Friday 12/13: En Route to Oahu

Todd and I just got back from 9 days on the wonderful islands of Oahu and Maui in Hawaii.  I had written and scheduled several blog posts prior to leaving on vacation.  Now we’re back and the blog will have several posts of daily vacation recaps.  These are my favorite posts to look back to on my blog.  :-)  While on vacation, both of us journaled daily recaps so we wouldn’t forget the wonderful details.

On Thursday night when we were packing for the trip, Noodle crawled into the luggage and slept there all night.  It was as if he didn’t want us to leave. 
Good thing our wonderful next door neighbor took great care of Noodle while we were gone!
Our alarm went off at 6:15am.  I wasn't ready to get up yet!  We got ourselves and the last of our stuff together.  Didn't have time to eat breakfast, so we just brought an apple.  Drove down to the remote long term parking and took the shuttle to the airport.  Checked in at Hawaiian Airlines curbside.  It was only 45 degrees outside (so cold for San Diego)! 

The security line was not too bad.  Got through it ok, except that our backpack was singled out for manual checking.  Got a couple of muffins from Pannikin at the airport and ate them.  Then it was time to board. 
 
On the plane, we had seats in the back of one section so we could recline without feeling bad for the person behind us.  Also, the plane had 2 seats together on the sides and 4 seats in the middle.  We were the only two in our row, which was nice.

There was a delay getting the luggages onto the plane, but finally we were off.  Plane taking off from San Diego.

Todd read on his Kindle and  finished the Eragon book series.  Then he finished The Violinist's Thumb.  I had some trouble with sinus pressure on the plane, so I wasn’t feeling very comfortable.  We listened to music on our noise-canceling headphones.

I read magazines on my iPad.  They served us a breakfast of fruit, crackers, juice, and cheese.  I guess Hawaiian Airlines is the only domestic airline still serving meals in flight!

The flight was about 5.5 hours.  By the end of 3 hours I was feeling uncomfortable.  My sinuses were killing me.  I couldn't get comfy in my seat.  Finally we landed in Honolulu.  I was so relieved. 


We had to take a shuttle just to get our baggage.  Then we waited for the Enterprise rental car shuttle, which took FOREVER.  When we finally got on it, I asked Todd "Where's the backpack?".  He ran off the bus to get our backpack, which was left on the bench outside.  We were both so relieved because it had both of our iPads, Kindles, all our chargers, etc.  Would have been a total disaster if we left it behind!  Thank goodness we thought about it just in time.  When we got to Enterprise, we used a self-service kiosk to check in.  Then we met a customer service rep to go over our vehicle.  I always take pics of scratches and dents on the vehicle before driving off, so they can’t blame it on us!

We brought our portable Garmin GPS with us.  We love having it on vacation!  So easy to just put in an address and hit “Go”!  We got to Waikiki without too many problems or traffic.  We parked for $5 and walked down Kuhio Ave. to Marukame Udon.  We were so excited to eat there again!



Noodle masters.

It was so hot inside though, I kept sweating while eating my Kake Udon and tempuras.


Todd loved his curry udon.

After lunch, I had the biggest headache and felt a bit nauseous.  Which made it not fun to ride in stop & go traffic for over an hour on the way to the North Shore.  What was supposed to be a 70 minute drive turned into over 2 hours.  I was so relieved to finally arrive at Turtle Bay Resort.  We checked in and got upgraded to an end room on the top floor with oceanfront view!

We went downstairs to Surfer The Bar to just eat something simple for dinner. 

It took them over 45 minutes to bring us a cold hummus plate!  The server kept saying "it's next" or "it's coming" and it kept not coming.  I was pretty furious, but by then was too tired to fully complain.  The only good thing about it was that it was exactly the light dinner that we wanted.

 A tour of our room at Turtle Bay Resort.  They had just done a renovation earlier this year.




The view out our sliding glass door.

I was most impressed with the bathroom. 

There was a sliding glass door that covered the shower and toilet area.  You slide it depending upon where you want to go.


The shower was my absolute favorite.  It had a rain shower head and it was a HUGE shower room with a really big bench inside.

We went to sleep around 10pm Hawaii time, very tired from all the traveling, but looking forward to another 8 days in Hawaii!