Before I went to O’ahu with Jeff (who had to be there for work), a friend recommended I pick up the “blue book” about O’ahu. She had purchased one before her first Maui trip and said it made all of the difference. So I went to my local Borders (A moment of silence, please, over the fact Borders is going out of business.) and found the “blue book” for O’ahu. It is by Wizard Publications, Inc. and proved itself to be absolutely invaluable.
I started reading it before we left for our trip. And it was our constant reference while we were there. The directions were great. The majority of the descriptions and prices were accurate (some prices/hours changed and one restaurant closed down – no doubt since publishing). They did provide an online tool for all in the book as well. I didn’t use that though. We even used the GPS coordinates to figure out how to get to a spitting cave. And spent another day reading through the pages/driving around the coast (Jeff drove – I read), stopping as things in the book struck our fancy.
My only gripe is that I felt some of the maps could have been better. But I’m a horrible map reader, so that could be accounted to user error.
I finished reading the book upon our return, marking notes about what we did and saw. The book and O’ahu itself has entirely too much to cover in the amount of time we were there. But we’ll just take the book next time and know what we still want to see or what we want to see again.
However, if you are traveling anywhere that Wizard Publications has done a guide book too (I know they’ve done 4 of the Hawaiian Islands). It manages to be both entertaining and informative, all the same time.
