Day 1: Arrival in Honolulu

I told Paul on the day we got married that we should aim to be on a beach in Hawaii for our 25th anniversary. And lo and behold we've made it happen! We are spending the next 12 days on land and at sea, island hopping courtesy of Norwegian Cruise Line. We wil begin in Oahu and move onto Maui, the Big Island and then Kauai. 

We set off from Charlotte early on Wednesday morning, first stop Dallas, second stop Honolulu. In Dallas we enjoyed a glass of wine (can't break with our vacation tradition!) while people watching and catching sight of some real Texas Cowboys, clad in the obligatory snake skin boots and 10 gallon hats to prove it!

As we boarded the plane it was evident it was an absolute dinosaur of an aircraft! It's been many a year since I was on a plane with TV monitors that hung from the ceiling (and too distant and tiny to see without a pair of binoculars!), and that had ash trays in the armrests!  Checked out the window to make sure we weren't relying on propellers to get us across the Pacific! And evidently I've been spoiled by flying internationally because even though this was a 9 hour flight there wasn't so much as a free bag of pretzels served! Boo American Airlines! It was a long flight but we arrived none the worse for wear, apart from bruised knee caps thanks to the people in front of us throwing themselves back in their seats constantly!!

We arrived in Oahu on a warm, breezy evening and we were greeted by the Norwegian rep, presented with the traditional Hawaiin lei, and escorted to our hotel shuttle. As we drove along the freeway and then the downtown Waikiki roads the traffic was reminiscent of that back home, the traffic we're trying to escape! However, this is the most touristy part of our trip so we'll just enjoy the hubbub before we head off to the tranquility of the other islands!

Even though we'd been travelling for 18+ hours by now we did a quick change and headed out to explore the resort. We checked out the pools and ended up in a tiki bar with live music before finally heading back to the room and collapsing into bed. Early start for our first excursion tomorrow!