Hawaiian Islands

Archers Direct, May 2013





DAY 1: United Kingdom to Honolulu, Hawaii, United States

My 2013 Archers Direct bus tour is going to Hawaii. Now, this is not a new state for me, nor even a new tour, as I did this tour with my ancient assistant Noreen and her friend Doreen, a few years ago. However, I never did get around to writing it up so, as this is the first time my assistants Di, Paul and Dave have done it, I thought I should tell you about it now! Dave also brought a little bear pal with him - Colin - and we got on well together.

It's really just a one state tour - Hawaii, obviously - although we do land in California and New Jersey to change planes. We will be visiting four islands over 12 sightseeing days.

Map copyright ArchersDirect 2013


As usual, we caught a 6am taxi to get us to Birmingham Airport for our 9am flight to Newark, New Jersey on United Airlines. As I am a Premier Gold member with United - I fly so much! - I am entitled to go into the lounge on transatlantic flights, and my gold status indicates I can take a guest. In fact I have, many times. However, on approaching the lounge this time, with Assistant Dave in tow (who doesn't have gold status), they advised they couldn't let him in as United wouldn't cover the fee. I pushed, but they said they'd asked several times and United always said no. To be fair, rather than charge the £27.50 entry fee, they only charged a guest rate of £7.50. As we knew he could pay more than that for breakfast outside with the rest of the peasants (that'd be you lot!) my assistants forked over the dosh (or money, to the uninitiated!)

It's a bit annoying, but it seemed the fault was with United and their refusal to pay for the guests even though they tell their Premier members they are entitled to an additional guest! Another United cutback, I assume. We never had a problem when the airline was Continental, nor with the Servisair Lounge. We've often taken a guest into the official United lounges, but with one flight a day from Birmingham, they hardly need their own lounge! We were only there for an hour and as they use the airport's free Wi-Fi I'm not sure why they balk at paying for said guest. Presumably so. Dave made sure he got his money's worth! As it was 7am-ish - and my pal Theo wasn't with us - we thought it was too early for alcohol!

All that said, it was still a much more pleasant way to spend the hour before heading to the gate as it is a nice lounge, and the Wi-Fi (which still didn't work on the phone - it hadn't a month ago when I went to Florida) worked fine with my tablet this time. Good thing as I had to tweet my pals about my departure!



Boarding was fairly painless and we set off on our first leg - a 7 hour 31 minute flight across the Atlantic Ocean. Film choices were pretty dull, but with writing up another of my tours the time passed reasonably well. I watched Taken 2 with Liam Neeson and was surprised how much I enjoyed it. It kind of fizzled out at the end, but was gripping in places, albeit a little contrived. It's a movie, the whole thing is contrived!

   

On arrival at Newark, things took a turn for the worse. We landed early 11.33am instead of 12noon, which was a good thing because our next flight departure was 1.30pm, boarding from 12.40pm. Well, we hit the immigration hall at 11.50pm and uh-oh, the place was packed. We'd had 3 hours and no checked bags last time, so of course it took no more than ten minutes to get through immigration. This time time was tighter and we had checked bags. Sigh. Always the way.

Well, we snaked our way back and forth, back and forth through the relatively well-moving queue (and being in the 9th row on the plane helped too!) we finally got through and into the baggage claim area at 12.50pm. Hmm. Tick tock. Our bags were waiting for us so it was through customs and into bag recheck where the guy took our bags and told us to hurry up! No need to tell us!

Good job we know the ropes, we dashed up the escalator to wait for the monorail-shuttle to take us from Terminal B to C. Eventually it came (probably two minutes but it seemed like an age), then we rushed down to the Terminal C security checkpoint. I'd called the UK and ancient assistant Noreen was on the case with our gate number 102, which, fortunately for us, was the nearest gate to security. Phew!

While waiting in the marginally faster Priority line for Security, we made a game plan that whichever human was first through security, they would dash to the gate and - if necessary - lie in front of the plane (metaphorically at least!) This would give the others time to catch up. Di and I headed the charge. Unfortunately, when it was Dave's turn through security, the security folks decided to have a chat, so he was a few minutes longer.

We made it! We got to the gate at about 1.20pm and the gate was still open. Paul went ahead onto the plane with the bags while Di waited for Dave - the lady at the gate said he was the last one (though technically, we weren't late - just)! Talk about cutting it fine, but she was very nice. She could also see my team were there with laptops in hand, shoes undone, belts off having run straight from security without stopping to put all the stuff back in the bags before getting to the gate.

We got to our seats and mostly fell in a big heap. They were ready to close the doors behind us so there was only time to send a quick text to the ancient one so she'd know we made it and they were ready to go. I will add, they left the gate early so we didn't hold anyone up. I typed this four hours into a 10.5 hour flight from Newark to Honolulu and we had no idea if the luggage made it or not! Hey ho. Who needs luggage? Important stuff - money, cameras and me, of course, were all in the carry on.

Of course the plan had been to grab some food and drink for the trip at the airport, or snack in the lounge, but that didn't happen. I'd had the foresight to pack some snacks though so I figured I'd be okay - the assistants would have to fend for themselves! What a boss, eh? At least there was power on both flights so plenty of time for website work (which is slow going, I'll admit) and with loads of films to watch, there was still nothing on! Well, not much. I watched a pleasant little film called A Cinderella Story and then Roman Holiday with Gregory Peck and Audrey Hepburn.

I did take a few photos on the flight - not hugely exciting though.

   

I saw some weird cloud formations that I took photos of for you, and I made my assistant take one so you could see I was working hard (and snacking).

   

As we approached the West Coast, I think (according to the Flight Map) that we flew over San Francisco. As we headed out over the Pacific, the clouds looked like a real weather map!

   

We eventually arrived at Honolulu Airport at about 6pm local time. As we'd cleared customs in New Jersey we just had to pick up our bags (if they had arrived!) and find our way to a shuttle bus to the hotel. We'd booked our own United flights this time (saving several hundred pounds) but this meant we didn't get the airport transfers included. Wasn't sure if I'd get a lei when we arrived, so I packed my own!



We followed signs for Ground Transportation which took us outside, but that was it. No further indications what to do/where to go? There were taxis, but we prefer to shuttle as it's cheaper (usually). Eventually a shuttle bus arrived and we told the driver where we wanted to go - he sent us round the corner (still no signage that I saw).

We were greeted by half a dozen folks clad in red Hawaiian shirts who took our money and put us on the next available bus.

Our hotel was the Sheraton Princess Ka'iulanu (the Princess K) in Waikiki and it took us about half an hour to get there (with a few drop offs before us). Not bad - a huge lobby, no one waiting so we checked in quickly. As always happens Paul and Di had to swap rooms with Dave as they always put them together because their surname is the same - they always assume Di and Dave are the couple but they're brother and sister.

Room keys sorted we headed up. We were in rooms next door to each other. Fortunately, for my assistants, there were two beds so I got mine and they got the other. We had a big flat screen TV, plenty of lights, quite a bit of room, but no Wi-Fi (which lost them a Ted!) as well as a balcony, but being dark, we had no idea of what we had a view.

 

I knew there was a Cheesecake Factory across the road but we didn't really want that much food, so decided to go to the nearby California Pizza Kitchen instead. Besides, Di had a coupon for a free appetizer! We had a beer and checked the menu while we waited half an hour for a table.

   

Once seated, we ordered our free small plate of fried macaroni and cheese (same principle as mozzarella sticks, but containing mac and cheese) which was pretty good, though not as hot as I would've liked. Then we ordered our pizzas.

When the pizzas arrived Dave's was a bit weird - a Club Pizza (like a club sandwich on a pizza I guess) but it looked pretty nasty - a lot of lettuce and avocado piled up on a pizza base. Seems there was also supposed to be bacon and tomato but they looked pretty hard to track down. Glad I didn't order that! On seeing this concoction I decided I'd share Di's California Veggie pizza - now that was normal - and nice!

 

We thought we'd be taking some back to the room but despite it being about 5am (UK time) we managed to polish off the lot - even Dave with his freaky lettuce pizza! They dropped a Ted because of the wait, and a mix-up with the appetizer (they forgot our order, it wasn't very hot when it did arrive and then they tried to charge us twice for it!)

We returned to the hotel shortly afterwards - just a block or two away - and retired for the evening. We had to be up for a 8.30am for a briefing from the Archers Tour Director, according to notes she'd left for us when we picked up the room keys. Yawn. Early night - at midnight...Hawaii time.



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