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First thing after checking in to our hotel, Sue and I headed over to the beach and grabbed a fruity drink at the bar.

The beach was beautiful, so we went for a long walk.

It always inspires confidence to go swimming in the ocean when you see a sign like this.

Here is a picture of waves coming over the surf wall. We must have been off season, because the waves were much smaller than I expected.

For the most part, the beaches were fairly quiet. It wasn't until our tour check in meeting the next day that we learned that a sewer pipe broke about a month before and spilled 29 million gallons of raw sewage into the ocean. The beaches are now "safe" but there is still an elevated microbial count. Most locals told us that they wouldn't swim there any time soon.

Here is a picture of a coconut palm tree.

And here is the view of the ocean from our hotel room balcony.

And here is a view of the hotels across the way. Waikiki was much noisier than I expected.

And here is a shot of the hotels and building behind us with the back drop of the mountains. Waikiki is a district of Honolulu. Something like 80% of all tourists to Hawaii only spend time in Ohau. And 80% of those tourist only see Waikiki. No wonder it is so busy.

Our second night, we were upgraded to a room with a king-sized bed (instead of the 2 full sized beds in our first room). This room was on the corner and had a little better view of the ocean.