Monday, 19 September - leaving Phoenix!

We had to be up at 4.30am in order to leave by 5.30....  bags packed and weighed.  Checked out and gave the GPS our instructions to take us to the airport.  About 15 mins later we realised the GPS had failed us and although we were in the vicinity of the airport - we were not at destination!  Had to work quickly and try a few different commands before we lucked on to a road sign pointing to rental car returns!  Managed to arrive and return the keys.  Took the courtesy bus to the terminal and checked in for our flight with about an hour-and-a-half to spare.  Time for brekky!  Airports are nice and quiet at 6am - we should do this more often?

Our flight to Honolulu took 6hrs 8mins.  Somehow the plane was different from the last one and even though we had booked the same seats, we didn't have a window :-(  ...  and really wanted to see what was going on because we were in a queue of about 8 planes waiting to take off!  It was amazing hearing the ones in front of us taking off!

The flight attendants announced that there would be a breakfast 'service' of an egg sandwich and your choice of juice or coffee/tea.  Company policy no soda pop served at breakfast.  I looked in the menu in our seat pocket and saw that they also offered 'champagne splits and vodka shots'....  Thoughts of Lesley Casey came to mind the morning they offered us Bloody Mary's at their house for breakfast - LOL!  People were asking the flight attendants for soda pop and they were getting annoyed....
So when she came to us, I asked what a champagne 'split' was - she replied, a half bottle of champagne and your choice of juice.  Bingo!  We were pleased - we asked for champagne splits!  She then said we would have to pay for those - no problem we said - and she said she would be back with the little machine for us to be able to pay....

We gained 3 hrs on that flight - so it took off at 8am and arrived in Honolulu at 11.15am local time.  Brilliant!  We were picked up by our transport and arrived at our hotel, named the 'Aston Circle Waikiki Hotel'.


It's the only circular hotel in Waikiki....  Our room is on the second floor, that's our verandah
on the left of the blue sign!  Ocean view!

The clerk at check-in said he had no rooms of our requested type available, however, he could upgrade us to an ocean view for an extra $10 a night - no problem we said!


Above and  below - our view from our room....



Jan and Oliver happened to be on the same flight leaving from Brisbane (3 weeks ago), as us!  But we didn't see them, Jan saw me but in the rush to board, lost track of where we went.  They went through to Vancouver, Canada whereas we stayed in Honolulu then went to the mainland.  Jan contacted us through Facebook and we arranged to meet for dinner as we'd both finished on the northern continent and we are all headed home.  So we went to dinner Monday night to share stories of our adventures!