WE'RE IN HAWAII!!!

We are here!  It's sunrise, and I'm up already.  Of course, I fell asleep at 9 p.m. last night, which even accounting for the time difference was ridiculous.  But I had to get up SOOO early too catch the plane, and it was really nice that Anna got up at 0 dark hundred to take us to the airport. 
At some point in the flight I was asleep, with my mouth hanging open as usual, and they came by with snacks.  They had previously told us that they had free snacks, so I thought the guy coming by had the free snacks, just as I woke up.  I told him I wanted the Hawaiian chips, which he then said, "that will be $5.50.  You would have thought I was holding a lighted firecracker, I threw it back so fast. 

They did later have free snacks, and also a free meal, though it was burrito and some kind of a sweet Hawaiian or Asian cupcake.  An odd combination.  And why you would give a bunch of people trapped on a plane together a meal that is largely refried beans is somewhat of a mystery. 

We landed, took the city bus for a dollar to our hotel, which we got for a pretty bargain price and were a bit afraid would be kind of dumpy.  For instance, they offered no ocean views, only city views.  Well, it turns out we can see more of the ocean from this hotel than we could from the one where we paid extra for partial ocean view two years ago.  And it has a little balcony. 

John couldn't get into the room fast enough and had the TV on looking for the 49ers game before he even took off his backpack.  I left him to it and went to the beach.  It was a bit overcase and very pleasant.  I didn't put on my swimsuit, just my shorts.  And I got lucky and found a couple of grass mats for free.  I spent the money I saved from that and bought a little bag of kettlecorn with chocolate and macadamia nuts, hoping to ruin my dinner. 

I came back to the hotel and sat out on the balcony.  It was the time of day when all the birds start flying somewhere else, only as we are on the 16th floor, I was looking down on them.  The sun was hitting them just right so they were very bright fluttery things and it took me a couple of minutes to realize they were birds. 

birds flying somewhere

After the game was over, we went to the Moana surfrider and had a drink with an umbrella in it and watched the sunset.  John had some rum drink that apparently had some kind of fruit passed through the rum but was otherwise mostly rum.  For reasons I don't understand, this man who usually tells me he is going to die from lack of regular nutrition had basically not eaten all day, except for his part of the popcorn.  You can see what's coming here.  Liquor hit him like a ton of bricks.  I had a fruity drink that had a little rum passed near it. 

We left and went to a little Thai restaurant we had seen while we were on the bus, one of the places along Kuhio that is on the second floor above the more profitable and ubiquitous ABC stores.  We had an eggplant salad that the waitress tried to talk us out of, apparently because it's kind of different from what people are expecting, but it was absolutely delicious.  The eggplant was kind of smoky tasting, and just barely warm, and the other veggies in the salad were cold.  We also had green curry -- no surprise there. 

And then we came home and John reminded me for a half hour why I don't ever want to have cable TV by going through all 50 channels again and again and again.  Aaaaaaaaarrrrrgh.  Sherlock Holmes was on and I fell asleep before it was three minutes into the program.