The flight from Auckland was long (8.5 hours), but actually not nearly as tedious as we had been anticipating. In contrast to LA airport, entry to the USA in Honolulu was quick and easy. The online visas all worked perfectly, we were photographed and fingerprinted and Aloha! that was it. Despite the AustPost travelsim not working and therefore my phone being useless, we were able to ring the hotel and find a taxi. Because we are staying in a condo managed by Outrigger hotels, they had to send someone over to let us in. Hard to see where exactly we were in the dark so was good to find in the morning that the apartment does look out over the sea - though not down over Waikiki Beach to Diamond Head as I had thought, but up the other way over Fort de Russy and further round to the port and airport and the building is right on the beach so quite handy.
We decided to go next door to the Outrigger Reef hotel and find something for a late light dinner and ended up at the SandBird Bar - a big open air bar and grill on the beach that we enjoyed visiting last time we were here about 27 years ago. It's much the same but unfortunately has karaoke every night. Drunken Japanese renditions of Unchained Melody are not the most enjoyable musical accompaniments to dinner.
So it was fairly late when we got to bed and we were not thrilled to be woken shortly after 7 by a loud continuous knocking on the door. The landline phone in the unit was apparently not working which meant they hadn't been able ring and get my credit card details off me last night, so they had sent someone to fix it. Very disconcerting when you're still in bed asleep.
Today we're just mucking around but will tackle Ala Moana shopping centre tomorrow.
In the meantime we're tracking down Glop!
View from window taken in a hurry
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