Overview Sydney Auckland Santa Barbara
We left Cincinnati for Honolulu via Dallas. We were fortunate to get first class from Cincinnati and when we got to Dallas, it appeared that flight 17 to Honolulu was going to be pretty heavily booked. The number of open seats had diminished considerably from the day before. As we were waiting, we were paged and both of were surprised to get seats in first class on a 1011.
We arrived in Honolulu after watching "The Horse Whisperer" in the early afternoon. We grabbed some information on hotels and then headed for a phone to make some reservations. We booked ourselves at the Outrigger Islander Waikiki. There must be thousands of Outrigger hotels on the island. But we finally managed to find our hotel. It was very close to the Royal Hawaiian. We checked in and then started to head for the beach. We walked down a little walkway to the ocean and found ourselves staring at Diamondhead in the distance. We walked a short way down the beach and Chearl managed to get her outfit damp by walking in the ocean.
We then walked back and did some shopping in the lobby of another Outrigger Hotel where Chearl finally bought a pair of shorts. Back to the hotel to change and drop off some things and then back out to the beach. We ended up eating dinner at the Outrigger Hotel's outdoor dining area which turned out to be very good. The prices to this point did not seem to be too awfully bad.
We walked along the beach after watching the sun set in the west and then finally back to the room for some needed rest.
I got up after spending the night on the floor by our balcony door and tried to find a USA Today. Turned out to be pretty hard to do what with the time change and distance from the mainland.
I managed to get us booked on a half day tour to Pearl Harbor and various other attractions which turned out to be very interesting. The desk did not open in the hotel until 7:30 a.m. so I just waited around until they opened. I returned upstairs to get Chearl and we went down the street to a little caf‚ for breakfast. Not too bad, really.
We had a little time before the bus tour arrived to pick us up so we just walked around our little bit of the island until 8:30. Our tour guide was a Hawaiian woman who had for a time lived in California and was very informative on the islands.
As we were driving around picking up other people for this tour, we met a couple from New Zealand that were returning home later on in the day also.
Our tour group managed to get into the 10:40 boat trip over to the memorial so we just putzed around in the museum and gift shop for the time. We waited for quite a while to see the Arizona memorial but it turned out to be worth the wait. After the memorial we drove to the "Punch Bowl" to see the cemetery and that was OK. Then down to the palace and we just got off of the bus long enough to take some pictures and then back on the bus. We arrived shortly after 2 and then went back to the beach for lunch. I had a seafood croissant which turned out to be rather good.
We spent the rest of the afternoon walking through the multi story mall across the street from us. Chearl was looking for her watch and I was just looking for souvenirs.
We had booked the room for Thursday night even though our flight to Sydney left at 12:30 a.m. We took advantage of the beds to get a nap and then left for the airport about 10:30. Keeping the room was a good idea. It allowed us to get cleaned up before the long trek south.
We got to the airport all hyped up to go and the Qantas agent that checked us in asked if we had applied for our visas to Australia electronically. We sort of had a dumfounded look on our faces, I guess, and he surmised that we had no visas at all. He took care of getting our applications for the visas and all that we had to do was wait until just before boarding to see if they were OK or not. So we just plodded down to gate 30 and waited for our flight 4 to Sydney.
Overview Sydney Auckland Santa Barbara