Beautiful and clean unit! The view from the room is very breathtaking and we enjoyed waking up to the sunrising every morning (who needs alarms when you have the sun!) if you step outside to the balcony, the morning sun would be to the far left (so it’s not directly blinding); Diamondhead would be straight ahead beyond the other buildings in town; and you could see patches of the beaches and ocean to the right. If you look almost directly down it’s a view of part of fort derussey and enjoy people watching (and traffic watching, if you are into cars or just want to see how traffic it gets throughout the day) as they go about their day; very pleasant and relaxing for us even though my counterpart was afraid of heights.
Very accessible to the malls, beaches, restaurants and attractions in town (both drivable and walkable). The hosts were accommodating, we checked in later than expected and Hing walked us through the lobby up to the room.
If you’re renting a car, take advantage of the host’s parking fees, it’s cheaper than what they’re offering at the front desk and you can go in and out for any amount of time without worrying about losing your parking or getting your towed away.
They also have basic things you would need in a hotel room: shampoo, conditioner, soaps, body wash; along with things to feel like you’re almost at home: dish soap, dish sponges, dining set, bottle/can opener, scissors, cooking utensils, rice cooker, hot plate, toaster, coffee maker, microwave, cleaning supplies, snorkel gears, umbrellas for when it rains, beach umbrella, a beach mat (we brought our own beach blanket and snorkel gears since I wanted to be prepared), they also had a body board on the balcony. If you have trash and recyclables (bottles and cans) there’s a door across from the elevators that say “Recycle”, there are about 2 bins in there for your wastes.
Our trip consisted: driving around the island, paradise cove luau, makapu’u lighthouse, Pearl Harbor, seeing family, Matsumoto’s, Romy’s, byodo-in temple, swap meet, don Quixote, Costco, navy exchange and commissary, international exchange, royal hawaiian.
Waikiki strolls: Banan, gyu-kaku, beach, fort derussey, marukame, malls, and walk around the block to see our surroundings (saw a local lady singing pleasantly towards ala wai canal, such good acoustics to our surprise).
In the end of the day/trip, we wish our trip was longer so we could experience more since we were crunching on time with most attractions starting and ending around the same time of each other (basically around 7-4/5).
We will definitely have to come back and we would not mind reserving with Sam and Hing again if they are available!