The plan was LAX -> Honolulu -> Auckland with just time for a quick pint at the brewery in the airport in Honolulu before connecting with the Auckland flight. The reality was that it turned into a few days layover, but for some reason I didn’t seem to get much sympathy when I let people know I was stuck in Hawaii!
I won’t bore you with the details but suffice to say the New Zealand Electronic Travel Authority (NZeTA) is now a thing (even for Brits) and they don’t always take 24 hours to be approved and ‘system maintenance’ can cause it to take days!
The outcome was a weekend in Hawaii and then a couple of long days of travel/work combo that were brutal but given that I was going on 5 weeks of holiday I managed to muddle through my last week of work for the year!
The unexpected travel plans continued as I was in the queue at the airport for a taxi to a last minute booked hotel. Instead of a taxi, the next car in line was a limo, just for me! It was only a short hop to Waikiki and I didn’t even get a chance to open a bottle of champagne.
The first stop was lunch and the mission – to come up with a plan for the weekend!
As you can probably guess, the plan revolved around breweries and food.
I did manage to escape the mayhem of Waikiki Beach Hotels and get out on a scooter for the day. To be honest, I think I could have ridden a bike faster than the little scooter that seriously struggled to drag me up hills, but it was a fun trip along the coast.
(True story on the warnings for jelly fish!… A wave lapped in and dragged a little tentacle over my foot and it was stinging for days!)
Waikiki Beach is a bit of a Hawaii/Vegas feel with the large hotels but it does look pretty enough at sunset. Sunsets and cocktails would have been more fun with Heather tagging along 🙁
The hotel room/office space was technically an ocean view room but only if you ignore the Macy’s car park.
It wasn’t all cocktails and beaches as I did have to get up at 4am to work till lunch time, hop on a flight to Auckland, straight to bed at 1am and then back up at 5am the next day. Technically it was 5am the next, next day as I some how skipped a Tuesday.