Good For What Ails You.

No matter where any of us live, we occasionally find ourselves in a rut. And that often means we’ve slipped into a mindless routine and forgotten what it was about our town or city that we once found interesting or exciting.
 
During the years when my wife and I lived on Oahu, we would occasionally skip away and spend a night or two in Waikiki. It was always a welcome break from our normal routine to book a room at a nice hotel and play tourist for a weekend.
 

 We did it again this past Friday! Leaving our daughter in charge of things here on Maui, and flying over to Oahu for a wonderful dinner party with a number of old friends and their spouses. The event was held at the New Otani Kaimana Beach Hotel and it made sense to spend Friday night there. The photo is the view from our bedroom lanai that greeted us on Saturday morning.
 
The hotel is located at the foot of Diamond Head right on a wonderful uncrowded beach, but it’s an easy walk to all the action in Waikiki. By the way, that pink building in the photo is the iconic Royal Hawaiian Hotel which is located right in the middle of Waikiki Beach.
 

 Breakfast on Saturday morning was at the hotel’s Hau Tree Lanai. It’s a very popular spot for locals, especially for Sunday brunch, and it’s easy to see why. The hau tree, by the way, is well over 125 years old and it is a fact that in the late 1880s, Robert Louis Stevenson, author of Treasure Island among numerous other works, spent many hours writing and relaxing under this very tree.
 
The Waikiki area is especially geared to tourists, of course, but there is much worth seeing on the rest of the island, too—the only royal palace in the United States, for example. Or Pearl Harbor, where World War II began for this country. That’s interesting.
 
But the beach … Waikiki Beach? That’s therapy.