couple of days later for a snorkel experience at Turtle Canyon which was just fantastic.  With only 10 minutes sail time we were swimming with a dozen or so enormous honu as they came in and out of the cleaning station – where tiny fish feast on the bacteria that grow on their shells, literally cleaning them up before they swim off with their newly freshened up shells!

One of the most amazing experiences came completely out of the blue, when we got chatting to the Uber driver who drove us back from Yoga Floats one morning.  He mentioned that he absolutely loved sunrises, and his favourite thing to do was to take people out to see great sunrise spots on the island.  We organised to go out with him one morning, and not only did he take us to a fantastic spot to watch the sun come up but he turned out to have a great photographers eye, and took some sensational photos for us too.  You can see some more of his great pics on Instagram at @pictureperfecttwur .

So that’s our Hawaii Christmas for 2018, here’s the links to the 2015, 2016 and 2017 posts and it’s fair to say there’ll likely be another update this time next year!