Penny's news: Hawaii 2017

Hawaii Trip 2017

Day 1 – Sydney to Honolulu

Well, I said I didn’t think I would blog this trip … because … why would you bother? How much can you say about lying by the pool relaxing? It turns out, even on Day 1, quite a lot can happen!

We decided to leave plenty of time to get to the airport so we headed off soon after 2pm for our 9:20pm flight – surely that leaves plenty of time? …and it did. Even with a lazy stop at Maccas and a long search for a car park in the the pre-purchased Sydney Airport Car Park, we arrived with almost an hour to wait before check in commenced. No problem – we parked our bags in a corner and sat there watching the world go by. We had checked for the correct check in spot – D1-9 – so we waited near there. When it was 3 hours before our flight I started to wonder why no one else was there. Turns out we hadn’t read the board properly and we should have been at A1-9. When we got there there were hundreds of people lined up … and we joined the end of the queue … oh well.

OK so what else could go wrong? Well, after checking in with little incident, we went on through to the customs area. Gary seemed to be struggling to get the face recognition software to recognise him and was taken to the side to be “processed” separately. I waited patiently to one side as the minutes ticked by, thinking ‘I’m glad we allowed a lot of time’.

Finally, Gary made it through Customs so we could move on through Security Screening. No problems you think? Think again. I got the obligatory singling out for the extra testing but Gary got stopped and his bag was searched three times until they found and confiscated the scissors he had inadvertently packed into his carry on instead of checked luggage. Once again I waited patiently until they “processed” him … and I loved those scissors! Gone forever!

Not much else happened after that – we boarded pretty much on time. (Yes, we found the right gate and got there on time). When we did find our seats, we saw that we were seated a couple of rows behind Laurie Daley and his wife – that was a bit of excitement. The flight was also uneventful – 10 hours – and Gary said he didn’t really sleep at all. I slept a bit but it was never longer than about 40 minutes at a time. Needless to say, we were pretty tired when we finally made our way off the plane, having left Sydney at 9:30pm on 4/9 and arriving in Honolulu at 11am on 4/9, 10 hours later – I love the International Date Line – it does your head in!

We found ourselves in the usual long queue waiting to get through customs but at least we were entertained by Laurie Daley who was a couple ahead of us in the queue and was talking to the fella in front of us. Heard about football, the various joys of living in Canberra, Sydney (and Junee), and how he was looking forward to getting away into some warm weather. He took my line! A tough footy season, and a reward of warm weather in Hawaii. OK, his State of Origin season doesn’t compare to the outstanding success of the New Lambton Wrens this year – I can see why he needs a holiday. Regardless of all this, the outcome is that Gary and I were fingerprinted, not just by the same machine as Laurie, but directly after him. That’s right, my fingers touched where his did!

It did not take long for us to realise we needed to get out of our long pants – it was hot. As we walked along through what must be rated the worst international airport in the world – it’s REALLY BAD – old, dirty, run down, poor facilities – Gary saw a dead bird ... I'm not joking, a dead bird (!) - we looked for somewhere to change. This was not easy, and in the end Gaz had to go up 2 flights of stairs to find a toilet that had one cubicle because the one on the ground floor was being cleaned. It took a while…

So then it was a longish line to get a taxi, trip to our hotel which is right on Waikiki Beach. They were delighted to see us – who wouldn’t be? – and offered us an upgrade which I quickly accepted. The only catch was that we would have to wait for it to be available. No worries – we left our bags and went for a walk, finding a nice restaurant and had some well earned food (and drinks)! I had a raspberry daiquiri which tasted pretty darn good!

Next stop was a walk along the beach and some time sitting in the shade watching the world go by. There was some excitement with many police converging on a group of young people near us, with much talking, gesticulating, ticket writing, and even hand-cuffing! It was very entertaining. We loved the look of the beach and will no doubt be back.

After finally gaining access to our room I was glad we waited! We have a King Ocean View room on the 24th floor, with a little balcony. I’m very happy with it – I can lie on the balcony and watch the beach – and Gary has even stood just on the balcony, right near the door – he was very brave!

My legs and ankles have blown up big time so we decided a swim was in order – we went to the pool and that was very refreshing. I thought about keeping this to myself, but I have permission … watching Gaz trying to climb the ladder out of the pool when he kept getting a cramp and falling back down into the water was hilarious. (He did eventually make it out by swimming under the rope that separates the shallow bit from the deep bit and walking up the toddlers steps).Then back to the room, a bit of reading and TV, but we were starting to nod off and it was only 6pm so we decided to go back down to get some dinner.

What a great idea that was – beautiful food, great live entertainment, and a perfect sunset over Waikiki Beach to cap off the day.