Arrival in Honolulu!

After 3 flights and a close connection we almost missed, we arrived in Honolulu around 9:30pm local time, about an hour earlier than scheduled.

But within 15 minutes we realized that our bags hadn't made it. :-( So we checked in with United Airlines baggage service and learned that they had not made our Seattle flight, as we had thought, and were still in San Francisco. C'est la vie. At least we had made it and were fine. So I called Wes, one of our co-hosts and he walked up to us a few minutes later.

The ride to our Condohotel took less than 15 minutes. It was absolutely wonderful to walk into the open air lobby and feel a warm breeze, even late at night.


Wes took us up to our suite and made sure that everything was okay.

The suite wasn't as large as I had expected but was plenty big for just the two of us. We discovered that our Chicago friend, Toni, who is staying just a few blocks away, had taken some time to stock our fridge, give us a bowl of fresh fruit, and generally make us feel extremely welcome!

Here's my mom, with the colourful lei around her neck. Like me, she was tired, but very happy to be here.
This is the nice gift basket provided by Wes and Irene, the suite owners. A wonderful touch:

So now that we had arrived, we had no change of clothes. The airline had provided an emergency toiletries kit, but I wanted some clean clothes to change into. This prompted us to make our first of several visits (over the next few days) to "ABC Stores". In your community there may be an abundance of Starbucks or McDonalds but I doubt they come close to the number of ABC Stores in Waikiki. They're like a combination of a 7-11 along with a a tourist souvenirs shop, offering food, liquor, beachwear, and tacky souvenirs.

I'm a little embarrassed to say it, but the very first meal I took my Mom to was at Denny's. It was a "safe" meal and very close.