Jason -

We saw an ad on TV for ABC Stores this morning. There are evidently 38 stores in the Waikiki and Ala Moana. I'm not sure there are actualy 38 city blocks in Waikiki and Ala Moana.

Today we started out with some Special K and fresh pineapple for breakfast. Then, we went down to the beach and played in the waves for a few hours. Anne Marie and I both got sun burns, as the sun screen we're using isn't waterproof. :( But we still had lots of fun.

After the beach we had lunch at "Jack in the Box", which is a big fast-food chain down here, similar to McDonalds.

We spent the first part of the afternoon at the Honalulu Zoo, which had a somewhat confusing layout, but we saw lots of cool and strange birds, and lots of strange flowers.
Really, strange flowers aren't that hard to come by here. "Exotic" flowers grow literally on the side of the road. You see orchids in table arangements at restaurants, since they're somewhat common here. All the local vegetation looks strange. We have a number of photos of this wacky tree called a Ficus Benghalensis; basically, you have this crazy knarled tree that shoots out branches, then the branches grow roots that start to hang down lower and lower until they find ground and start to form secondary "trunks". You get this big "forest" of trees, which is really all just one big tree, and all around the edge you have these huge roots dangling down. The roots are pretty strong too; we saw a little kid hanging on to them and swinging around, being pushed by her dad.

After the zoo we visited a big aquarium. Lots of pretty fish, and lots of live coral. They had these interesting "audio wands"; as you walked around, you'd find these little "fish" icons with numbers on them painted next to displays. You type the number into the audio wand, and then hold the end of the wand up to your ear, and you'd get a little recording about whatever display you were looking at.

We saw these crazy sea-horse like animals called leafy sea dragons, which looked a lot like drifting seaweed. We also saw a VERY cool display of jelly-fish in UV light. I got some video of that, which will hopefully turn out OK (I don't have Quicktime installed on my laptop).

We ended off the day with dinner at a restaurant called "The Cheesecake Factory", which was fantastic. We had some stellar strawberry pineapple smoothies, some brushetta, and then shared a plate of macadamia crusted ono, which is a very tender flaky white fish. It was excellent. Sadly, we were too stuffed to try the cheesecake, although I believe we will remedy that tomorrow.

It's only 8:15pm now, but Anne Marie is asleep, so I think I'll log off.