HAWAII! (Continued.)

Sunday was relatively uneventful so, we'll skip ahead to Monday. (Except, I must mention, we had a FABULOUS dinner at Duke's in Waikiki. Mitch took me to Duke's in Malibu before he proposed and so, it was only fitting that we go to the one in Waikiki while we were there. The one in Malibu is good but, the one in Waikiki is nothing short of celestial. Really.)

Monday. We were planning on going to Pearl Harbor on Memorial Day but Mitch decided it would be too busy. Which is true. So we move that to Wednesday and moved our Wednesday plans-- hiking Diamond Head Crater-- to Monday.

Diamond Head Crater is actually an old (like, 150,000 years old) volcano. You drive in the side of the crater, park on the base of the crater, and then hike up the side of the crater.

This is what the crater looks like. (Wikipedia actually has a cooler picture of it here.)

I had kind of expected like... you know, black rocks and, I don't know, a pit of fiery lava. It wasn't like that at all. It was like southern California but in the shape of a volcano. Anyway. We hiked.

The hike actually isn't that long, it's just steep with lots of switchbacks. It kind of reminds me of hiking the Y. Oh, except for all of the stairs at the top.

It was hot while we hiked too. We should have probably left earlier in the day when it was cooler but, well, who wants to wake up early when they're on vacation?

Once you get to the top though, you realize it was all worth it because the view is incredible.

And then we hiked back down. We had lunch and then went to the beach. The beach that you see in the background of these pictures. We slept and tanned and played in the waves. (I refuse to get in the water in California but, this water was different. It was clear and it was warm. I like it much better like that. Except that it's still salt water.)

All in all, it was a good day.