Day 2 was somewhat uneventful, though since I was surrounded by mountains and ocean and overall beautiful-ness, I still took a bunch of pictures.

We worked the first part of the day, and then headed to the airport to pick up the rest of Agathon Group.  I was like a dog in a car window on the way there, snapping pictures and staring.

On the way, we drove past the State building

Even the govt buildings are amazing.  For example, the outside of this building was designed to look like it was being held up by trees, while the inside is designed like the inside of a volcano.  Maybe the state building in Chicago should be designed like it’s being held up by crime money, and the inside could be designed like a snow storm.  That would at least make it kinda cool.

After picking up everyone, we headed over to the hotel to check in.  The hotel we’re staying at (the New Otani) is situated on Waikiki beach.  So all those songs and movies and such… yep, that’s where we’re staying.  And these pictures will likely make you all pretty jealous.

If you look at those pictures in that order, that is looking from left to right off of the balcony of the room I’m staying in.  Not an ocean view, so yeah, I’m really roughing it with the scenery.

The inside of the hotel is kind of designed like the inside of a volcano as well (not sure if that’s intentional).  Directly above that is open roof.  There’s so much open air architecture here, it’s like you never really go inside (because why would you).

This is the restaurant in the back of the lobby of the hotel.  Yes that’s the beach, and yes that’s downtown Honolulu in the background.

Originally Ron and I were supposed to room together, but since Ron sleeps like an infant, and I snore like a city bus, Joel and I are rooming together now instead (he also snores quite loud.  We’re having a contest).

That’s the view from Ron’s room.  Jerk. (Joel and Ron are in this picture)  Also, this is what is directly behind our hotel:

for the record, it’s difficult to find a shot of the beach without some dude laying on it.

So after checking into the hotel, we headed over to get some lunch at a burger place called Teddy’s (one of the largest burgers I’ve ever eaten, and it was amazing).  On the way, I snapped one more picture

I also bought a new pair of shades while walking around.

You’ll find out in later pictures, but Peter and I unknowingly bought the exact same shades.

Eventually later that night we got toasted…… I mean, had dinner at a place called Yard House that had somewhere in the neighborhood of 100 beers on tap, most of which we needed to sample.  We walked there and back, and got to walk through most of Waikiki, which was fun.  One thing I noticed was that there was a Burberry store on the walk.  Who’s buying anything from Burberry while they’re in Hawaii?

After a day in Hawaii, I have to say that the huge time difference is really hard to get used to.  For example, the Blackhawks game that was played in Helsinki actually started (live) at 6am in Hawaii.  The football games on Sunday will begin at 7am.  I never thought I would need to set an alarm to catch the Bears game.  It would take me 3 years living here to get used to that kind of thing.

After dinner we headed back and hopped into bed, as we needed to get up to go snorkeling the next morning at 6:30am.  Since I’m about two days behind, I’ll give you a little sneak peak.  It was an amazing day.