Waikiki Wanderings

Claudine, I promised a shorter travelogue than your Tripoli trip. Since I was gone only 5 days, it is bound to be more brief.

It's a six hour flight from LV to Honolulu, so I stupidly spent an extra $25 each for two exit row seats. What a 5'6" man and 5'1" woman need with extra leg room is probably worth debating; however, the deal was done.

This particular aircraft, instead of an exit window, had extra exit doors mid-ship that came equipped with an attached evacuation slide. This was enclosed inside of a plastic covering attached to the inside of the door. An interesting feature was the seams around the covering that allowed in outside air, which at 25,000 feet is probably the same temp as dry ice.

Now, six hours with ice-cold air blowing on your lower extremities is like hooking yourself up to intravenous refrigeration fluid. Compounding the discomfort was my decision to wear shorts and flip-flops on this trip between warm weather climes. I have never been so cold except for once while shoveling snow in Boston and accidentally locking myself out of the house.

After we landed and received emergency treatment for frostbite, our daughter, whom we were visiting, dropped us at our Waikiki beach hotel just in time for bed.

We've been there a few times and know an inexpensive joint for breakfast, so headed there as soon as we got up.

We spent the days on the beach, evenings and the weekend with our daughter. Gwen has a $215 K condo, the size of which must be 200 square feet easy, overlooking the Ala Wai canal. Only two people can visit at a time, but only one can sit down.

We made the required trip to the north shore for some scuba and grilled shrimp from one of the many shack-like places that do a land office business on the weekends. Pretty good stuff, though don't ask for their health inspection certificate. Same for the hole-in-the-wall place in Chinatown where we had dinner.

Our last day we took a catamaran into Waikiki Bay for some great views of the city and Diamond Head.

Took the red-eye back, but had my exit row seats refunded and reassigned to some unsuspecting tourist from Peoria.