Due to the magic of International Date Lines, we went back in time. Australia is at the moment (due to Summer time) on the East coast, 21 hours ahead of Hawaii. So leaving Australia at 6pm Monday night, saw us arrive in Honolulu around 6 am Monday morning.
What to do with the longest day of your life?
Go Shopping!!!! I had planned this trip for a while, and had printed maps and timetables of the places I wanted to go.
There was even shopping available on the plane: alot of Duty Free goods that just did not interest me (alcohol and jewellery mostly), but I did buy the Jetstar plane scribblers (like etchasketch) an early start on my family souvenir shopping.
The hotel we were staying at had a room available when we arrived - which was really appreciated, and generous, considering we arrived before 8 in the morning and normal check-in times are after 3pm. It meant we were able to offload suitcase, and unwanted hand luggage, tidy ourselves up some what (even though travel hair is very attractive) and despite not having more than 2 hours sleep head off into the great wide yonder.
Right outside our hotel was the Pink Line bus/trolley service, that with a flash of your hotel key allowed free transportation to the local area in a repeated circle, with its main shopping attraction (in my opinion) the Ala Moana Center.
It was first stop - for some breakfast of sorts with Diet Coke bottled outside of Australia
There's this amazing shop called "ABC stores" and well Monday might have been repeating itself, but this store was definitely a case of dejavue there are 30 something almost identical shops in Honolulu I believe, as in the products that they sell. The above pictured food and drink is just one of them. Yummo. (ABC stands for All Blocks Covered). If you go past a block or a shopping centre without one of these in it you know there is a problem, or a housing development.
We needed some caffiene and Energy food as the plan was to go to Kmart in Waikele, being the furthest location away and then wind back via Toys'r'us, Target, Costco, Walmart and the Ala Moana Center again .
Seeing however that we were already there, we did need to make sure the American Girl store was actually there and not just a hoax, considering we never in our wildest dreams imagined when the holiday was thought of or booked that a store would be opening the month before.
!!!!!!!
It was there
Quick look again, yep still there.
Woohoo!!
And now to tease you all, yes I did go inside and I took pictures, and bought things (but that was later), the plan was to go to Kmart etc etc, and so after working out how to buy a bus ticket, caught the bus for Waikele.
That is not Kmart, I agree, we did not actually make it to Kmart. I recognised street names from the maps I had printed, and well not wanting to sit in a bus any longer (over an hour already) we got off and walked up the street to Toys'r'us.
And now to tease you all, yes I did go inside, and I bought things, and forgot to take pictures - unfortunately, we headed back toward the main street planning to follow the printed planned bus trip back to Ala Moana Center, willing to sacrifice Kmart maybe for another day.
Yep, I saw a bus, it was going Honolulu way (which was a good start), and nope it was not on my plan, but I got on it anyway, and saw alot of streets, and by some luck, the busdriver said the word Target - and I got off.
The pictures didn't happen at all. It was getting rather humid and hot, and the girls were wanting to stay in the bag. But Target was a success in locating what I was after, and I did buy something, which I will show you, of course - later.
We were back on the right route, found the bus stop and caught the bus. By this time it was schools out and heading into peak traffic - ah! So the bus slowly headed back to Ala Moana Center, and I was more than done with working out how to avoid being squashed on a crowded bus to get off anywhere else.
Ala Moana Center
American Girl Store visit number 2 - this time was the later - in which I did buy things that I had not wanted to lug around half the island in the heat (actually the island is alot bigger than I imagined).
We eventually made it back to the hotel room, the girls were exhausted (despite being carried around all day), and changed into their pjs to watch some TV and eat chocolate chip cookies
