Readers’ picks

Best hiking trail

Tantalus

You can feel relatively safe hiking the hills around Honolulu without once having to worry about coming across a banjo-plucking inbred who wants to make you squeal like a pig. Feral pigs hunters? Well, that’s a different matter entirely. That said, there are some truly splendid trails here, but the half dozen or so trails on Tantalus are some of the island’s best and our readers agree. With numerous starting points and trail combinations, you can take a different jaunt through the woods each time.

Foster Botanical Garden

Best public botanical garden

Foster Botanical Garden

Located across the street from Chinatown, Foster Botanical Garden is truly a tropical oasis in the middle of the city. For that reason alone, it’s worthy of your votes. But right now, you can also catch a once in a lifetime event: Telly the Talipot is blooming. This palm planted in 1967 blooms once in its life and then dies. Check it out while you can.

Kapi’olani Park

Best park to fly a kite

Kapi’olani Park

With its wide-open spaces, Kapi’olani is easily the best spot in town to fly a kite. Not that we’d know. We haven’t flown a kite in years. Maybe that’s what’s wrong with us.

Photo Credit: Malia Leinau

Best place to grill

The backyard

Yeah, nothing quite beats packing up the family, calling up all your aunties, uncles and cousins, and barbecuing from noon until sundown while gazing out at the Pacific at one of the island’s numerous parks. But grilling at home? Well, it’s home. You don’t have to go nowhere. You can stay put right where you are. Convenience trumps scenery every time.

Ala Moana

Best beach park

Ala Moana and Kailua Beach Parks

Maybe Mufi was right. The only way to return Ala Moana to its status as the crown jewel of O‘ahu’s beach park system was to kick out the homeless. You can debate that if you like. But there’s no debating that Kailua Beach Park’s sewer woes needed to be taken care of. Folks like to drink mochaccinos, not swim in them.

Editors’ picks

Best way to get up close and personal with a shark

Shark tours

Since Spielberg’s 1975 film Jaws, the shark has had a harder time living down its poor media image than Ted Kennedy. There’s a reason, however, that the Discovery Channel seems to run “Shark Week” twice a month-they’re majestic, perfectly evolved creatures that are truly wondrous to behold, even looking cuddly, almost like a Golden Retriever with black, soulless dead eyes that could snip you in half with one good bite of its razor sharp rows upon rows of teeth. And the way to truly witness these beasts is while they roam free in the ocean. But we wouldn’t want to come face to face with one whilst on our boards, looking like a dolphin with obesity issues. That’s where Hawai’i Shark Encounters and North Shore Shark Adventures (both based out of Hale’iwa) come in handy. Dropping you in the middle of the ocean tucked safely away behind reinforced Plexiglas and steel, you can watch as they glide by while the crew keep them circling with bait, not unlike a cat following a laser pen light, even making them crest the surface, biting down on the edge of the boat just like that scene where Quint meets his end.

Hawai’i Shark Encounters, 351-9373

North Shore Shark Adventures, 228-5900

Diamond Head State Monument

Most needed renovation of a public park

Diamond Head State Monument

As the crater gets older, it gets crankier. Once upon a time, you could climb up the face of the monument, just in case you didn’t want to deal with all those stairs or the endless gridlock around the spiral staircase. And once you reached the top, it was easily accessible to walk along the ridges from lookout point to lookout point, depending on your daring. Now due to erosion from the site that oversees 2,000 people a day, you have no choice but to walk the same route as everybody else, snap a few pictures and then walk back down surrounded by hummer-sized tourists, making the day on par with sitting in your car on the H1 during rush hour. With the $4.4 million allotted to giving the crater a face lift, we hope that after ensuring rocks will no longer fall on innocent picnic-goers by the light house, they’ll get to work on creating a one-way roundabout to ease traffic, even if it does bring about visions of waiting in line for the Matterhorn at Disneyland.

Jelly belly

Best place to take your visiting old college roommate, after you remember that you never liked him or her much in the first place

Anywhere on the South Shore, 7 to 10 days after a full moon.

Honolulu is one of the few places where anybody, regardless of gender can complain that “it’s that time of the month.” Sharp pains, bloating, cramps‚Ä’we get it, and complain, but ultimately acknowledge that it’s part of the cycle of life. And we’ve been able to count on it like clockwork. But even after extremely high influxes of the jellyfish over the past two months, a simple Google news search shows no media coverage outside of the Islands. Drop that former frat brother, mother in law or business partner off at a remote location, say you need to run some errands and smile as you drive away, thinking about what their reaction will be when they first hear about the urine cure.

Best way to travel interisland without getting airsick

Hawai’i Superferry

Thanks to the ongoing price war between interisland carriers, getting from this island to its neighbors is cheaper than ever. Not that this is good news for the folks that get airsick. Nope. Low prices don’t prevent you from tossing your cookies. But what if there was a way to travel from island to island without having to do the 5,000-foot upchuck? Well, now there is, and it’s called the Hawai’i Superferry. Of course, the type of person that’s apt to spew on a plane is prone to puke on a boat traveling over the choppy open seas.

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Best ocean- side place to take in the moon, a six-pack and a smoke

Crying Babies

Beyond the ritzy Kahala ‘burbs (right in the backyard of some rich dude’s mansion, actually) is a place known as “Crying Babies,” where fishermen hang their poles over the ocean cliffs for a little nighttime catching, and stoners, drinkers and lovers go to take in the incredible views. Named for the area’s birds whose calls sound like crying babies, it’s where the surf breaks wild and high, the moon shines bright and where those in the know spend their nights.