Our Honeymoon in Hawaii, Part 2

Pictures from our honeymoon can be viewed here. Enjoy!

Putting everything into perspective, despite our travel problems, we were in Hawaii, so that was a lot of fun. And things could only get better from this point. All of a sudden, I woke up to hear this great big booming noise, like cannons were going off. As I was still tired from the channels, I looked at the clock (it was 5am) and hoped that this booming noise wouldn't happen every day. Turns out, it was just fireworks to indicate the start of the Honolulu marathon. At one point Lisa and were contemplating running in that marathon (well we hoped there would be a 1/2 marathon part), but when I heard that noise, and I later saw a lot of the participants, I'm glad that I didn't run.

When we woke up Sunday morning, I immediately turned on the TV so that I could find the weather channel. Turns out, there is no weather channel in Hawaii...(maybe because the weather is just hot, hotter, or rainy). Instead I found football. I was quite confused because the clock said 8:30am, but there it was on tv - NFL football. Well, turns out that due to the time change Geofford and I would have to get used to watching sports at earlier times in the day. We ended up going to breakfast at Moose McGillycuddy's restaurant, which is kind of a sports bar. I was surprised to see the number of people having beers with their breakfasts...but I guess it's part of watching football? I was finally able to tear Geofford away from the TV so that we could get our bearings and do some grocery shopping so that we would have food for breakfasts and lunches. It really turns out that Waikiki is not a very big place and you can walk everywhere. We ended up meeting with Stephan, Lisa and Shay and we all went to dinner together at the Cheesecake Factory. I keep forgetting how big the portions are and even though I just had a salad, I had to take my cheesecake to go.

The next morning, we got up very early and met up with Stephan, Lisa and Shay so that we could go to Hanauma Bay. I think we were there for the 2nd movie (you had to see a brief film about the preservation of the area before you could go to the beach), and we got to the beach around 8:30 after walking down a steep incline. We went snorkeling for a while, and I saw a turtle. But at the time, I had lost Geofford and Stephan and I felt like the reef was super close to me, so I just tried swimming towards what I thought was Geofford. Turns out it was just a buoy, but it was deeper at this area, and the boys ended up finding me. When we were swimming back to shore, Stephan saw a snake in the water and was trying to call out to me, fortunately I didn't hear him and just continued swimming to shore. That evening, we were invited to Stephan's parents condo for dinner, so we decided to accept because it is really nice to have a home cooked meal when you are away on vacation. It was a really enjoyable evening, but we were so stuffed that we couldn't even walk along the beach.

Tuesday morning, we again woke up early and met Stephan and Lisa (Phil and Diane took care of Shay this morning), so that we could hike up Diamond Head. It was quite a nice walk, the first part was paved, then it was gravels and rocks, and eventually it led up to stairs, then a spiral staircase, and then more stairs before we got to the top. It was quite suprising to see some tourists doing the hike in flip flop sandals. We ended up picking a great time because it was in between tour groups and we didn't have to share the summit with a busload of tourists.

Wednesday, the gang (Stephan, Lisa, Shay, Geofford and I) piled back in their vehicle and headed up to the North Shore. We decided to hit a few beaches before meeting Lisa's parents and their friends at Turtle Bay Resort. We arrived at Pipeline and saw that there was a competition going on. We easily found a parking spot, which was an indication that something was up, and when we arrived, it turned out that the competition was on hold because the waves were not big enough. We got to see a few waves, and Shay was quite tired, so while he napped on the beach, the adults got to watch the waves and the surfers. It was quite impressive. After Shay woke up, we got back in the car and drove up to Turtle Bay Resort. It is quite the nice resort and I think that if we are ever to return to Oahu, it would be nice to stay there. We had lunch with Lisa's parents at a restaurant overlooking a beach at the resort. On our way back to Waikiki, we stopped at the Dole plantation to have some Dole Whips and have our pictures taken as pineapples. Unfortunately, something went wrong with the pictures of Geofford and I, but there are some fun pictures of Lisa, Stephan and Shay.

Thursday, I babysat Shay in the morning so that Stephan and Lisa could go get their marriage licenses. During this trip, I learned that there is a lot more planning when you have a baby with you. We had a pretty good morning, but I learned that a lot of fruit from the day before can make a pretty fun diaper for you the next day :) After Steph and Lisa got back, Lisa and went to the Outrigger pool and just hung out. I was surprised that the pool wasn't more busy, but I guess that is the advantage of coming before the crowds. That night, we went to a restaurant at the Ala Moana mall with Lisa's friend Chris. It was a crazy big mall, and the stores were very nice, but we really didn't have the money to go into some of the stores - Fendi, Gucci, Salvatore Ferragamo. But it was fun to walk around and check out the stores.

Friday morning, Geofford and I joined the Stars and Stripes Tour through Robert's Hawaii. We were on a mini-bus, I believe that there were 10 of us total on the tour - that took us to Pearl Harbour, we got on the 2nd shuttle out to the Arizona Memorial and were able to check out the Pearl Harbour Museum. This was an incredible visit because it was really hard to believe all of the chaos that happened that December 7, 1941 in the very spots that we were walking. I think that these tours are really important because it really gives you a chance to remember how lucky we really are. We also got a guided tour of the Mighty Mo', which is the battleship where the declaration of surrendar was signed for WWII by the Japanese. I think that it is really nice that the Arizona and the Mo are bow to bow in Pearl Harbour. Following our trip to Pearl Harbour, we received a guided tour of Punchbowl National Cemetary by a legion veteran. It was really insightful to get personal accounts of what he experienced the day that pearl harbour was bombed even if he was just a small child. Overall, I'm glad that we took the tour, but next time it would be nice to go on our own so that we could spend a little more time at the museum and on the Mo. That evening, Geofford and I went to the Ocean House, a restaurant at the Outrigger Reef on the Beach, which was right next to our hotel. It was a really nice restaurant, and it was right on the beach and we actually witnessed a wedding. We also got to see fireworks, so that was quite exciting.

Saturday, we went down to the beach in front of our hotel. It was fun to watch Shay in the water. We ended up having lunch at the ShoreBird, which is another restaurant at the Outrigger Reef. We all tried to order drinks, but since we came straight from the beach, and none of us had ID, we were all turned down. Fortunately, Stephan had his on the beach, and Geofford just ran up to our hotel room to grab our ID, so it all worked out well. That night we went to Germaine's Luau, which was a ton of fun. The food was yummy, and the show was really cool. Geofford, Stephan, Phil, Diane and Jim all upsized their drinks, so they got doubles with their drink tickets. I also got 3 free drinks when I went up for a drink, so we ended up definitely getting our money's worth :)

Sunday, the gang (minus Shay) went back to the North Shore and we had lunch at a place in Haleiwa before going to Waimea Bay to hang out at the beach. This turned out to be the best beach that we visited as it was completely sandy. We had a lot of fun playing in the water and just sitting on the beach. Geofford was quite disappointed when we left because it was such a nice beach. We ended up going to Costco on our way back to get golf balls for the boys' golf game on Monday and to get gas because it is 20 cents a gallon cheaper at costco than anywhere else. I asked at the counter where the gas station, and was again mistaken for a local and was told that it was where it always was. Being the polite Canadian, I explained that I was from Canada and didn't know where the usual place was. It was pretty funny. That night, there was a reception at the Imperial (where the majority of people were staying) for everyone to meet up before the wedding. It was nice to see everyone and there was a ton of food.

Monday, Geofford and Stephan went to play golf with Steph's parents (Phil and Diane), Lisa's father (Pat), Steph's uncle (Jim), and Lisa's parents' friends (Neil and Laura). There was a small bet going on to see which "team" east or west would win. There was quite a bit of trash talk, so it was quite amusing. Before Geofford and Steph could play golf they needed to buy a golf shirt as neither of them brough one, so they bought matching shirts at Macy's...awwww. Lisa and I met up with Lisa's aunt and cousin for lunch at the Cheesecake Factory. This being only my 3rd ever trip to the Cheesecake factory, I ended up ordering the same sandwhich that I had in Vegas - forgetting that I didn't like the bread because it was fried. Oh well, everything else about it was super yummy. After lunch, we headed to the mall, to get pedicures and manicures and to get me a dress for the wedding and a tie for Stephan for the wedding. The wedding was the next day :) Unfortunately we didn't find anything, but we had some good ideas and we had pretty finger and toenails. That night, we ended up just having dinner with everyone again, this time Pierre (the best man) and his girlfriend Vero joined us. Lisa's mom cooked a nice pork roast and it was quite yummy.

Tuesday, the wedding day. I went to the mall to purchase Stephan's tie, which turned out to work out quite well. I learned once (by a rude salesperson at the Moore's in Orleans), that it is quite important to purchase a tie that pulls together an outfit. Well, this tie was silver with black and white dots, which pulled together the black suit and the white shirt. It was actually one of the first ties that Lisa liked when we were shopping on Monday, but we wanted to get a pocket square, but Macy's didn't have one. Oh well...it all worked out in the end. Lisa and I had makeup appoints at MAC, and got our make-up done. Then we had a quick lunch, actually we had room service delivered up, but it didn't come in time before we had to go to our hair appointments. We were able to get everything done in time to meet the bridal party and the parents' for pictures. The pictures in the hotel (The Hyatt) were a lot of fun, but when we went down to the beach, it got a little chaotic. As it was the middle of the afternoon, there were a ton of people on Waikiki beach, so hopefully the photographer got some shots of just Lisa and Stephan. The wedding was beautiful and the dinner was also quite nice. It was a restaurant named Ciao Mein, and it was an Italian-Chinese Fusion restaurant. After the cake cutting, the newlyweds went off, and everyone else went back to Lisa's parents' room for some post-wedding partying.

Wednesday morning, the newlyweds gave us a call and asked if we wanted to go to Waimea Bay again. Geofford and I of course responded in the positive as it was so much fun the first time. Well, this time was insane. The waves were much bigger and they were tons of fun. Geofford was so excited to get into the water that he neglected to put sunscreen on at all, and paid the price for the next few days. We don't have pictures from this yet, as we still have to develop the underwater camera, but it was a lot of fun. I only got thrashed by two waves, and that was enough for me...but Geofford, Stephan and Pierre seemed to never get out of the water. They were like little kids. That evening, we had our last dinner in Waikiki at....the Cheesecake factory. It's funny, our first and last at the same restaurant, but the food was quite yummy. Shay was quite sick that day (had quite the fever), so we didn't get to see much of him or Lisa. Fortunately he got much better and was in fine spirits for his travel day to Kaui.

Thursday morning, we said our goodbyes to everyone and did some last minute shopping, as we had to get some souvenirs from our trip. It is hard to believe that our honeymoon was over, but we were looking forward to getting home, to see some snow. Our trip home was quite uneventful, but we were sad to get home and see that there was no snow on the ground.

Oh well, our honeymoon is over and now we were back to reality...I will post the pictures from Lisa and Stephan's wedding soon.

Our Honeymoon in Hawaii, part 1

So it has been awhile since I have wrote, but one of my excuses is that I was on my honeymoon with Geofford in Hawaii! Overall, the honeymoon was a lot of fun, but it started really poorly. Read on if you are interested. If not, I will post our pictures soon.

We had booked our whole package through expedia and this included both our flight and our accomodations. In hindsight, I am going to try and fly Air Canada whenever I can because then you actually know what you are going to get. We were scheduled to fly on American Airlines from Ottawa to Chicago and then from Chicago straight to Honolulu arriving at 2:30 local time. Seems pretty easy right? Well, we had a 6am flight out of the Ottawa airport, so we dutifully arrived at 4am, after not sleeping all night, because there was no real point. As we arrived to the gate, my cell phone rang. It was American Airlines informing me that the 6am flight to Chicago was CANCELLED (please look at the photo to the left, which is a photo of the departures at 4:03am which states that the 6:00am flight to Chicago was on time), and we were booked on the 12:30 flight to Chicago instead, and since we weren't going to make our connection to Honolulu, they changed our connection to go to Los Angeles and then to Honolulu, putting us in Honolulu for 9:55 local time. Obviously we were very disappointed and confused because neither of us had sleep since the night before, so we went to ask the ticketing agent, and she was really rude and said that there was nothing that she could do because we were on the 12:30 flight. Meanwhile, other people in line seemed to be able to do something because they were able to go through customs. We called expedia to see if we could be reimbursed if we took a cab home and then back because part of our package included travel insurance which included trip delay, if your trip was delayed more than 6 hours, which our trip was. After a few hangups on the other end, we finally got through to an agent who put us through to the insurance people, who told us that we may not be able to get reimbursed, because the delay has to be out of province or something like that. What?!? I think that the agent felt sorry for us because she did open a claim for us, but did insist that we may not be reimbursed for our expenses. As we were already spending a lot for this trip, we decided to stay at the airport, as would only be another 4 hours before we get through the gate, which at the time didn't seem that bad.

As the line had dwindled at American, we decided to ask why other people were able to go through customs, and just to see if we could do. The lady there was super rude and just explained that we couldn't go through because of US Customs rules that you couldn't wait in the waiting room for more than 2 hours. Fine...so we just sat on a bench at the exciting Ottawa airport and took turns napping. Finally at 10:30am, we got back into line and were able to go through customs and get rid of half of our luggage as it was checked in. Now all we had was our carry-on, which included Lisa's wedding dress (part of our honeymoon was attending Lisa and Stephan's wedding) as I was the matron of honour. After a while, I just pretended the dress was mine, because it was too much trouble explaining that I was bringing the dress for someone else.

So once we got through and into the waiting area, we learned that the 12:30pm flight was delayed to 1:15 and we finally boarded the plane at 1:30. Yay! We were on our way to Hawaii, finally.... The only other travel problem that we encountered was due to the delay in Ottawa, we missed our connection to LAX by literally 10 minutes (we watched the plane push away as we got to the gate...O'Hare is a big airport, we had to move from Gsomething to Ksomething...), so I had to call American and get them to reroute us, again. Fortunately there was one last flight out of LAX to Honolulu putting us there at 12:55am local time, almost 11 hours later than we were supposed to arrive. We were also thinking at this point and called the Hotel and our shuttle to inform them that we would be late. When we called the hotel, they were very happy that we called because Honolulu was packed that night because Pearl Jam was opening for U2 that night, and the Honolulu marathon was the next day. So it was... a little busy.

We fortunately had no more problems getting to Honolulu, the shuttle driver found us, we got lei'd, and got a nice tour of Honolulu/Waikiki since a lot of roads were closed for the marathon. Fun...but at least we were finally here. When we checked into the hotel, the Outrigger Waikiki Shore, we were informed that we could only get a room with two twin beds because we were checking in so late, but I was too exhausted (after travelling 27 hours and being awake almost 48) to complain. Fortunately, the bed was made up as a king size when we got to the room, so it wasn't so bad.

But in the end, we made it to Hawaii, and our honeymoon could begin. I'll try and write more soon...