Hawaii with Kids: The Beaches of Oahu

I loved the beaches of the Big Island. I loved the coarse, black sand. I loved the lava rocks. I loved the sea turtles.

But, oh! The beaches of Oahu! These are the beaches of paradise:

This, for instance, is Kuhio Beach, in Waikiki. It was simply the local beach, a short walk from our lousy hotel.

And yet? It was marvelous. We went there almost every morning, Syd even managing to get herself invited to a playdate there one day, and almost every evening for sunset, as we did on this particular evening:

Look! I'm taking one of those mommy blogger feet photos!

After the sunset we'd rinse off and walk back to the hotel by way of a grocery store where, I kid you not, there was to be found the most delicious, and cheapest, sushi that I have ever eaten. You know that normally I am all about eating plain groceries on vacations to save money (and we did that on this trip, and I know that we saved money over restaurants, but it hardly felt like it at the time when two days of groceries cost as much as we'd spend in five days at home), but when I can fill my tummy on amazing, fresh sushi, AND doing so is cheaper than eating a sandwich, then friends, I ate sushi for dinner every single night!

And for breakfast one day. It was awesome.

But of course we didn't spend our entire vacation four blocks from our hotel! We also drove up and down the coast, seeking out the best beaches to be found, and find them we did.

This is Sandy Beach, where the waves were probably a little too strong to safely play in them. We played in them anyway!

Kailua Beach, however, is the best beach on Oahu. The. Best. Beach. It's not too wavy, not too rocky, nice and sandy, and pleasantly shady. On one visit there, we watched the Banksy of sand castles happen upon an abandoned inflatable raft and spend an hour painstakingly craft a big-assed sand person laying on it before wandering off again, leaving his art to the gasps of every meandering passer-by.

Another time, we watched a heavily pregnant woman obsessively dictate a pregnancy photo shoot with her partner. She had this giant list of what I assume were poses that she kept referring to, and loads of props, such as paper cut-outs of the baby's name, and a little laundry line of baby clothes, and she'd pose for her partner, but then look over all of his photos and then pose again because they weren't good enough. The best poses were the ones that she wanted of them walking hand-in-hand down the beach, but it was just the two of them, so her partner set up the camera on a tripod with the self-timer, then they held hands and put one foot in the air each as if they were walking while they waited for the shutter. Matt had to keep chastising me, on account of I was visibly far too invested in their photo shoot to play off any semblance of normality.

Finally, I was pretty much instructed to please just go out into the water if I wanted to act weird.

So I did!

And then I came back, because I couldn't see the pregnant woman's newest prop from the water. It was a sonogram!!!

We liked this beach so much because it had waves AND you could swim--a rare combination this time of year in Oahu!

See? Shade! Don't Matt's legs look pink? Poor guy doesn't have a speck of melanin in his epidermis.

 Going to the beach every day like this, playing in the water, digging in the sand, was marvelous beyond words. When Matt and I have a beach house in Hawaii one day, we'll invite you out to visit us so that you can see for yourself!