Day 1 Recap of Hawaii

*long post alert*
Sorry for the delay on the Hawaii Recap posts.
I had to finish editing a wedding as soon as I got back,
start editing a second wedding, & shoot a 3rd wedding!

So, Let's see how close our days were to what I previously
posted in those scheduled posts.

We left Wednesday night for Atlanta since we had an early morning flight on Thursday.

My brother had enough points to get us a free room at the Crowne Plaza! Oooh Fancy!

 

So day 1 was travel day, from Atlanta to Dallas to Honolulu!

We started our day at 4am by taking our car to Motel 6 for parking.

I used a site called Airport Parking Reservations for this.

It was SO much cheaper than parking it at the airport. We saved over 50%!

And they provided a free shuttle to & from the airport.

If you ever prefer to leave your car at the airport, check  with them first.

This site will let you know if the hotel has 24 hour security, cameras, 

shuttle service to the airport, etc.

After arriving at the airport we had about an hour & a half wait for our flight.

Our gate was near the security area so we could watch everyone getting scanned in.

All of a sudden, one TSA employee yells Breach! Breach! Breach!

And then they tell everyone to stop moving. 

I mean everyone!

So I whipped out my phone to start recording
because I didn't know what was going on.

I thought maybe there was a terrorist or someone with a bomb!

 After about 10 minutes they allowed people to resume moving, a TSA employee on her cell phone points towards us and walks over & asked if I recorded what just happened.

I got nervous as hell and said, uhh just a little but I didn't get much.

And then she just walked away.

Talked about scared! 

Apparently this is some type of drill they do every 4 hours so I 

guess they didn't want it to end up YouTube!

Anyways....so after this we boarded our flight to Dallas.
In Dallas we had a 4 hour layover.
Hubby & I decided to go outside to smoke & wouldn't you know...
as soon as we go outside they announce they are offering $500
flight vouchers to people willing to give up their seat & be willing to catch the next flight which was an hour & a half later.
My brother text me to tell me this while we were outside so we tried to get back in as fast as we could. Of course we had to go through security again which took forever!
By the time we got in, they had enough volunteers! BOOO!

So we stayed in & had lunch before we boarded the 7+ hour flight to Honolulu.
It was strange arriving at 4:30pm when our bodies were saying, it's 10:30pm est!

Did yall know they don't give you a lei upon arriving in Hawaii anymore?

You have to pay for it and they are $10+ each.

Since the whole point of the trip was for my mom's 60th birthday,

we of course had to make sure she got a lei!

Alamo is not on site at the airport which I thought was crazy, but
at least they provide a free shuttle service.
We rented a hybrid car since we would be in HNL for 3 days before the cruise.
Gas was $4.52 per gallon! But because we had the hybrid, we didn't even have to fill up
before we turned the car back in.

Of course our first destination was the hotel.
We got settled & showered and headed out for dinner.
We ate at a place called  Gyu-Kaku that served raw meat because all the tables had
a fire pit in the middle of them. We just cooked the food ourselves!
I've never eaten at a place like this so it was fabulous!


This photo of Gyu-Kaku Kapiolani is courtesy of TripAdvisor

After dinner we headed to a nearby Karaoke place.

This business had several small & large rooms that you could

rent by the hour. They had rooms for 4 and rooms for 20+.

My mom LOVED it!

I always knew she liked karaoke, but had no idea she loved it this much!

After this we were all pooped & headed back to the hotel. It was 11pm Hawaii time
but it was 5am GA time, meaning we had been up 24 hours!

Stay tuned for day 2 of Hawaii!