You might notice that a lotttttt of TV personalities don’t really take time off. That’s for many different reasons. Sometimes it’s that they haven’t earned enough time off or that it’s sweeps (our ratings period) or that their boss won’t approve much time off.
I will say, I’m very lucky to have the boss I have. She approves my time off requests for all the days I have earned/worked for someone else. Because of this, I got the amazing opportunity to go to Hawaii with my boyfriend, Bryce.
We spent a whole week on the island of Oahu and it was amazinggggg. Here’s everything we did:
Day 1:
We went on a tour of the island, which was really helpful in getting our feet wet in Hawaiian culture, knowledge, and getting a lay of the land. We booked it through Viator.
-The tour took us to this beautiful lookout point called Nu’uanu Pali. It’s where a famous battle in Hawaiian history took place.
-We then hopped over to the Byodo-In Temple, which was a commemoration to the first Japanese immigrants to Hawaii. This temple was amazing. A fun fact about it is that it was made without a single nail. Also surrounding the temple was one of the only cemeteries I saw on the island.
-After visiting the temple, we went to Tropical Farms which is a Macadamia nut farm. There you can sample the different kinds of nuts! My personal fav was the garlic and onion nuts. But there is one nut they don’t have samples out for and it was my favorite of alllll of them. It’s called pineapple snow. It’s a white chocolate covered pineapple infused macadamia nut. SO good y’all. And it’s exclusive to Tropical Farms. I recommend that you buy your macadamia nuts elsewhere because it’s cheaper, but you can’t find the Pineapple Snow anywhere else, so definitely snag it while you’re there!
-After Tropical Farms we went to lunch at Fumi’s. Guys, this place was soooooo good! I got the spicy garlic North Shore Style Shrimp which was amazing!!! It came with a pineapple slice, corn, rice, with some of the sauce poured over it. Bryce got the shrimp Tempura which was also really good! It came with the same sides and then some orange dipping sauce. I liked mine better, but I will say north shore style shrimp requires a lot of work to eat and is messy lol.
-We then moved on to a hike! We went to Waimea Valley and hiked up to the waterfall and then went swimming! The hike was not strenuous whatsoever lol it was a paved path the whole time and had beautiful views. The interesting thing about the place was all the trees and plants you saw on the hike were actually planted there. They weren’t originally located in the area. And for those of you who don’t enjoy hikes, but wanted to see the waterfall, they have a trolley you can pay to take up to the top!
-After the waterfall, we ended at Dole plantation. The plantation honestly had the best pineapple whip on the island. It was soooooo good. I definitely recommend getting fresh pineapple on top of the desert as well! Yummy!! And in case you didn’t know, it takes years for a pineapple to grow and the Dole plantation grows a lot of them!
I really enjoyed this tour, it was fast-paced, and our guide Eugene told us allll kinds of background information on the island and fun facts that made the experience even better!
I will say, I wish we had more time at the waterfall and the plantation. The plantation closed while we were there so we had to leave earlier than I had wanted.
After the tour was over, we walked around the main shopping strip in Waikiki and just enjoyed our scenery.
Day 2:
We rented a car from Turo and drove the scenic route to the North Shore, definitely recommend doing this!
We stopped at some scenic point stops and then drove through a mountain to get over to the North Shore.
When we got to the North Shore we went to Shark’s cove and looked at all the fish. If you’re into snorkeling, this is a real fun spot! Fish like to swim/stay around coral and there’s a lottttt of coral in this area. This place definitely attracts a lot of people wanting to look at all the fish swimming through the coral.
We ate lunch at Giovanni’s shrimp truck and that was amazingggggg. I got their north shore style shrimp scampi, which is what made them famous. It came with rice and then I also got a side of macaroni salad (it had shrimp in it and was sooooo good). A couple of things I wish I had known about Giovanni’s: It’s cash only and you can sign the truck! I had just enough cash for my meal, but not enough to get a t-shirt (which I honestly would’ve loved to buy lol. I actually didn’t know I could sign the truck until we were on our way to the airport and our Uber driver was asking us if we had signed it.
Bryce got his lunch from a different food truck that I can’t remember the name of. He got chicken sliders and they were very good too! He wasn’t really into the north shore style shrimp, he thought it was too much work to eat.
We also went to a beach called Laniakea Beach. It’s known by many as Turtle Beach. It’s funny because this part of the island typically has a lot of stop-and-go traffic. That’s because this beach attracts a lotttttt of people and you have to park across the street (and parking is sparse to find) and cross the highway to make it to the beach. I will say, our island tour guide told us we can see turtles at any of the beaches, buttttt we only saw a turtle at this beach (we actually saw a few…some were in the water. There’s a lot of rock on the shore that the ocean tide reaches and vegetation grows on it. That’s what the turtles come on to the shore to eat.
Day 3:
We did a half-day tour of Pearl Harbor, which we booked through Viator. This honestly was a very somber day. Humu was our tour guide, and he was hilarious! On the way there and back he gave us a lot of good information about Pearl Harbor and what happened.
I will say, the amount of time we had there was just not long enough, we definitely want to come back in the future!
We walked around the grounds and read about the history, watched a video that has exclusive information/footage that can’t be found anywhere else, went to the USS Missouri, and to the USS Arizona.
We took a shuttle to Ford Island, which is where the USS Missouri is located. The Missouri was so cool! It’s this huge battleship that is famous because the Japanese surrendered on the ship. Also, another fun fact: It has sailed through a hurricane.
We spent about 90 minutes walking through the Missouri and it honestly was nowhere near enough time. It basically was enough time to walk a look at most of the ship, but we really didn’t have much time to read anything, which was a bummer.
We then shuttled back to the main area and hopped on their boat to the USS Arizona. I was really excited for this portion because this is such a historic place. I was really disappointed because we were assigned a time to go, which was 11 am, and we were on time and off, but only got to spend a total of 5 minutes actually in the memorial for the Arizona because the staff breaks for lunch at that time. So we really didn’t get to spend as long as I would’ve liked taking it all in.
For those of you who have never been/don’t know much about the Arizona. It was a ship that was sunk by the Japanese in a surprise attack. The ship contained about 1,200 people on board and there weren’t that many survivors. Still, to this day, the sailors on that ship are entombed within. It’s their grave and final resting place. The memorial was built right on top of the ship and allows us to look in and see some of the sunken ships. What’s really neat is the survivors of the Arizona are also allowed to be buried with their fellow brethren. Every year on December 7th, if a survivor of the ship passes (and wants to be buried in the ship), divers will take their ashes and put them in the ship. The last person to do this was Lauren Bruner in 2019. Other than him, there are two Arizona survivors left in the world but neither wish to be buried in the ship. So Bruner will be the last person buried on the ship.
Inside the memorial, there’s a wall full of names. It’s the names of all the sailors who lost their lives that day. Interesting to note is that many of the last names are the same. And that’s because there were many sailors on the boat that were family members. Whether it was father and son or brothers serving. Many of them perished together.
After going to Pearl Harbor, we relaxed at Waikiki for an hour or so and then came back to our hotel to get ready for a luau!
The Luau was a very cool experience! We learned a lot of information about the history of Hawaii and hula dancing. We watched many hula dances from the islands and there are even fire dancers which were so cool to see! Along with this, they had a person who could climb palm trees and we got to watch him in his element. And of course, there was lots of Hawaiian food. We tried Koulua pork, poi, purple sweet potatoes, along with a couple of other Hawaiian delicacies. It was all pretty good! Bryce is a picky eater and he enjoyed most of the food there. We also booked this through Viator.
Day 4:
Wednesday morning we woke up, picked up the car we rented from Turo, and went to Aloha Stadium. It’s a swap market that has alllll kinds of stuff. It’s actually where a lot of locals do their shopping. There is an entrance fee into the stadium, it’s $1 cash per person.
Bryce got a lot of souvenirs and I picked up some coffee for my dad and haggled with one of the locals on a pair of really cute sneakers.
We walked around Aloha Stadium (which is where the university of Hawaii plays) for a while and ended up getting lunch there. We ate this cheesy/meaty bread roll like thing (this was soooo good. We honestly wished we would’ve bought more), and then hopped over to a food truck and got shrimp bites (which were fantastic) and a Mac and cheese type item (which was honestly terrible and we threw it away).
After we left the stadium, we went to Kualoa Ranch. The ranch offers a lottttt to do and it’s famously known for where Jurassic Park was filmed. We did the 2 hour ATV tour which was fantastic! It poured down rain, but it was still so cool and we both really enjoyed the tour.
Afterward, we headed to Bellow Fields Beach (which is an Air Force base beach reserved for the military except on weekends and holidays). There, were met up with the amazing KT Howie, and we took some fun beach photos to remember our vacation.
Afterward, we drove back (and we actually took the “longer” way home because Hawaii traffic was no joke so going around it all was actually faster) and showered because we were all sandy and gross and then we hoped below our hotel to a restaurant called Appetito.
We both got a fancy drink, he ordered the Ribeye and I order a creamy crab pasta and we enjoyed our night. The food was good but definitely way overpriced for what you get. We did like this place though, and the restaurant had cool vibes.
After dinner we walked down to the beach and just watched the waves and listened to the live music playing at Duke’s. I literally fell asleep to the waves while Bryce took cool pics of the water…I don’t function without the right amount of sleep lol.
Day 5:
Thursday morning we went to breakfast at Aroma cafe. Bryce got the French toast which he said was okay and I got waffles that tasted real wrong (it was not good at all). It just was very weird tasting. Totally do not recommend this place unless you just want coffee. They did have a really cool spot for some pics though!
After we ate breakfast we headed on a helicopter tour! Which I absolutely loved. Our pilot was awesome and seeing the island from above was just amazing! For Bryce…not so much lol. He gets motion sickness and threw up like 5 minutes into our flight. He was a good sport though lol he stuck it out the rest of the flight. So if you get really bad motion sickness, I do not recommend doing this tour because it’s pretty windy around Oahu and that makes for a little bit of a bumpy ride. But, Bryce said he still really enjoyed it, so that’s a plus! It even rained a little during the flight so I got a cool pic from above with a rainbow in it!
After the flight was over we hopped over to the hotel, Bryce needed to lay down for a hot minute lol. Then we were off to Maui Brewing Company! We each grabbed a drink there and I got their Guava BBQ Pork sliders and Bryce got their Jalapeño Bacon Burger. We both loved our meal. Definitely a great place and they have a location right near Waikiki beach which was a lot of fun!
We then headed over to Waikiki for the rest of the day! It was nice to just sit, lay out, and enjoy the beach. Definitely a peaceful day that I really enjoyed.
We then went out to dinner at one of the only places open after 10 p.m. We tried Ahi tuna for the first time…neither of us liked it that much lol. So now we know we won’t be ordered that again. But we got a hodgepodge of things like coconut shrimp, ahi tuna, this great chicken dish, hibachi steak, and fries. The only thing I really liked here was the coconut shrimp and the chicken. Everything else was just mediocre, but it was one of the few places open at 10 p.m. Our waiter here was really cool though! He literally bought a one-way ticket to Hawaii and just decided he was going to work here. What a risk!
Day 6:
We went swimming with Dolphins! At Moana Sea Life Park, you can swim/pet dolphins.
Y’all it was so cool!! We went early in the morning and got to go into the water with the dolphins. We met and touched two different dolphins. One was like 700 pounds and the other was like 400 pounds. That’s insane!! It was just so neat and the two animals had personalities lol. We took pictures with them and got to give them some commands as well. You do need to make reservations to do this excursion.
After we were done with the dolphins we headed back to the hotel, grabbed lunch, and then went to Waikiki to relax until our booze cruise.
Y’all, this booze cruise and was SO fun. There was a good mix of younger people and older couples. And they were serving up some good drinks. They really were dangerous lol lotsssss of alcohol, but you couldn’t taste it. The booze cruise was at sunset, which was a beautiful sight to see the sunset over Waikiki and Diamond Head. This was also booked through Viator.
After the cocktail sail, we went to a nice dinner at Rum Fire. That meal was amazingggggg. I wish it were a little less windy that night, but regardless the food was goodddddd. Bryce got a steak and I got the Mahi Mahi. Both were fantastic! The drinks were good there too.
Day 7:
We went beach hopping!! This was so fun! We picked up our rental car (a jeep with no doors) and hit the open road. We started by stopping at Leonards bakery and getting malasadas which were good! My favorite was the cinnamon sugar one and Bryce’s favorite was the chocolate-filled one (am I surprised? Nope lol).
After we fueled up, we headed over to the blowhole. There’s a walkway to the right of the cliff that you can climb down and there’s a small beach cove called the Halona Beach Cove. I don’t recommend swimming here because there’s a lot of coral and the waves are reallyyyyy strong so you can easily get swept up in them. But it was a really nice little secluded area to sit at for a while and dip your toes in the water.
After about an hour we hopped over to Sandy Beach. The sand here was really good. It was this bright taupe color that just felt good on the toes. I will say, the waves were harsh here too. Really a good beach for boogie boarding and surfing. In fact, there was a surfing competition going on while we were there!
After leaving Sandy beach we headed over to Waimānalo Beach! This beach was great! The only part that wasn’t great about this was how hard it rained for like 20 minutes lol. It was a nice beach though! We didn’t realize it until we had been there for a hot minute, but this beach is literally right next to Bellow Fields beach which is where we were Wednesday night!
Around lunchtime, we headed into Kailua and grabbed food, and did a little shopping. The two of us stumbled upon this cool shirt place called Crazy Shirts. This place was dope. I got Bryce a hat and t-shirt here. Their apparel is natural dyed. Like I got Bryce a shirt that was dyed with beer. He loved this place! I thought it was cute how much he liked this place so I got him another shirt he liked that the store didn’t have in stock and had it shipped to home.
This area was so fun and I wish we had more time to explore the food and all the shops around us. Definitely a nice area of town. We had to stop in the Target before leaving because Bryce and I decided to extend our trip out by a day (last minute) and Bryce didn’t pack enough shorts or underwear for that…so he needed to go buy some lol. Me being the over-packer I am had no problem staying an extra day!
After picking up those essentials lol we headed over to our last beach, Pounders Beach, known for its shallow waters. It’s on the North Shore and since the sun was setting we missed out on the warmth it brought. This side of the island was a little colder. That didn’t stop us from getting in the water lol. We had to soak in our last beach before it was all over.
The craziest thing happened while we were there. We saw something floating in the water and didn’t really think anything of it. We just thought it was driftwood or something. The object continued to get closer and I kid you not, it was a PIG. A PIG was just nonchalantly swimming in the dang ocean. I literally have proof- this actually happened. The dang pig swam who knows how long in the ocean and then came up to the shore and sprinted off into the woods lol. What a sight! You'll have to head over to my insta for a look at that!
A little bit later we did our last beach walk for who knows how long and then headed off to dinner. We went to Seven Brothers, a burger place. And my gosh, it was FANTASTIC. We went with our photographer from Wednesday who is amazing by the way! She’s so fun and she’s from the midwest just like us. We won’t hold the mistake of her going to KU against her though lol. We’re a big MIZ couple.
I will say, you need to be hungry to go to Seven Brothers lol. The burgers are HUGE. And honestly, the prices are very reasonable! Their fries were delicious too! They were like circular chopped up potatoes, baked and then they came with a dipping sauce. I would say imagine a Freddy’s fry sauce, but BETTER. The Burger itself was amazing as well. I got the Cowboy (aka Paniolo) and Bryce got the Spence. Mine had giant homemade onion rings, grilled pineapple, bacon, and melted American cheese all covered in house and bbq sauce. It was heavenlyyyyyy. Bryce’s burger had grilled jalapeño, two crispy strips of bacon, melted Swiss cheese, topped with a homemade onion ring and spicy, blue cheese ranch. He loved this place too!
We definitely recommend Seven Brothers. You know a place is really good when the line is long. I was waiting in line for like 15 minutes and then they came out and said it will be about 15-20 more minutes before they could take more orders because they ran out of burgers and needed to make more patties. Not a single person left this line when they said that. That was crazy to see! But so, so good! Would def come back on repeat!
Then we drove back, packed everything up, and left paradise the next day. Hopefully, we’ll get to come back soon, because this place was just amazing.
Xoxo,
Amber
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