Saturday, January 02, 2010

Day 2 Saturday - Honolulu, Oahu

We woke up at about 6 AM for a 7AM pick up for our morning tour. We waited in the lobby and I called the agent who said we waited an hour late. I guess that was miscommunication that it was an hour earlier. We were still on for the luau for the night. We walked to the agency and asked them to rebook us for Tuesday the same intineray. They had no problem in doing that for us. We decided to swap the whole day with what we were going to do on Tuesday. We took the bus to the Ala Moana transit center. The bus driver was very nice and gave me directions to the Dole Plantation and marked on the bus on how to get there. While that route was short, the bus to Wahiawa ride was over an hour.

When we got off, we were the only ones visiting Dole Plantation using the bus. We went through the maze which takes 45 minutes but we took about half an hour longer due to a short break. We learned a lot on the history and saw the actual pineapples were grown from the ground.Afterwards, we went aboard the Pineapple Express tour of the fields. We missed the cut off for the next train by about 4 people so we had to wait around for an extra half hour. The next stop was a garden tour which alone was not worth $4 but it was $2.25 when combined with the train ride. The guide went over some of the plants and flowers that could be found locally and where it came originally. We went by the food court and grabbed some pineapple ice cream or "Dole Whip".

We waited a bit for the return bus ride back to Waikiki. Some of the people on the bus did not use deoderant. On the way back, I was able to make plans to meet up with some friends for a late lunch. After a mishap of going too far on the bus, we had to backtrack and finally made it to the Outrigger on the reef for a late buffet. They told us that it ended at 3:30 so we went to PF Changs for a lunch. We chatted and caught up on the happenings. Lunch service was decent but the primary concern was having a tete a tete with each other.

We walked back to the hotel and passed a Ramen noodle house along the way. We were exhausted so we took an hour nap to catch up on energy.I was awoken by my stomach grumbling and got ready to go out for dinner. We walked by Ramen Nakamura (noodle place) and they had about a 30 minute wait. They also did not accept credit cards so we walked across the street to another noodle place which had a shorter wait time. We got the basic noodles with a side of gyoza (fried dumplings). The place was bustling busy and they had a long line of patrons as well that showed up after we got there.

We had to go by a pharmacy for a few items and the closest was an independent that was half a mile from our hotel. We walked around the blahhhh street at night see all the sidewalk  artists and conartists (magicians and such). We bought some souvenirs and got mistaken for Japanese tourists several times. We took a leisure stroll back to the hotel and retired for the night.

My status finally changed to EXP today. My mileage to upgrade counter is gone. I was 294 miles short of my next set of 500 mile upgrades. I will have to call to see if they will give it to me to upgrade companions or myself when I drop below EXP. The 500 mile upgrades never expire for the life of the account.

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