Anyway, with everyone off Maui, this trip involved just involved Connie and I, the kids, and my parents. And, with the Maui houses gone, we spent the entire three weeks on Oahu, something we haven't done in a long time (though back then, with more flexible schedules, we tended to stay for a full month or more). Flight options seemed a bit more limited this time around, but over all the trip went pretty well. Matt is still at the age where sitting still for long periods of time is a challenge, but he did a bit better than last year (and didn't throw up) so it wasn't terrible. My parents were already there, both to enjoy the vacation with us, and to start packing up the condo for its eventual sale.

A lot of the trip was spent on pretty normal things such as walking around Waikiki. Matt has been really into stroller walks and most days I ended up taking him out multiple times, sometimes for two or three hours at a time. Unlike Zack at this age, he didn't care so much about finding a place to run around (though he did enjoy the recently expanded playground near Ward), but he recently developed an elevator obsession so I would often have to spend at least some of that time riding up an down an elevator somewhere for 20 - 30 minutes. Fortunately, he also really took to the swimming pool. While he never hated water before, he wasn't a huge fan either. However, after a little bit of time getting used to his new vest and water wings (replacing our old float), he fell in love with swimming so he, Zack, my mom, and I spent quite a lot of time at the pool as well.

We also visited a lot of favorite restaurants and found some good new ones such as Istanbul (a Turkish place I wish I'd checked out years ago) and San Paolo Pizzeria (a fairly new restaurant that applies the Brazilian steak house model to pizza). Of course, we didn't just swim and eat. We hit up some familiar sightseeing spots like the Polynesian Cultural Center and Dole Plantation that I've already written about a lot in the past so I won't rehash them here. Zack and I also revisited the Aquaventure course at Wai Kai, which had added some fun new obstacles since last year. And we got one really nice beach day at Waikiki. Only one, unfortunately, due to having to deal with a lot of days with questionable or just plain bad weather.

I'll follow this with a handful of daily entries for the new things we did and a final wrap-up for the Hawaii Travelogue series (at least for the time being).

Random Hawaii Comment: Honolulu Year to Year
Visiting Oahu and, more specifically, Honolulu each year, it's interesting to compare and see what has changed and what's stayed in the same. In most ways, this year didn't see any particularly drastic changes. There's still more empty store fronts than there should be, and a couple of places I used to like have shut down. It's always been a challenging business environment due to heavy tourism, high taxes, significant regulation, and the like, but the COVID lockdowns exacerbated all that and some parts of the city still haven't entirely recovered.
On the plus side, they seem to be doing a somewhat better job of keeping the homeless away from tourist and business areas. Though only somewhat. While I didn't see any large encampments, there were still scattered individuals, some of whom were very clearly mentally disturbed. But hey, at least no one started screaming that I was a kidnapper this time.
One other thing I noticed was the growing prevalence of marijuana. Although recreational use is still technically illegal in Hawaii, they've decriminalized it to the point where that doesn't seem to matter, with multiple shops and stalls featuring signs saying that no medical card is needed. I did a lot of walking on this trip and pretty much every time, I'd end up passing a couple of areas and/or people that utterly reeked of the stuff, even in nice, heavily trafficked areas. Personally, I'd mark that as a big negative and something I hope doesn't get any worse. Though I'll acknowledge that there's probably a number of people who view it in a much more positive light.