Advertisement
We woke up at the crack of dawn on Monday 3 July 2006 and Shane's parents kindly drove us to the airport. After the usual tears, photos and hugs Shane insisted we head to customs and leave home behind us...
Christine was body searched at customs (haha just kidding), but was really fortunate when they didn't drag her off for a body cavity search after finding suspicious looking scissors in her hand luggage! After Chris was tested for 'explosives' (and Shane thinking who is this girl) we headed towards gate 51 to await our flight to Honolulu.
Christine finally built up enough courage to visit the 'lavatory' only to walk in on a gruff American guy doing his business. After going red and having a quick peek, Chris eventually closed the door and the American felt it necessary to use the lock. Chris turned around to find half the people on the plane smirking and returned to her seat to find Shane and the old man across the aisle in hysterics.
A short 10 hour flight later and we arrived in balmy Honolulu. Eventually Shane located a cab large enough to hold his snowboard (and people think Chris
packs heavily) and along the way he attempted to chat cheerfully to the cab driver who couldn't have been less interested...
We checked into our room at Ohana Maile Sky Court and headed out for a walk to Waikiki Beach. It was 2am by this point and all the weird and wonderful characters were stalking the streets. Shane was keeping one eye on all the sketchy characters and the other sometimes on Chris but mainly on the massive American pick-up trucks.
The next morning (Monday 3 July 2006 again) we accidentally slept in... In the interest of spending as little as possible we finally ventured into Burger King (after walking for 2hrs) to buy a cheeseburger (or 2 in Shane's case) for breakfast/lunch. We headed for a peaceful bite down at Waikiki beach and Shane then went for a dip whilst Christine took photos of the beach and surrounds.
After lunch and a short bus trip and walk and we headed through the tunnel at Diamond Head Crater. The entry fee was only US$1 each but it was definately worth it to see the final view from the top (and the redness of Christine's face). From the
top of the volcano we were able to see a 360 degree view of Waikiki and the surrounding mountains/beaches. Whilst Shane glided up the 1.4km track with ease Christine insisted on "drink stops" every few hundred metres. After our walk we had a passionfruit snow cone but were too stingy to buy two so we shared one.
That night we found a cheap Vietnamese Restaurant where we had dinner and then went in search for an affordable ice-cream. Christine suggested a Macca's 40c cone which turned out to be $1.75 and Shane refused to pay this amount. We then headed to the supermarket and stared in awe at the 100's of varieties of ice-cream. We settled on the cheapest, a box of 6, 3 of which Shane had consumed before we even reached the hotel (200m down the road).
We woke up this morning at 6am with the intention to visit Pearl Harbour. After our $2.25 breakfast consisting of 2 pancakes, bacon and scrambled eggs we caught the bus to Pearl Harbour. We collected our tickets at 9am and were advised our tour would not be starting until 11.30am. We took some photos, went to the museum and
Chris and breakkie
The typical US breakfast, full of healthy food! each feel asleep on the grass whilst waiting for the tour to commence.
At 11.30am we lined up to enter the theatre where we were shown a 25 minute documentary of actual footage from the event. Half way through the video Chris heard snoring to her right only to look over and find Shane blissfully sleeping. After a quick jab of the elbow Shane regained consciousness and struggled to stay awake for the remainder of the short video. A boat then transported us to the Arizona memorial. The place was packed but we managed to get a few photos... It was definately eerie to think that there were bodies buried beneath us from that fatal day back in 1941.
After a 1hr bus trip back to our hotel we headed to the room for a quick afternoon snooze (Shane not needing as much due to getting some in the movie earlier) and then headed for dinner at 'All you can eat' Chinese. Dinner was very filling but Shane still managed to devour 4 plates of food and 1 dessert. It was very interesting to see the size of the soft drinks here, our small that we shared between
us is the equilivant of a large back in Australia, however some people still manage to drink the large here which could feed a family for a week.
Today is Independance Day and fireworks have been going off every now and then for the past few hours.
Mahalo for now and speak to everyone soon.....
Love Chris and Shane xoxoxoxo
Advertisement
Tot: 0.105s; Tpl: 0.011s; cc: 13; qc: 65; dbt: 0.0604s; 1; m:domysql w:travelblog (10.17.0.13); sld: 1;
; mem: 1.2mb