HILTON HAWAIIAN VILLAGE, OAHU

Over the past few years, everywhere we travelled that had anything to do with beach, tropical, and sunny, there was always a check-in line. But never have we experienced such a long wait, which lasted over one hour. But there wasn't much to complain about since it was around 3 pm, check-in time. Lesya and the kids went to eat a late lunch while I took care of checking in. 

View from a suite in the tower over looking Honolulu

Our view from the hotel

Prior to coming to Oahu, several people warned me that Waikiki isn't the greatest place to go because the beach is very crowded. I think the opposite happened to us, because the beach was the only place that wasn't crowded and everywhere else like the restaurants, little shops, and streets/walkways were. Lesya and I were quite impressed at the number of Japanese, Chinese, Korean, and Vietnamese tourists/residents there were in Oahu. For starters, I couldn't tell between any of them, so Lesya and I joked, that we might as well have just arrived in Tokyo. All menus, many shop names, all labels/headings at the hotel had a Japanese translation printed on it. 

The village itself was Billy Fuccillo HUGE, with 5 towers, 5 pools, 20 restaurants, countless stores/shops, and endless things that one could do. In fact, I had prepared myself before the trip to make sure we didn't do everything and go everywhere on the island. Our first impression of the rooms were just standard hotel room style and look. We stayed at the Diamondhead tower. It had everything that we needed except for a working iron to press our wrinkled clothing. It was a halirious experience speaking to an Asian room service attendant on the phone in an effort to exchange our non-functioning iron. The conclusion was we got a bucket of ice at the door. 

Lagoon (ocean water)

Village from our room

Guinness World Record for largest mural

Lobby view

After a couple of days at the beach, Adrian decided that he doesn't like how the sand feels on his toes and so he would sit in the stroller for an hour until we were ready to go to the pool. Our favorite hang out was the Tapa pool. The pool had plenty of chairs and side tables. It was only 3.5 ft deep with a large ankle deep portion with bubbling water for the toddlers. Both Alexis and Adrian had playmates in the pool. 

Adrian enjoying a smoothie and relaxing in the pool

We spent 30 minutes in the Paradise pool which had the slides and different pool levels but it was overcrowded and our kids didn't like it as much. 

There were beach umbrellas for rent, $45 per day, but we didn't get any because our 2 hr stay at the beach wasn't worth it. 

Setting up for a Hilton luau

Diamondhead