Hawaii Day 1

We prepare the night before. Packing the bags, dropping the boys off at my new Father and Mother in-laws house. We also have my friend Frank drop by, he was our minister for the wedding. We had forgotten to sign all the paperwork to send in to the county in order to be legal. Francesca's parents are our witnesses.

We awake at 6:30 to get to the airport at 8. The taxi driver tells us a sob story about being picked on by the cops and has to pay big fines, etc. I fall for it, every time, and give him a big tip.

We hop on the plane, no issues. We leave this:



And land at this:


Quite a nice change. 50 degrees to 85 in only 5 hours.

We walk through the airport and grab a shuttle to the Avis rental agency. Through my dealing with Microsoft and all the travel I use to do for events I often rented from Avis, they've been good to me, and I rarely have any room to complain. I made the reservation about 3 months out, and chose a compact car, easy to maneuver, gas efficient, and low profile. We're dropped off at the counter and meet the Hawaiian woman who's assigned us a car. She's cordial, nothing over the top, which is the Hawaiian way. On the flight over, Francesca and I have been talking about how to play up our new status as newly weds. We've been told by people who've done this, to make a big deal about it, play the newly wed card as often as you can. So I suggest the Francesca play it here since she has such pretty eyes, and she does. Francesca says to the lady, "sooo, we just got married, do you have any specials for newly weds?" and the lady says's congratulations and that she doesn't have the power to do anything, we'd need to go inside to the "main" desk. I say, it's not that big of a deal and we're good with what we've got. She gives me a funny look and starts moving things around on her desk. She asks for ID and then says with a big smile, "row F, stall 76, and congratulations, have a great time." I say thanks so much, and head out to stall 76. This is what we find. A full size gas guzzling Jeep Wrangler Unlimited. I'm not sure if I should thank her or not at the time, but we do, its a nice treat, full size SUV for the price of a compact, not bad.


We head on out of Honolulu to the Hawaiian Princes Condos on the West coast of Oahu.

Here we see our view.


But I think it needs something:


Wait! Something is still missing:


That's better. :)

We retire for the evening an watch the sun set and the stars rise