Mobile Vince

Sunday, August 5, 2007

Hawaii wrap-up

It was fun! It was too short, and it's definitely over... My trip to Hawaii was planned last minute in between two jobs. I booked a flight and a hotel, packed a few things and went... One goal: do nothing and escape, a sort of "retreat" in a way. I went alone and I must say that was an experience on its own :) I don't think I had ever traveled alone before and I was a little worried of getting bored.. Well, now I now I can do nothing for extended periods of time without the slight hint of boredom :-)

So what did I do? A lot of nothing by the beach and by the pool, drove around the island in a Jeep in the last three days, met new friends, ate at various restaurants and drank a lot of Mai Tais. They have really good Mai Tais, even at the airport! I barely used my laptop (and only to look up addresses and maps) and disconnected from the work world quite effectively, that was cool. I must say, I love Hawaii!

I stayed at the Waikiki Sand Villa hotel, a cheap but decent hotel two blocks away from Waikiki beach and with a decent pool. The hotel was clean and the staff were very helpful. They also have a nice caesar sald and good french fries which can help after too many mai tais ;) It's very close to the main strips in Waikiki (Kalakaua Ave & Kuhio Ave) where most shops & restaurants & bars are in Waikiki. And in case you get bored and you're a single male, starting at about dusk you'll have lots of sexy hot friends on Kuhio Ave wanting to talk to you and try to get you to "go play" :-)) (I didn't go play -- I had Mai Tais in mind.)

I'm glad I took some time to go around the island as Oahu has lots of beautiful places all around. It is a tropical island after all and the overcrowded Waikiki wouldn't let you see that. I rented a Jeep thinking I'd be happy to go on secret trails were I to find any, but I'm finding out now (dealing with Enterprise Rent-a-Car which is trying to claim I did something to their hood that I never did) that going on sand or off-roading with a Jeep violates the contract and voids any warranty you'd have purchased with them. Good to know! Next time, rent a real convertible ;) Driving around was lots of fun though, and it brought back a lot of memories from when I was there back in 1998 (Clin d'oeil Kristell! :) ) I'll be back, oh yeah, one day, I'll be back.

I've put up all the photos I ended up taking on a Hawaii picasaweb album but as of right now, it's a massive dump with no captions, lots of duplicates and nothing edited. Be warned, lots of stuff.

Until next time... Aloha!

The phone that made it all happen

All the photos on this blog (well, except this one and another one) were taken and published with this phone. It's a Sony-Ericsson K790a which has a built-in Blogger integration: take a picture, chose "Blog This!", type in a title and some text and poof! It appears on your blog without having to do anything else. It's just awesome :-) All the photos were taken "live", i.e. they were taken on the spot on published on the spot. Those who followed the blog everyday got some live-taste of Hawaii ;)

The phone was lent to me by Jessica from the Blogger team. Thanks Jessica, it was great!