Hawaii Day 1

Today was finally the big day! August 1, 2012 - (the day that I've been waiting for for over a year) Michel and I are traveling to Oahu, HI!!!! Our flight left at 10:50 in the morning, so we started our day early. We were both up at 5:45. As soon as Michel's alarm went off, I sprung out of bed, and that NEVER happens. I normally need 5-10 minutes to "wake up". Today, I was awake right away!

We arrived to the airport, checked our bags, and were at our gate waiting to board the plane by about 9:00, so we had over an hour to kill before we would be allowed to board. We read books some, I took pictures, and talked about how excited we were to be going on this trip! Here is one of the pictures that I took while waiting in the airport.

Here's a picture of our plane - a 767

Once back on the plane, I had to get out my camera and take more pictures. Of course, just to torment me, Michel likes to do the opposite of what I say. I say "smile for the camera" and he makes a pouty face....

And here's our second attempt...

I think we finally get it right...

For our very long, 8 hour flight to Hawaii Michel was smart and bought us seats on the emergency exit row of the plane. It has the most leg room without going to first class. I have finally found one major plus for being short - check out how I can stretch my legs completely out and barely touch the chair in front of me. Michel, with his normal-sized legs, cannot do the same.

 

For our flight, I packed plenty of books, we took our own snacks and bought Subway from the airport to take for lunch. However, by about 2:00, I was restless. I watched a movie, I read, I tried sleeping, but I just couldn't wait to get there! Finally, we landed in Hawaii! 

Hawaii is five hours behind Texas time. So, we landed at 2:30 Hawaii time, but for Michel and I it felt like 7:30. We still had to get our checked bags, pick up our rental car (which took ONE HOUR - it was ridiculous!) and went to check in to the hotel. We spent our first two nights in Waikiki at a hotel.  When we were finally ready to go eat dinner it was 5:00 local time/10:00 Texas time. Needless to say, we were both hungry, exhausted, and maybe a little cranky. Our mood suddenly lightened when we ate at Duke's which is located right on Waikiki Beach. Check out our view at dinner!

Our food was pretty good. Considering I hadn't eaten anything since about 3:00 Texas time, and it was now about 10:30 Texas time, I could have eaten my shoe and thought it tasted good. However, my burger and waffle fries really was pretty good.

 

After scarfing down our food, it was about 6:00 Hawaii time, so we decided to walk around downtown Waikiki a bit. That ended up being one of my favorite things about Waikiki - we walked everywhere we went! We checked out some local souvenir shops. Apparently, Waikiki is the city for the crazy cat lady??

This shop that we're in seriously had a corner of the shop dedicated to t-shirts with cats on them. There were at least 20 different cat t-shirts! I know it's hard to tell in the picture what's on these shirts, but they are all cat shirts. And no, I didn't buy any :)

By about 7:00 Hawaii time, Michel and I were exhausted. We had been up since 5:45, endured a very long flight, a long wait for our rental car, and we were just ready to go to bed. So, yes, we were in bed on our first night in Hawaii by about 7:30 or 8:00 local time. But hey, to us it felt like 1:00 in the morning! Plus, we knew the next day would be very early because we were getting picked up to go to Pearl Harbor at 6:00 a.m.!!