Our flight to Honolulu was fully boarded and ready to depart on time. It was just a shame the baggage loading chute had broken and for whatever reason couldn’t be disconnected from the plane. It took over an hour to get a mechanic out to remove it and get a new one in place so that the rest of the bags could be loaded. Just what we needed when we had an overnight flight of 8 hours 25 minutes ahead of us.
We had paid a supplement for ‘extra comfort seats’ which gave extra room but not sure if it was worth whatever we paid several months back. I slept in fits and starts as did Karen. I declined my meal (which was a sandwich) and just had a mug of tea about which I could just say that it was hot, wet and inoffensive.
Our sleep was not at all helped by a crying baby a few rows back who seemed to howling at least once every hour. I think if a baby cries more than twice on the flight then they and their parents should be moved into the luggage bay.
Eventually we both woke properly and took the breakfast offering. We both had different and both were foul. The tea again though was hot and wet.
At some point during the flight, time went backwards. For the 2nd time this trip we crossed the dateline. Having missed out completely on January 9th going in the other direction, this time we were going to have January 30th twice. How very strange. We were going to be Back from the Future. No idea how the step counter on our phones would cope with this.
It was a very long walk from the plane to immigration. Again, we were glad for Global Entry status as we just walked straight up to a machine which took out photo and we were into the USA. The process may have delayed our walk and progress through the airport by almost 10 seconds.
Our bags were off reasonably quickly and we headed out to meet our pre booked taxi. To tell them where we were I had to use their ‘portal’. This proved impossible as it would not accept the booking reference nor my details. I gave up and we went searching for a taxi rank instead. In doing so we came to the Waikiki shuttle bus and sensing it would be cheaper and there was one waiting to leave, I bought 2 tickets for that instead. It only had 3 drop offs and we were first.
We were booked into the Hilton Hawaiian Village on Waikiki Beach. This had been selected for several reasons including location. I had managed to get a deal on the price but it was still much more than we would normally be prepared to pay. But all of Waikiki is expensive and we wanted to be central as we didn’t want to hire a car or worry about parking. From our previous visit here in 2012 we had seen mostly what we wanted to see from the rest of the island. What had really attracted me though was the easy access to the adjacent lagoon, the fact that Steve McGarret was filmed standing on the building in both the old and new versions of Hawaii Five-0 and of course the links with Elvis with the filming of Blue Hawaii (another of my favourite films).
The drop off point for us with our luggage from the shuttle must have been about ¼ mile from the lobby. This made for a grumpy wife (or perhaps one who had not had enough sleep the night before). Her mood was made worse when they confirmed we would not even be able to attempt an early check in before 12.30pm. They offered to store our luggage until then but we chose to keep it with us and when and sat outside one of the 2 Starbucks on site for 40 minutes (which may have been another factor in our choice of hotel). The time past quickly but not quick enough for a sleep deprived wife. It was like having a petulant child with me.
I was in the queue and being helped by 12.30pm by a lovely young lady. I agreed to pay what I thought was an exorbitant extra fee to get in our room from 1pm instead of 4pm. And in return she agreed to upgrade the room and Tower block we were in. The less said about the grimace I made when paying the frankly ridiculous daily resort fee on top.
Our room was number 31 on the 31st Floor in the Tapa Tower. We had an amazing view of the coastline round to Diamond Head. After settling in amidst more tired moans about the lack of microwave or proper kettle we went out the explore the village and then have a walk along the beach.
The sea was colder than it looked when I had a paddle. I am not sure I will be brave enough to get in whilst we are here but we’ll see. We tried the lagoon which was not much better. There is the facility to do some gentle water sports on it. I am very tempted by the Stand-Up Paddleboards. It is always something I have wanted to try. My problem is that I cannot get up from a kneeling position gracefully on land alone which keeping balance on water. However, one of the instructors here said that as the lagoon is so shallow around the edges, I would be able to get on it from a standing position whilst on land which would possibly make this doable. The cost though is $55 per hour which seems a lot to me. But will I regret not having a go. I don’t know the answer myself so you will have to keep reading the blog to find out.
Back in the room we had some cold drinks that we took back after finding an ABC stores within the village complex. After exchanging a couple of messages with Graham & Jo we had a video call with them. It was lovely to catch up with. Amazingly they are in Hawaii at the same time but we hadn’t realised that our time here crossed over by 1 day before they fly onto New Zealand themselves. If either of us had realised then we would have met up. I think us flying back over the dateline probably confused us when we had compared our schedules. As it was though we were still knackered from the early flight and they needed an early night as they had an early morning flight so meant it wasn’t to me. Such a shame though.
We headed out for an early dinner. The plan was to visit a close by Red Lobster. We came to it quite quickly but decided to carry on walking until we came to the nearby Target store as there was a couple of things Karen wanted plus, we wanted to see if we could find something for breakfast in our rather than pay the $30 each the Hotel wanted to charge in it restaurants.
The one-mile walk back had me carrying all the purchases in 2 bags on my back via the Red Lobster restaurant. The restaurant seemed short staffed and run down. We both had the Shrimp Linguine. It was fine. It came with a baked potato. Karen sent hers back as it was very black inside. This made a tired Karen even more tired and grumpy. Just as well she is so tolerant all the time.
Back in the room we sorted a few things out before finally collapsing into bed.
