[dan ze'l-ik-man]

Mele Kalikimaka Hawaii & Merry Christmas East Coast

Posted on 22. Jan, 2009 by Dan Zelikman in Stoked

Christmas break was absolutely amazing! The last few months have been extremely busy so it was nice to take a long break and relax. But before I left to go visit home on the East Coast, Kimmy and I decided to check out what Hawaii had to offer in terms of Christmas attractions. Although it was warm, and snow flurries weren’t falling, there’s nothing that says Merry Christmas like a Santa throwing a Shaka.

There were a bunch of families enjoying the festivities which included some giant Christmas figurines, an assortment of Christmas tree designs, some loud buses filled with singing tourists, a bag pipes concert, and some great Christmas lights. They had a few dozen Christmas trees that were decorated by different schools and city organizations, a favorite of mine had some Batman ornaments. Even in the warm Hawaii weather surrounded by palm trees, Hawaii has a great way of spreading the Aloha through some Christmas cheer.

Our Christmas festivities continued in Times Square in New York. I took my Mom and Kimmy into the city for a day of eating, shopping, and a Broadway show. Living in Waikiki for the past year I grew accustom to the tourists walking about but somehow I completely forgot about the intense crowds in New York during the Holidays, nuts! I honestly felt like cattle walking about, so much so that I cranked a few “Mooooo’s” while passing an unsuspecting passerby. It was fun being back in the city, especially now as a visitor and not a resident. It was one of the first times I pulled out my camera and took some shots. I don’t know, I guess sometimes we have to embrace the stereotype tourist in all of us.

We didn’t get any snow that day like I hoped, but almost everything else went perfectly. I got to eat breakfast at a typical New York diner where you get served and billed in about sixty seconds, yum! We window shopped at all the Christmas window displays and imitated the ridiculous poses that the mannequins were performing. I don’t mean to pat my own back, but I think I have a career in mannequin modeling if I lose my interactive marketing touch.

Considering it was the holidays, we had to stop by Rockefeller Center and see the largest Christmas tree on the planet. It was a lot of fun seeing all my usual holiday spots again, especially since I wasn’t able to in the Christmas of 2007. We watched some folks skate and watched a whole lot more folks that were waiting in a long line to skate. Then like other typical Rockefeller on-goers, we took one too many photos of us and the tree!

After that we tried standing in line at a TKTS (a booth where you can buy Broadway tickets for almost half the price) but decided to ditch that idea when we realized the line wrapped around a few buildings and ended somewhere in Wyoming. Instead, we called Ticketmaster and got last minute tickets to Avenue Q, a play made up of puppets living life and tackling issues like making money, dating, racism, and homosexuality. Basically it was a hilarious grown up version of Sesame Street that had some major inappropriate scenes. I definitely recommend it if you are in New York and itching for a show. It was a great day in the city, Kimmy and Mom were both stoked so mission accomplished.

Otherwise, in terms of Christmas on the East, everything was great. Hopped around a lot between Jersey, New York, and Maryland. For whatever reason I don’t have too many pics from Maryland from when we visited Kimmy’s family, we’ll have to remedy that for next year. In MD we ate a lot (big surprise) played and watched some football, and finally gave Rock Band a try which Kimmy became borderline addicted too. In Jersey we ate a lot too, and somehow got addicted to a fun little board game called Apples to Apples.

All in all great times! Its amazing how a little family and friends can defrost you after stepping out in the miserable winter chill!

Tags: Christmas, Kim, Mom, New York