First things First – On our way to HI

Catch up here if you missed the first post.

We picked my grandma up around 6:15 and headed for the airport.

Hubby, me & Grandma waiting to board the plane at the airport.

 

This wasn’t our plane but it was exactly what we flew from SGF to DFW.

 

I can’t help it, I like window seats for this reason!

 

Now where most airports are all enclosed, HNL is all open for the most part, so if you’re running late for your plane, you will be sweating by the time you get to your gate 🙂

 

See that Giraffe?  Yeah, that’s my luggage.

 

I was excited it made it to Hawaii! LOL 🙂

 

This is riding in style!  This is how we went from the airport to the hotel.

 

It was huge inside!

 

While it was 9:30ish pm back home as you can see by my watch, it was bright and sunny in Hawaii.  Hawaii is 5 hours behind Missouri when we are on Daylight Savings Time.  They don’t honor that so in the winter we’re only 4 hours ahead.

 

Don’t I look excited… NOT… LOL

 

We stayed at 2 hotels while here (long story) and walked through 2 others, then the parents have stayed at 2 more.  Now there are 150 hotels in Honolulu alone, but my recommendation, choose this one!  Especially b/c you walk directly out of the hotel onto the sand!

 

These floral arrangements were EVERYWHERE!  Gorgeous!

 

My beautiful mother (who will disown me if she knows this photo is up so don’t tell!)

 

Hubby checking us in.

 

If you wanna read this click on it and it’ll make it a smidge bigger I’m sure 🙂

 

The previous description goes with this 🙂

 

This is our room.  We were on the 15th floor.  Since Hawaii is an island, they can’t have “skyscrapers” like some of the large cities of LA, NYC, etc, the tallest buildings they can have are 40 stories since they are an island not on a continent.  I think our hotel only went to like 20 floors.  Anyway back to our room, we had a king-sized bed and the couch pulled out into a full-sized bed.

 

The bathrooms were large enough hubby and I weren’t dancing around each other.  In the sink cabinet, you had a mini-fridge so we ran across the street and bought bottled water and always had some on hand.  (ABC store (best friend btw) big bottle water $0.79 or vending machine 20 oz for $2.50, lemme think about that… LOL)  The shower & toilet were off in their own little room with a sliding door, then the sink was in a room of its own plus there was a door to shut off the 2 rooms together.

 

This was a little room off right behind the sink.  We locked all our electronics up in the safe when we weren’t in the room and never thought twice about it.

 

Here you can see how the 3 little rooms all fit together.

 

Then there was the couch and on the opposite side of the room (back by where I’m standing) is a little nook type table.  We played cards there one morning.  Seriously, 5 hours difference will screw with your sleeping habits.  I usually woke up every morning at 3 am which was 8 am Missouri time and then I had to convince myself to go back to sleep and sleep until 6 am HI time which was 11 am MO time.

We happened to have an adjacent room to my parents/grandma so we had the door that lead over to their room

 

They had 2 queen-sized beds but otherwise, their room was just like ours.

We had a Partial Ocean View.  We could have upgraded to mostly ocean view for $50/night or full ocean view for $100/night but seriously, we weren’t in our room enough and you’ll see our view in a minute, it was GREAT!

 

This is looking straight down.

 

This was our Ocean View.  It was fabulous!

 

And this was to the other side.

 

And here is our balcony.  We sat out here every morning taking in the beauty and eating breakfast and left the sliding glass door open at night, with the beautiful breeze and sound of ocean waves hitting the shore.  It was bliss!

 

My Do’s & Don’t’s recommendations:

Do:

• Stay at the Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach, their sand outside the hotel is so much nicer than any other hotel around, their prices were decent, & the rooms were nice!  {No they aren’t paying me for this plug, this is my honest opinion}
• Rent a Limo from the airport to the hotel, it’s about the same amount as a cab (especially b/c they charge for 1/8 mile or 40 seconds of sitting in traffic so sometimes your cab bill can be more than the limo) And come on, it’s cool and you’re in Hawaii!
• If you fly American, take snacks b/c they don’t feed you, only drinks, you know unless you want to buy some of their ridiculous priced food…

Don’ts:

• If you think planes are chilly, wear sweat pants, don’t wear jeans, especially when you sit on the plane for 8 hours… it kinda sucks! 🙂
• Don’t be grouchy, yeah you’ll be running on a little lack of sleep, but come on people, you’re in Hawaii, save grumpiness for when you get home and have to go back to work 😉