Hawaii Day 7/ Home (2006-11-18)
All good things come to an end and we said goodbye to Hawaii. Our transport to the airport required us to be at the pick-up spot at ten to noon, so we had time to have lunch before we left. We thought we could do pizza again, so off to Round Table we went at 11 am after checking out of the hotel. Our order took 25 minutes (normally 20 minutes) to arrive at our table which meant we had to wolf down the Steak Supreme pizza and then hurried back to the pick-up point. We made it just in time. Whew!To our surprise, we got a stretch limousine to take us to the
airport. Wow. There're real crystal glasses, goblets and a
decanter on the inside panel. Fancy. The ride only took
half an hour, about half the time it took on the reversed route the day
we arrived. Like everywhere else in Honolulu, the airport was
inundated with Japanese tourists. Plenty of Japanese staff was
helping with the check-in procedures which ran very smoothly and at
lightening speed. There was no security check, just a weight
station where you plop your suitcase on the scale to make sure it's
under 50 lbs. We had two suitcases, but only one was asked to be
weighed.
Honolulu airport's departure area is quite small. Not much to
see while we waited for our flight. At 2:30 pm, we boarded.
I didn't see one single Caucasian passenger at the gate, there was a
handful of Chinese and the rest was Japanese. The flight was
pretty uneventful which is a good thing. The meal was again,
pretty tasty. The chicken breast was tender and surprisingly
juicy and smoky sitting in a pool of yummy BBQ sauce. I ate everything
except the fake mashed potato which tasted like chemicals and totally
sucked. Dessert was a packet of mint chip chocolate cookies which
was ten thousand times better than those yucky cakes which so often
pretend to be real cakes in the meal tray.
An hour before we landed, the captain announced that turbulence was
foreseen and breakfast (soba noodles and fresh fruit!) service was
scraped! He said this was to ensure the safety of the crew and
passengers. Personally I only felt A minute of centrifugal bumpiness,
two minutes tops, not the long-lasting and life-threatening turbulence
he scared us with. But, whatever
you say, Chief. Did they
have to throw out all the soba noodles and fruit? Waaah.
The plane touched down at 5:45 pm and idled for 30 minutes on the
tarmac before we deplaned. The earliest local train out of Narita
departed at 7:30 pm and we didn't get to Ueno () till 8:50 pm. We
ate ramen there and dragged our tired bodies home in steady rain.
We went to bed close to midnight. KL went straight to work the
next day at 7 am. He is Superman.
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