Wedding Adventure - Day 5 - Vegas to Hawaii

This morning we had to say goodbye to our Vista Suite and experience with how the other half lives. Still we were excited as this meant we were on our way to Hawaii!

Checking out went smoothly and we were pleasantly surprised to discover that the hotel had completely comped one of our nights in the Vista Suite instead of just putting the small allowance that was part of the wedding package towards it. That was probably our biggest win in Vegas right there!

The flight from Vegas left mid-morning and we spent about 6 hours on the Hawaiian Airlines 767 before landing in Honolulu. The flight was long but went rather fast. I think my favorite part (besides landing and getting off the plane of course) was when we pushed back from the gate and they started playing “Hawaii Five-O” by The Ventures over the intercom. It really got me in the Hawaii mood. On approach to Honolulu we flew over Pearl Harbor and saw the Arizona Memorial.

All of our bags made it to Honolulu on the same flight and we made our way to the rental car center. Going outside, the air was such a change from Vegas: humid and very fragrant, much like a flowery shower spray. It rained and then became sunny twice while I was filling out the rental paperwork. Our rental car was a very cool bright red Jeep Wrangler convertible 4x4! It was trick to get all of our luggage into it with the small trunk area but we managed and headed off across the island of Oahu to the famed North Shore.

The Tuesday afternoon pre-Thanksgiving traffic was pretty heavy and the frequent rain slowed things down. However, as we got further outside Honolulu, the interstate traffic cleared up. Coming into the little town of Haliewa, we came over a rise to our first glimpse of the ocean on the north shore with an endless parade of waves stretching to the horizon. The beaches looked gorgeous and the surfers (and their old VW buses) were out in force as we drove along the shore to our resort hotel, Turtle Bay, located on Kahuku Point, the northernmost point on the island of Oahu.

You know that the weather is going to be nice when the hotel lobby doesn’t have any doors. Turtle Bay, famed for its setting amongst the undeveloped fields of the still rural North Shore is a sharp contrast to the Waikiki beachfront crowded with high-rise hotels. It was featured in the movie ‘Forgetting Sarah Marshall” but as always, some Hollywood liberties left us not knowing exactly what to expect. Our room was one the 4th floor on the west side of the part of the hotel that juts out into the ocean, with a balcony perfect for watching sunsets. We were very lucky again!

After taking a short walk around the grounds we watched the sun set from our balcony and ordered room service. I had spaghetti and meatballs while Amy had Hawaiian pizza. Both were very good. With a second two-hour time change and the long flight dragging on us, we drifted off to sleep pretty early in the evening as darkness enveloped the waves crashing onto the reef outside the balcony.