traveling is exhausting

day one of our hawaiian vacation got off to an early start.  since we were flying out of LAX at 8am on a monday, we knew we'd have to get ourselves out on the road no later than 5:30 to get through the traffic.  somehow, we managed to pull it together and piled ourselves and our luggage into the car and got there right on schedule.

after getting the car parked, on and off the shuttle to the terminal, and dropping off the luggage with the skycap, it was time to get into the security checkpoint line.

everything had worked out so well that we had just enough time to grab some snacks before it was time to board the plane.

the girls were two rows ahead of us, and the hub and i got to spend a little time together.  apparently, united has done away with the screens in front of each seat and instead you're supposed to download their app onto your device in order to watch movies or tv shows.  they've even got little pull-out pieces that will hold your phone or tablet in place in front of you.

i, of course, couldn't get the wifi to connect and ended up napping and reading a book instead.  that still wasn't enough to stretch out over the 5-hour flight, but luckily the wifi kicked in and i settled in to watch one of my favorite movies:

too bad the system still wasn't working properly.

i even tried to watch several other movies, but ran into the same problem.  the hub pointed out that there were episodes of "friends" available, and i was apparently meant to watch them because they streamed perfectly without a hitch for the rest of the flight.

this is what we got as a snack.  i thought it was a little weird because aren't these intended for placing on top of a cup of hot coffee to melt the caramel inside?  we ate them anyway, and they were pretty delicious even cold.

aloha!

grabbing our checked-in bags was super easy, and then we headed outside to catch a shuttle that would take us to pick up our rental car.

we've always wanted to stay at the moana surfrider, right on waikiki beach smack dab in the middle of all the excitement.  it's known as the "first lady of waikiki," since it was the very first hotel built in the area.  we always go there for lunch at some point during a trip to o'ahu, under the gigantic banyan tree, but this time when we arrived we were checking in for our week-long stay.  we were greeted with smiles and fresh leis, and while the hub headed off to the front desk to get us settled we went straight to that banyan tree to get our first look at the beach we love so much.

we'd arrived pretty early - around 11:30 - and so our rooms weren't quite ready for us yet.  no worries.  we were hungry anyway, and so we headed to a table to have some lunch and our first lava flows of the trip.

the bean resisted as long as she could, but almost as soon as we'd polished off the last of our meal she changed into a swimsuit and ran right into the water.

she got at least an hour of playtime before we finally got word that our rooms were ready.  this was our home for the next six nights:

once we were all settled in, we went back downstairs to relax and take in some peoplewatching from the rocking chairs lined up along the front porch area.

by then we were ready for some grub, and so we took off on foot to see what we could find.  just down the street from us we found this:

which housed all sorts of fun stuff, including this:

and there were lots of dining options, too.  we walked into what turned out to be a fancy schmancy food court:

upstairs we found a mitsuwa marketplace, where you could pick up all sorts of japanese food - snacks, meats, spices, you name it, they had it.  they had an entire bar of different versions of musubi, or you could pick up stuff to make it yourself:

tucked in a corner we found this:

mochi donuts.  yum.  the hub decided that we need to try one of each flavor:  original, strawberry, black sesame, chocolate, matcha.

and then, overwhelmed by the many, many options available, we ended up at the kona grill.  they had a weirdly wide variety of dishes on the menu from sushi to cuban sandwiches to pasta.  the bean was a happy camper as long as there was sushi:

and the rest of us were just happy to be seated somewhere with food in front of us.  it wasn't particularly good food, but we'd been up for hours and were just ready to go back to the hotel and crash.  with the 3-hour time difference, our body clocks were all out of whack and so we all passed out before 10:00 hawaii time.

aloooooooohaaaaaa!