Bulgari

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Bulgari Carbongold LE: Part 2 - Aloha! I'm seeing these everywhere!

I'm a frequent visitor to the island of Oahu and I've always enjoyed my visits because of the wonderful weather, the friendly people, and relaxing atmosphere.  And best of all is the delicious food all around the island.  Recently my fiance and I made a weekend trip out to Honolulu, Hawaii for a special occasion.  For the past 6 years, I've always stayed at the Hilton Hawaiian Village in the Waikiki area.  Some of the locals jokingly call this 'Los Angeles West' due to the traffic and crowds, but I love it.  There's plenty of things to do, great restaurants and plenty of high end shopping.  In fact, within a 1 and 1/2 mile radius of Honolulu are 4 Bulgari boutiques: 

The first one is located at the Ala Moana shopping mall and when it was opened back in 1959 was one of the largest shopping centers in the United States and is currently one of the largest open-air outdoor malls in the world.  I've visited this location several times before and it reminded me of the one in Caesars Palace Forum Shoppes in Las Vegas.  It seemed to me that this location focused more on jewelry but still carries a good selection of watches. 

The second and newest Bulgari boutique is located directly on Kalakaua Blvd in Waikiki.  This recently opened about 2 years ago in the Royal Hawaiian shopping area and has a dedicated area for watches and jewelry, and a second side for accessories.  There are two entrances to the boutique with one right on the main street of Kalakaua and another facing the hotel side.

The remaining two Bulgari  stores (yes TWO) are inside the DFS Galleria.  But before I get to that, a little bit of information about DFS.  In my past visits DFS used to have this huge 4 story tall circular aquarium that had a walk way that leads you to the upper level stores.  I was a bit sad to see this removed with most of the other outside shops during a full renovation that was completed late last year in October 2010.  This major renovation coincided with the 50 year anniversary of their location in Waikiki. 





As we walked in to DFS we immediately noticed the difference.  It was a complete makeover of the store with many high end luxury brands including Bulgari.  The other big change is the special 3rd Floor section.  On prior visits it was restricted access and you had to physically present your boarding pass on an international flight outside the U.S. to be able to enter in the area.  It's now open to everyone but still have to have an international ticket to be able to purchase items.  Oh well, at least I was able to browse around and see what interesting items are featured.




My first stop inside DFS is the smaller Bulgari boutique.  It's similar in size to the mini-boutiques I've seen at the airport.  Surprisingly there was a good selection of Bulgari watches but mainly from the Bulgari-Bulgari collection and lot's of B.Zero1 for the ladies.  I asked the salesperson if they had any of the new Sotorio, GG, or DR watches and she said that they do not have any but to check the other Bulgari boutique in the special watch section.  Cool! 

A short walk around the corner of the DFS Gallery is the Luxury Watch section.  Many brands are represented here but I was on a quest to see what Bulgari had in stock.  Although the watches were displayed in a single long glass case there were quite a large selection of Diagono's, Assioma's, Bulgari-Bulgari, and B.Zero1's.  A friendly sales rep was there to answer my questions and the first thing I asked was about the GG/DR collection.  He said that they were expecting some soon but did not have a firm date of arrival.  He did show me two Sotorios, the retrograde date in YG and another in SS. 

One of the pieces that I've been really interested in is the Carbongold Via Condotti and I was surprised to see two in the case.