Our Winter Escape To Bucket List Paradise
Aloha!
In Minnesotan that means “I vacationed in Hawaii and you didn’t.”
Yes, Catherine and I went to Hawaii for 12 days in early March. We managed to get away just before winter defeated us. But this was not a “we’ve got to get out of here now” vacation. We planned it in early December when we could have still mowed our lawn. But enduring the snowfalls leading up to the trip was maddening.
A trip to Hawaii is a bit more involved than a weekend car trip to Iowa so we decided to make this a bucket list event and see all we could in case we never go again. We stayed in Honolulu (Oahu) for a few days, then took a cruise that stopped at Kahului (Maui), Hilo and Kona (The Big Island), and Nawiliwili (Kauai). We enlisted Mary Foley at Carrousel Travel to help plan this so Catherine and I wouldn’t kill each other in the process.
The main takeaway from all this is that our 50th state really is a paradise. Each island has unique features but on every one of them we stood in warm sunshine with only an occasional short sprinkle. It was Minnesota’s best June weather – all the time. The angle of the sun appeared to be the only way to know when the seasons change. They don’t even bother with daylight saving time.
But first things first. We took Eddie’s White Glove Shuttle Service to the airport to avoid parking. The A330 Airbus was just that – a bus – that was part of a grand experiment to study the behavior of nearly 300 passengers inserted into body storage units called “seats,” and fed junk food and sugar water for nine hours, while either watching inaudible movies on earphones not worth stealing or watching route tracking information intended to horrify us into model behavior (outside air temp -76 F, altitude 39,000 feet, ground speed 600 mph). Those in aisle seats quickly learned to keep their elbows in or they would lose them to a food cart. And of all the passengers, the four in front of us were from Red Wing. Go figure.
After landing and receiving our obligatory leis we soon learned that Hawaii has an interstate highway (H1) even though there are no adjoining states. Proof of that was evident in that we saw only Hawaiian license plates. The view was breathtaking from either of two balconies in the corner room on the 23rd floor of the Hilton Rainbow Tower in the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach Resort. We watched a luau on another building’s rooftop below us.
This area was a 24/7 carnival, where every other shop was a jewelry store. Most people swim in the many pools or sit on the beach with a rented chair ($18) and umbrella ($35). The local news centered on when the cold snap was going to end. The high temp was only 73 degrees.
The Pearl Harbor tour was very touching, especially when you learn that a little more attention could have prevented the attack. We weren’t able to visit the Missouri because half-way through the tour a water main broke somewhere in the area and the tour was curtailed. Must have been the cold weather.
The cruise took us to a separate universe. The Pride of America is a Norwegian Cruise Lines ship that, at full complement, carries nearly 2,200 passengers and 940 crew. Being a Norwegian-American, I couldn’t imagine a bunch of Norwegians building a ship like that and they didn’t. It was purchased by them from a failed American company and they had Germans finish and enlarge it. With 16 dining options, 12 bars, six hot tubs, three pools and a large theater, this was one large party barge.
Getting on the ship introduced us to getting our hands washed often. Every time we entered a food service area, someone was there with a hand sanitizer spray bottle and singing a melodious “washy-washy.” This delayed us from getting sick until we got home. Our room was tight but adequate and included an outside deck overlooking the ocean. We spent a lot of time there.
The cruise is designed to provide entertainment for everyone – kids to seniors. We did not partake in much of it because we were too busy with shore tours, relaxing in the sun, or eating. You can eat 24/7. One of the cafes (the Aloha, of course) was a feeding frenzy for breakfast. It also provided lunch, dinner, and an afternoon snack bar. I gained about 10 pounds. We also dined at three onboard restaurants – Italian, Brazilian (churrascaria), and Japanese (teppanyaki). We skipped events like hula dancing, art auctions, lei making, and a musical tribute to Don Ho. You couldn’t do it all in a year.
We took numerous island tours and saw old sugar cane and pineapple fields and factories, climbed over old lava flows, toured a macadamia nut farm, hiked through a rain forest, visited a tropical plantation, aquarium, and a black sand beach, drove up a valley in the mountains to a strange solitary peak, and viewed Waimea Canyon which is smaller but more colorful than the Grand Canyon. We tasted fresh pineapples, bananas, coconuts, papaya and passion fruit. Smoothies made from any of these are awesome.
The main event for me centered around my ID. In December I renewed my driver license and ordered the Enhanced DL. I still have not received it. So I brought my expired DL and the paperwork for the new one. The first day on the ship I lost my DL. It was never turned in so I had to rely on the paperwork, which I was required to display every time we went ashore. I was sweating going through the TSA check for our flight home. Sure enough, the paperwork and a credit card with my name on it was not enough. I had to go through the whole process of a pat down and body scan. The agents were polite but it was a bit humbling.
The whole trip was awesome, but for my next one I’m wearing a lanyard containing all the IDs I need tightly attached to my neck.
Aloha and mahalo.