Country 11 & Stop 54 - Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

Aloha, Mahalo, Howzit...
From our next stop, one we've been looking forward to since booking our flight all the way back in January. Dani is very fortunate to have a cousin, Conor, living in Honolulu - so we'd have the opportunity to get to see this little chain of islands in the middle of nowhere, and all the while having a local show us around! Conor very kindly met us at the airport, with a lei each waiting for us - doesn't get much more Aloha than that. Given our flight from Sydney was ~10 hours long and had us crossing the international date line for the first time, our body clocks were in absolute tatters, some rest was much needed. We did quickly stop by Coffee Talk near Conor's place, to grab some breakfast and grab our first of many pictures of the three of us having a great ol' time:

Air mattress technology has come a long way thankfully - as Conor had us set up with a comfy bed for the week here, and we both badly needed a nap first thing:

We rested up and decided a walk down to the local Whole Foods would be a good way to get our bearings of the nearby area, so getting a few supplies for the week into the fridge was our first attempt to say thank you to Conor for having us - though there's absolutely no way we can repay him for how much he looked after us!

For our first night, given we were still a little bit bleary-eyed, Conor picked us up and we just chilled down on the coastline to take in our first Hawaiian sunset.

Waking up the next day and we again took it easy, just acclimatising to the time difference, and something else we hadn't quite noticed on our first day: the heat. It's pretty hot in Hawaii, who'd have thought! Beer was Stu's weapon of choice to help combat it, whereas Dani went for the more conventional route of hugging the aircon as close as possible:

We made it through our first full day without melting, and now felt a bit more settled - some celebratory drinks on the cards for the evening:

We didn't make it to the coast for sunset on night #2, but we'd more important things planned, as Conor brought us to a gig on in town for the night...

...where we got to meet the lovely Becca for the first time, a good friend of Conor's who joined in on the volunteering to show us the best time possible here:

And with that, we all set off the next day for a bit of a tour of some of the best hidden beauty spots of the island - with another new friend, Cruze, in tow for the day:

As Conor said, when you see the above sign in Hawaii, that's when you know you're walking to the right place! We walked down to the absolutely stunning Cockroach Cove:

Before carrying on with our travels on the east side of Oahu:

Which ended up with us making a stop at the lovely Lanikai Brewing (first of many breweries we stopped at during the week!),

And combining it with a stop at the must-do Maui Mike's Fire-Roasted Chicken - we're still drooling thinking about it now.

And one of the best days we've had on the trip was all wrapped up with a moonlit firework display from across the way from Waikiki Beach.

More exploration was on the cards for the next day, as the fantastic four (well, five with Cruze), as we went for a hike to check out a hidden waterfall:

Which again was great and something we definitely wouldn't have found ourselves! Only downside to this was we all missed the weather warning on our phones, and got absolutely drenched as we were caught in the middle of a storm in the mountains - but no better way to make ourselves feel a bit better after the rain: Heading to the North Shore, to Giovanni's, a food truck with the most amazing Garlic Shrimp and hot sauce. Again, drool-worthy.

And with a fantastic weekend over with, Conor had to head back to work, and with that we decided to fit in a hike to the top of Diamond Head, a crater overlooking Honolulu, and well worth the $1 entry fee:

But after Conor was finished work, we headed off to another secret spot for sunset - himself and Stu here pictured giving Dani a wave:

Our time here was flying through, far too fast for our liking! We managed to fit in quite a bit into our last couple of days though, with Becca bringing us out in Waikiki for a surf lesson - I think it's safe to say we're not quite up to the Hawaiian standard, but good craic all the same. We all then headed back to her place to have ourselves a little dinner party, with the two of us whipping up a carbonara - along with some sprouts cooked in the left over bacon fat, which turned out to be pretty damn good if we do say so ourselves:

And a few drinks were had, leading to us all jumping on the back of the classic Chevy truck currently stuck out in the garden for a photo op:

And sadly, our last day had arrived - Conor kindly let us take the car as we headed off to get in one last touristy activity, checking out Pearl Harbour at our second attempt - we first tried to enter the active military base, and were unsurprisingly turned away.

Cool to see, though military might isn't really something in the Irish psyche so it was all a bit odd for us. We did meet back up one final time with Conor & Becca, fitting in a happy hour after work, at which we all got a little bit of an eerie feeling as the government warning alarms went off. This is only supposed to go off in a training drill on the first of every month, or if a tsunami/missile is headed this way, and it most definitely wasn't the first of the month! Not much you can do at that point, so we just kept eating and hoped for the best. Turns out someone pressed the wrong button in a training drill, as you do.

Still, despite the last minute scare, it couldn't dampen the absolutely amazing week we had. We grabbed one last 4 pack of beer, and went to catch one last sunset in Honolulu with Cruze (and of course, Conor and Becca). We can't thank Conor enough for everything he did for us for the week, it was an absolute blast - and we've more in store for our next week in Hawaii too that he's helped us with! Hopefully someday we can repay the favour, though it'd be difficult to top the week we just had.

Big love,

Dani & Stu.

Currently listening to:

Stop 53 - Melbourne

Best til last...
or so we've been told. It seems there's a bit of a rivalry between Sydney & Melbourne as to which is the better city - we've a week in both so we'll be able to make our own judgement call. From what we've gathered along the way, Sydney is a better tourist destination with more sites to see, whereas Melbourne is a nicer place to live, with a bit of a better vibe in the city. With this advice in tow, we didn't really plan much for our time here - main thing on the agenda was to see some old friends and visit a few coffee shops. Tough life. We checked in to our hostel, United Backpackers, settled in for night number one in the CBD, and then managed to tick everything off our "to-do" list the very next morning.

We managed to meet up with Shannon, our friend that we met in Sri Lanka six months ago, and just before she set off to do her farmwork too, so just in time! After our first of many coffee shop mornings, we ventured further into the city to grab a beer, play some Kaboom for the first time together since we crossed paths in Sigiriya, and see how our lives have changed in the half year since we met. Always lovely to see a familiar face!

And it didn't take long for us to see another, as the very next day we made our way out to Colonial Brewing Co. to meet up with Kate, Stu's (and now Dani's) friend from trinity, first meeting nearly eight years ago now! Didn't take long to catch up on how we all were, and before we knew it we were on a tour of Kate's place of work:

With plenty, plenty (plenty) of free beer. More than is in any way necessary - it even ended up being a bit of a lock in - as you might imagine, a lock in in a brewery is never really going to end too well, leading to both of us ending up looking like this:

We made it home in one piece, but the next day didn't look too pretty for either of us. the main highlight being when we finally left our room to collect our food delivery from Betty's Burger & Concrete Co. - Would definitely recommend.

Even the next day we weren't feeling too great, but thankfully we managed to hoist ourselves out and do something somewhat productive, stopping off at another coffee shop and getting a little bit of a plan together for our next six weeks post-Australia.

Feeling a little more alive, we then paid a visit to the much-famed Hosier Lane to check out the street art. Given that it was only a five minute walk from our hostel, and it was our fourth day in Melbourne, we had clearly been enjoying our time elsewhere in the city. It ain't too bad here!

And the street art was definitely worth a look, so we made ourselves feel a little bit better that we weren't just spending all our time drinking or hungover.

that didn't last long though, as we met up again with Kate - this time with Amy & Paula, and we embarked from Flinders Street Station:

and had ourselves a bit of a pub/brewery crawl. None of the photos are fit for public consumption, or weren't taken as we were too busy enjoying ourselves (or drunk), but we again made it back in one piece - though we moved to a dorm room to save a bit of money, and we couldn't really spend the next day in bed ordering food - Dani was over to the next yoga class, and the NFL was starting for Stu, so on we went to studio and sports bar, respectively:

thankfully it was a little more civilised, and we made it to our last day in Melbourne feeling like we'd done it right, enjoying it as a local would. Still, a part of us wanted to get a small bit of sightseeing in, so on we went to St. Kilda, the seaside part of town, and catch a final sunset, and see the penguins come in for the evening to the little colony at the harbour.

After this we walked to Kate/Amy/Paula's for one final visit, they hosted a bit of a dinner party for us, which was absolutely mind-blowing - we can't thank them enough for the way they made our time in Melbourne as good as it was. Hopefully a few pints in Dublin will make up for it somewhat! An unbelievable way to close out our time in Australia, it reflects how good our entire time here was. We were surprised by how much we enjoyed it, we didn't know what to expect at all, and it really surpassed any idea we had. travelling down the east coast of Oz was one of the most well set up/best experiences we've had all year.

Although, our last night was marred by two new couples that came into our 8 bed dorm and eh....affected our sleep for the night. Can't always go so perfectly!

That aside, it'd be hard to imagine things can get much better than this, but we'll have to see how we get on in our next stop...

Big love,

Dani & Stu.

Currently listening to: