Middle Child Syndrome - Thoughts from LA: 2009

TJ and I spent Thanksgiving in Oahu this year. We stayed in a condo on the North Shore in a town called Punalu'u

Sunrise from our lanai

And this was the view from our front door

Down near the beach

Lounging

We visited the Byodo-In Temple. It sits at the base of the Koʻolau Mountains in the Valley of the Temples.

TJ basking in his asian heritage.

The flora and fauna of the temple:

Koi

Black swan guarding its egg. I had to stomp my foot and pretend to try to steal the egg so the swan would look at me. I love nature.

Octopus Tree

Paper Bark Tree. The bark really felt just like paper.

Punalu'u is about an hour drive from Waikiki and is the untouched part of Oahu. Waikiki looks like Los Angeles to me - but where we stayed was the unobstructed part of Oahu. This is what our drive looked like to get to the grocery store:

that's called Chinaman's Hat

We tried to eat something "Hawaiian" every day. We ate shrimp from Giovanni's shrimp truck on the side of the road.

We had a traditional Hawaiian breakfast: Spam, eggs, and portuguese sausage

We had malasadas (delicious portuguese donuts) from Leonard's bakery

We stayed just down the road from Kualoa Ranch

This is where they filmed Jurassic Park, Lost, Windtalkers and Godzilla.

You really do kind of expect a dinosaur to come trotting around the corner.

We went to Pearl Harbor. If you look at the base of the flag out in the water, you'll see a white structure. That's the hull of the USS Arizona. It's just beneath the surface of the water and still leaks oil. The stone tablets surrounding the flagpole are of the different US ships that have been lost.

Look who returned to the scene of the crime:

The USS Bowfin: Launched exactly a year after the attack on Pearl Harbor, the Bowfin was nicknamed the Pearl Harbor Avenger and sank 44 ships during the course of World War II.