Something I didn’t realize before this trip was that flying to Hawaii is a lot like flying to Europe, only backwards. There’s a 5 hour time difference between Hawaii time and Central time and flying time is more than 10 hours once you figure in layovers.
The trip had already begun on a down note, but we perked up a bit once we saw our friends we were traveling with (A & J) at the airport. (Side note: even though this was our first time traveling with A&J, I knew everything would work out just fine because A had researched just about everything before our trip. Having him around was like having our own personal travel guide with us everywhere we went. This was also his first trip to Hawaii but you would’ve never guessed it with all the info he had memorized.) A had told us that this particular leg of our flight was delayed 70% of the time over the last two weeks so it was no surprise to us when ours was delayed as well. There was some concern about making our connection – basically we wouldn’t have made it – but A had already made friends with one of the customer service reps and he hooked us up with an even better flight on another carrier (one that flew to LAX rather than our original flight which would’ve flown to Denver, then LAX before finally landing in Hawaii). We were pretty stoked about only having one layover.
The flight itself was pretty uneventful. J and I were on the lookout for celebs while in LAX but saw none. Our flight into Honolulu had us flying straight into the sunset for hours. About two hours from landing, an announcement came over the intercom that we had a very special person on board. No, it wasn’t me, but a pretty blonde girl who looked completely confused stood up and a few minutes later, her boyfriend was on one knee asking her to marry him, right there on the flight. She said yes, of course, and we all applauded. I love watching proposals, though if I were that guy, I probably would’ve waited until we were on the beach. A little more privacy and a lot more scenic. But, to each his own I suppose. It was still cute.
A little after 8 pm local time we finally arrived only to discover that there was a mixup with our bag and they would deliver it to our hotel later that night. This also turned out to be a good thing because there was no way we were fitting all of our suitcases into the black mustang convertible. Oh yeah, we had rented a mustang convertible for the week. The only way to ride in my opinion. (That just made me sound like a total ass didn’t it? Yep, okay, just checking.)
So we’re in the mustang and all of us are absolutely starving because our flight didn’t serve meals. So what do we do? We eat. Our first meal? Mickey D’s. Yep, our first real meal in Hawaii ended up being McDonald’s. Because we’re classy like that. At least A made an attempt to try something different. McDonald’s serves tarot pies instead of apple pies. But judging from A’s experience, you do not want to try this. And we should probably consider asking McDonald’s to please send apple pies to Hawaii because they are truly missing out. Just sayin’.
After we checked into our hotel, that was pretty much it for the night. We crashed almost immediately only to be woken up around midnight for our luggage delivery. Not that I minded. I was just glad it made it. I don’t think our friends would’ve appreciated our nude swimming otherwise.
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