HomeMade Tales: Hawaii Day #1

I made it safely to Hawaii today. A day later than expected. I was to arrive yesterday, but thanks to some fog in Ottawa, I was delayed a day.

My day started out well, was up and ready in lots of time. My wonderful friend Joanne drove me to the airport and I was in and waiting at the gate in lots of time. As the morning moved on, there started to be a lot of questioning about whether the plane was going to be on time, as there was no one at the gate, but the screen said that the flight was on time. Eventually the screen changed to say that our flight was boarding and then that it had taken off. No one had come to the gate to let us know what what going on, so everyone was questioning even more what was going on. Within about ten minutes everything started to up date and it showed the flight was late by over an hour. Half an hour after the flight was suppose to have left, and after getting a United agent to make four phones calls, the United agent for our flight showed up. Of course at this time I'm freaking out because with the delay it meant I was going to miss my connection to Hawaii. Finally I talk to someone and she told me that there was another woman who was trying to get to Hawaii and that she had looked up flights for her and there were none so I could either take my chances or I could be rebooked for the next day. I decided I would take my chances. After talking with this other woman, Danyka, I decided to go back and find out if there were any earlier flights as it seemed she only looked for direct flights. The earliest she could find was one out of Chicago which would get me to Hawaii at 2pm today. I figured that wasn't too bad, so I went for it. Danyka and I decided that we would try to make a run for it and maybe we would make it. Well as we were getting off the plane, we watched our flight being pushed away from the gate. So tragic.

We went to the United Customer Service desk once we got in the terminal and found out that the agent in Ottawa had rebooked us to a flight Houston at 5:55am and then to Hawaii at 9:41am making it to Hawaii at 1pm. We tried to get something earlier, but we were told there was nothing. they gave us a number to call to get a discount on a hotel for the night, so we called and went to the hotel. Conveniently we were able to share a room, which split the cost. We basically got some food, as we hadn't eaten since before we left Ottawa, and then kept ourselves up until about 9pm, in order to get up at 4am to catch the shuttle to make it to the airport for our 5:55am flight.

I'm happy to say everything today went smoothly. We made it to the airport before security even opened, which meant we got through it no problem. Went to the gate and left on time! There were even agents at the gate there an hour before we left! We made it to Houston on time, we got to our gate, got some breakfast (Jomba Juice!!) and snacks for the plane and then boarded our flight for Hawaii. The flight was pretty empty, which was nice because I was able to switch seats and sit with Danyka. This also made me very skeptical about the flights on Saturday being all full. But after 8 long hours, we finally made it!! After a quick pit stop at the bathroom to change into my summer clothes (because it was a beautiful 27 degrees, felt like 34) and a 20 minute taxi ride, I finally made it to the hotel and to John!! Never been so happy to see him before!

After I got my stuff to the room, showering and changing, we left for the beach, which a little bit of a detour to some of the shops that John wanted to show me. We spent an hour or so on the beach. The waves were coming in, so it was a lot of fun to jump with them. Unfortunately we didn't take any pictures at the beach, but I'm sure we will later.

Afterwards, we came back to the hotel to shower and change and then went to the Cheesecake Factory for supper. I was very excited, because it's on the Big Bang Theory and I've never been. The dinner was really good, and I have leftovers for supper. We brought cheesecake to the hotel to eat later...it might be another night. Then we just walked about and saw some of the beauty of Honolulu at night. Take a look...