SHOW US YOUR LIFE FRIDAY - Favorite Vacation Spot

A girl who's blog I frequent has been doing this for many months and the topics are always fun and interesting to me so I finally decided I would hop on the "Show Us Your Life Friday" bandwagon.

This week's topic is "Favorite Vacation Spot." For a quick trip I love to go to Cincinatti, OH but my most favorite trip that I've been on was to Oahu, Hawaii. Maybe that's because I got engaged there or maybe it was just because it was fantastically beautiful in a way that I'd never before experienced. Whatever the reason, it's somewhere I am dying to visit again someday and so I suppose that makes it my favorite vacation spot.

Here's a shot when we were first arriving. The only unfortunate thing about these pictures is that I only had a video camera as a digital camera at the time and so they aren't of the highest quality, nor are they nearly bright and vivid enough to show all the true beauty.

Upon arrival, as is their custom, we were given beautiful live leis that smelled divine. Our hotel did not have an ocean view or even a good view (it was an alley) but that's what made it affordable for us. However it was right in the middle of Waikiki and a 2 block walk to the beach. Wonderful!

On our first full day we went on a submarine ride which was really interesting and beautiful with all the blue light filtering through. Later we went shopping and bought some Hawaiian attire to wear to the luau, as recommended to us by the locals. The luau we saw was fantastic and I would go again to the same one in a heartbeat.

It was a wednesday when we got engaged and really one of the most fun days of my life. We started out by renting a car to drive around the island. We got a convertible, something I highly recommend! It was the most beautiful drive. We stopped at the Dole Pineapple Plantation and went through the maze which was fun and really romantic. We went to the best pizza place I've ever been, Pizza Bob's. Then we went to Turtle Bay and saw my favorite animal ever, the sea turtle, swimming right there in nature. It was awesome. I mean, simply amazing. (The picture with the rocks is Tyler scouting for a big turtle. The encounter we video taped.) We went to Sunset Beach which is fantastically beautiful and the water couldn't have been more clear. After that was off to Pali Lookout for the proposal fiasco. Ha.

Pali Lookout is a beautiful mountain lookout that lets you see a great deal of the island. It's amazing and would've been super romantic had it not been for the unbelievable winds! Tyler kept trying to get me to stay a little longer but I kept telling him the wind was hurting me and so I started walking back down to the car. He looked awfully pouty and when I asked him what was wrong he said, "I just thought that would've been a really good place to propose." Ha. The parking lot worked just fine, too. Ha.

The rest of the experience was equally fantastic from walking Waikiki at night, to the dinner cruise, to souvenir shopping in the international market before we went home. I really can not wait til we have an opportunity to go back!