Honolulu and Oahu travel info

Seven in the morning on Waikiki Beach: the sand is still cool and dozens of surfboards are already lined up on the water. Kids splash inside the Kuhio Beach seawall, and Diamond Head crater blocks off the far end of the beach. One street back, Kalakaua Avenue alternates luxury boutiques and ABC Stores, and nobody blinks when you walk out in a swimsuit with a Spam musubi and head straight back to the sand.

Waikiki is only half the island. An hour's drive north, the North Shore gets winter waves the size of houses, and you peel buttery garlic shrimp with your fingers at plastic tables beside a truck. The east-side coast road turns the sea from lime green to navy and back, and Ko Olina in the west has calm man-made lagoons that suit small kids. The whole island loop is three or four hours by car, so it fits in a day.

It's the US, but the air feels like Southeast Asia and the menus mix Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Filipino names: plate lunch with two scoops of rice and mac salad, raw tuna poke tossed in shoyu, sugar-dusted malasadas. The catch is prices higher than the mainland, and hotel bills stacked with taxes and resort fees.

Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (Honolulu) (HNL)