Hawaii - The final days - Day 12 and 13

Sunday August 26, 2007/Monday August 27, 3007

It was the final day in Hawaii so kind of sad but you can’t vacation forever. We were up and took our time since we had paid for our bags to head right to the airport. We had internet connection again so I did some more updating on the blog while Jamie tried to clear up some money issues with the ship. The cruise wasn’t too bad in price upfront but it’s the $10 per person per day that adds onto the cost that you don’t realize. $140 extra is a lot of money. Do people really tip that much? Last time we were able to get some money off of it but not this time and we found the cruise wasn’t as great as the last one. They told us we were paying for mostly room service but we didn’t need it twice a day (which is what they do). We didn’t have a do not disturb sign either to indicate that we didn’t need service that day. We made two phone calls from the ship that we couldn’t do anything about as it was listed in the room but I didn’t look. I new it would be more expensive but $5.95/minute is a lot of money. So an 11 minute phone call cost almost $100 US. The food was mostly good but there were about 3 dishes I had that had way too much pepper on them. I usually have problems with too much salt not pepper. Other than those complaints we had a great time. The ship seemed like more of the place just to sleep this time since all of the days there was a port to visit (maybe that had something to do with it as we were not realizing the value the ship had).

Anyways, we didn’t get off the ship until about 10 am and tried to see what we were going to do for the 5 hours before our plane was leaving. We talked to some of the workers there and one mentioned the Ala Mona shopping centre which was awesome for me but Jamie wasn’t as thrilled. We decided to walk there since he said it was only about a mile (“theBus” would have come but it’s likely we could have walked there just as fast). We had lunch there and then split up. Jamie spent his time at the bookstore while I got to shop. I’m sure I could have spent a lot of money there with 3 full floors of shopping but whatever I bought had to go in our carry-on luggage. I did end up buying one Hawaiian type dress for Kendra and a shark bathing suit for Micah. We got some candies for the way home (for the ears on the plane) and then did a little tour around the mall to try to find “theBus” to get to the airport. We did eventually get there and we left with lots of time since we knew “theBus” would be slower.

We were at the airport at 4:00 pm for our 6 pm flight and I did some more logging of our trips in the computer before we boarded the plane. The airplane ride was good and I’m surprised that I actually slept for about 3 hours of it. It’s very hard on night flights as it’s really hard to sleep while sitting. We left at 6 pm Hawaii time but really that was midnight our time so we were flying over into the next day. The flight to Atlanta was 8 hour and 30 minutes and then we had a one hour transfer time for the 2 hour flight home. So in total, the flight and transferring was 12 hours and then we had to drive home. We stopped at Tim Horton’s (yes Tim Horton’s is now in the US) for lunch before we headed home. We got home around 2 pm and were able to chat for a bit with Jamie’s parents and see the kids (oh how much I missed them and were blessed to have a break too). I had a little sleep for about an hour and a bit that afternoon and Jamie somehow seemed to do okay on the lack of sleep (he watched movies on the plane instead of sleeping and didn’t have a nap).

The trip was fabulous and it was an awesome to re-connect with Jamie again as a couple. We had our share of little fights over the trip but it really was great to be able to hold hands rather than chase after little ones. What a blessing it was to be able to go. So happy early 9th anniversary to us (it was on August 29th).