Ok, I’ve skipped past a lot of days but I will get back to them, promise.
We left Cairns, Australia this afternoon around 1:oo p.m., Sunday, March 15. We flew to Sydney where we caught an overnight flight to Honolulu. We arrived in Honolulu around 7:30 a.m. Sunday, March 15. We are magical - it has something to do with the international date line and flying westward. Unfortunately we were not magical enough to put ourselves asleep on the plane!
We checked in to our hotel - Best Western Plaza - very near the airport and the Pearl Harbor Museum. For the privilege of forking over an additional $50 we were able to check in to our room immediately instead of waiting till 3 p.m. Folks, Highway Robbery still exists.
After depositing our luggage in the room we ate breakfast (Qantas Airline food is worse than hospital food) in the hotel restaurant (a mistake). After breakfast, Sherry hit the sack immediately but I plugged in my devices and checked email. I eventually slept for a couple of hours.
We awoke, ravenous, around 4 p.m., took showers and looked for a place to eat dinner. The hotel is about 15 miles from Waikiki but is on the bus line. A 40 minute bus ride took us to the heart of Waikiki. We walked to the beach and with the help of a saleslady in a store found a restaurant on the beach. We sat outdoors and ate and watched the sun as it began its descent over the Pacific. Behind us was Diamond Head.
After dinner we walked on the beach and met a military family who asked us to take their picture and they took ours (that’s Diamond Head behind us). The family had a visitor from Spain who spoke very little English so we were able to practice our spanish - ¡Que Bueno!
On the beach were these large wheeled vehicles pictured on the right (there were two of them) are tricycles which you can pedal in the surf. We didn’t get a chance to try them out.
We caught a taxi back to our hotel, showered and went to bed.