Aloha Stadium Swap Meet
Trip Start
Apr 16, 2008
1
3
7
Trip End
Apr 23, 2008
Honolulu,
Hawaii,
United States
Sunday, April 20, 2008
Entering the Swap Meet aka a gigantic flea market
. There were a lot of good, well-priced greens (ie. basil and arugula) which I would have loved to have bought if I had had a kitchen to prepare them in, but had to pass on those. Otherwise, not much there for us. It was only about a 5 minute drive from the hotel though, so not too far out of the way.After that we were going to drop off the car at the hotel and walk around Waikiki; however, Ben mentioned the Aloha Stadium Swap Meet that he had heard about that morning from some tourists he had spoken to at our hotel, who told him it wasn't worth going to. I told him I'd be interested in going to it (it's a big flea market held on Wednesdays, Saturdays and Sundays) but I hadn't thought that Ben would be into it so I hadn't mentioned it as a possible activity for today. But since we were in the car already, we decided to go and I punched it into the GPS and we were on our way there - a 21 minute drive from Waikiki, near the airport.
The Aloha Stadium Swap meet consists of convocation of apparently 700 vendor stalls that fully encircle the stadium a couple of times - one stall after another after another after another! I didn't think it would be an activity, with all the walking and all the shopping, that Ben would be particularly into, but he enjoyed it, and no doubt because we got some really good bargains today
Checking out the illegal paraphanelia
! Of course I enjoyed it as well, as I always love a good bargain.Many of the stalls contained duplicate merchandise, but many of them didn't, and I think it was worth it to spend a good amount of time walking through it, as we did, despite some online reviews I had read. We got there just before noon and stayed until the end, at 3pm. The stuff being sold ranged from all kinds of Hawaiian themed clothing to coconut purses to coconut bras to wooden carvings to sunglasses to jewellery to packaged nuts to cell phone covers to kitchen gadgets, and much more. If you wanted to purchase any of that kind of stuff at all, this was the place to do it, as the prices were really good. I needed sunglasses and I ended up buying three pairs (at $5, $6, and $7). Ben got another pair too, for $5, in addition to the pair he had just bought this morning near the hotel. He was enamoured with a stall that sold all kinds of weapons that are illegal in Canada, such as big knives, num chuks, and ninja stars, and bought a set of thumb cuffs there for $6 to add to his arsenal of police paraphernalia. I bought a set of 3 pretty coloured stone bracelets for $3, a dolphin necklace for $2, a dolphin toe ring and turtle toe ring for $5, a pair of sandals that I had previously seen (and wanted) in the ABC store for $16 for $13, 2 bras for $10, 3 hair bands for $5, and probably some more that I am forgetting
View of the Swap Meet
! I love getting good deals and there were many to be had here! Lots of not-so-good deals as well, and LOTS of stuff that I would have liked but didn't absolutely "need", and I really did control the ardent shopper in me to not spend too much. The sun was piercing down like a laser beam and I had not brought my sun hat and was worried about getting sun stroked again, so Ben let me wear his brand new cowboy hat that he had bought in the morning, insisting that he didn't need it despite my constant checking on him. The sun was really hot though at times and we could frequently see that we were getting burned, so we kept spraying the sun block on ourselves. And then it started to lightly "mist" in the air, which was, I think, God's perfect method of cooling down people in this kind of treacherously scorching weather. I had never experienced this kind of precipitation before in my life, which can only accurately be described as an actual mist! It was perfect! It took us until about 2:45pm to walk through about ¾ of the circle, and then we felt we had seen enough - well, actually, I think we felt we had seen enough about halfway through, but if we hadn't kept going I wouldn't have found the hair bands I had been looking for, to control my out-of-control hair on this trip!
We went back to the hotel then and stayed there for the rest of the day, watching tv - what a great way to spend a Saturday evening in Honolulu! We were going to go out to a comedy club in the evening that Ben wanted to go to, but then he wasn't feeling up to it after all the walking today, oh, and eating sweet, succulent pineapple at the flea market that he had been vying for since we got here. We were watching multiple back-to-back episodes of a reality tv show called "Rock of Love with Brett Michaels", that I don't think we get in Canada, so it was well worth it to spend our time viewing this high quality programming. The weather was about 28 degrees today again, at least, and sunny with clouds in the air again - really great weather. Tomorrow we have plans to go kayaking at Kailua Bay.
