Saturday, December 16th, part two...

Going by Tokyo time, its now 7pm on Sunday evening, and I haven't had a proper night's sleep since Thursday night, so I'm very, very tired!

Shortly after I posted the last blog entry, I successfully adjusted the Santa and then we jumped in a cab which took us to the Keio Plaza Hotel in Shinjuku. Once there, we transferred to a 'Friendly Airport Limousine' bus, which took us to Narita, dropping us off at about 6:45 pm. We checked in quickly, and then headed to McDonald's for a quick pre flight meal before clearing security and then immigration and heading to the gate. The only hiccup was the grumpy immigration officer who was mad that I'd gone with Peter into his line, but in the end let us both go through, and we got to the flight just as they were starting to wrap up boarding. They were checking every back that was being carried on, and we also had a film crew filming four twenty-somethings on the flight, but I didn't find out what for...

Luckily, the flight was only about 70% full, so we had lots of room, and I basically slept for about 4 hours I'd guess... I listened to the metpod, had the dinner, slept until the breakfast, and then did about 20 minutes of 'genki' nihongo studying before it was time to get ready to land. That rescue remedy really is magic stuff! Between that and a couple of nighttime cold relief pills, I was pretty genki myself for the flight :) Hopefully the way back will be equally good - too bad its so much longer!!

We got our rental car and headed to the hotel Mom and Grampa crashed at last night, waited around for about 45 minutes for them to get up and ready, and at around 9:30 HST, headed into Honolulu to the Hau (sp?) Tree Lanai restaurant where we ate a delicious breakfast outside just beside the beach. Mom was the most adventurous of all of us, eating poipu pancakes with some kind of coconut syrup on them, actually very tasty!

(Grampa at breakfast)

(Mom's pineapple)

After that, we walked along the beach until we got almost to our hotel, at which point, Peter headed back to pick up the car and the bags, and the three of us went to Starbucks so I could get some caffeine, and then to one of MANY ABC stores to pick up some cheap beach mats. We kept walking about half a block until we got to our hotel, the Marriott Waikiki.

(view from the hotel balcony down to the pool)

(view from the hotel room at dusk, looking along Waikiki Beach)

(same view, but later on...)

It's very nice! We're on the 21st floor with an ocean view. After we checked in, Mom and I headed down to the pool for a quick swim and a gossip, while the boys stayed in their room for a nap. We met back up at around 4, and did all of our pre cruise check in in the NCL office conveniently located in the lobby, and then did a bit of shore ex. research via the wireless connection in the lobby. We've all booked on one excursion so far (mine is a bike tour of Kona), but will probably add more as the week progresses - we were pretty disorganized about the whole thing since we haven't really been able to co ordinate with each other what we wanted to do.

(lots of pool pictures! I promise I won't post every picture we take at the pool!)

Just past six, we got changed, and then went out - Mom and Peter to the Billy Joel concert which was a surprise Mom found out about this morning, and Grampa and I went first to a kua'aina burger (restaurant wasn't as Hawaii themed as in Japan!) and then to the Ward 16 theatres to watch 'The Holiday', starring Jack Black, Cameron Diaz, Kate Winslet, and Jude Law. Despite falling asleep for about 15 minutes, I still enjoyed the movie, it was a pretty light hearted rom-com, a perfect end to this long but fun start to our vacation! Grampa and I went to (another) Starbucks, where I got one of those great green juice concoctions and we waited to meet back up with the concert goers, whom seemingly had a great time. Now we're back at the hotel, and packing the bags that seem to have exploded across the room in order to have them ready to put out for the cruise pick up at 8 am.
(Grampa at Kua'aina Burger)

I've started to download photos, but I don't have the patience or energy to post them right now, so I'll edit them (and maybe some more details) in tomorrow before the shuttle for the boat leaves at 12:30. It's a bit later than we would have liked, but it's the only one they are running tomorrow, so c'est la vie! It's vacation after all!

Aloha,
D