Day 5 - Lots of Driving and PITA Husband!

Good LORD yesterday was a long day. And Tony was in BIG trouble!

You know.. I can barely remember what happened yesterday morning..

First of all we went to the Scrapbooking store for Gloria. We got there, parked (wierd ass parking meter system, there was this big board with numbers and slots, and you had to fold your 1 dollar bills up and push them through the slot associated with the number you parked in, very old tech!) (As a complete tangent, our local Westfield Shopping centre car park has the funkiest new parking system! Every parking spot has this light above it, and when there is no car parked there, the light is green, when its filled its red so you can see which spots are empty from the side as you pass the section. It has this sensor that detects whether there is something below it or not. Its bloody fantastic! Then as you drive through the place there are signs in each aisle saying how many spots are available! Is that not the most fantastic thing you have ever heard of!?)

Anyway, back to Hawaii..

So we park and go the the shop. Its Sunday, so obviously its closed. Bah!

Back in the car we get and off to the Sea Life Park.

Now this was very exciting cause one of our most favourite movies is 50 First Dates, which was filmed in Hawaii and in the Sea Life Park, which is where Adam Sandler's character worked. We took some photos in a couple of locations we recognised from the movie.

We had a fabulous time there. Josie thoroughly enjoyed the Dolphin shows, and the Seals and Penguins (Penguins in Hawaii?! I hope they have their sun cream on! Also one of the penguins - Willie - was from the movie!) (Another tangent! I have stocked up on sun lotion here! Why you may ask? Cause they have this funky spray on lotion that comes out as a clear mist and not as cream, so that you don't need to really rub it in, you just spray it on. Its fabulous. So I think we will have to add that to the US products we get Harri and Alison to bring/send, along with Edge shaving Gel and Foaming Hand Soap ;-)

Right, back to Hawaii again..

So the SLP was fabulous, and we fed turtles, and watched the shows and had lunch. It was great and I think Seaworld will definitely have to be a goer in California! Feel guilty dragging Harri to Seaworld again, especially since we are going to Disneyland and Universal Studios, but I just can't bare for Josie not to see SHAAAAMU!

After we practically crawled out of the SLP (with Tony having also strained his back carrying Josie, my back is heaps better tho, thanks for asking Karen! ;-) the plan was to continue on driving up the coast, around the top, and down to the North Shore for dinner.

Of course things with us are never simple.

May I stress that no matter what he says, what his excuses are, and who he tries to blame (ME!), TONY was on directions, and MARI was driving!

So off we went.

We drove for about 20minutes before we hit the first point where Tony had been too busy staring at the beautiful scenery to keep an eye on the map and make sure he knew where we needed to go in the event of any turn offs etc. So after two u-turns and a left (not in that order) Tony finally proclaims us "right" (this means everything is now proceding correctly in "yobbo").

About 20 minutes later we arrived back in Waikiki... HUH!? Weren't we meant to be going NORTH!?

Turns out we had gone straight when we should have turned and had gotten on the wrong highway and had circled around the back of Honolulu and returned from the opposite side from which we started! In his defense, street signs are funny here. Thats all the defense he gets.


By this time it was about 5pm but Tony really wanted to go to the North Shore for dinner, which is fine, but at that point we should have gone through the middle of Hawaii up to the North Shore, and then come back after Dinner along the coast, which was longer. But, wanting to see the scenery Tony was unable to abandon his earlier plan and so we retraced our way back to the point we had made the wrong...lack of turn...and got onto the correct coastal highway.

Unfortunately the "highway" was more of a "main road" (sometimes one lane each way!) and by the time we got there it was about 7pm, Josie was asleep and had not had any dinner. We figured that she would wake up for some food soon so we stopped at a Food(land? planet? mart? something..) and I got her some breadrolls, ham, cherry tomatos and bananas. Just as I got back into the car, missy woke up, which was good cause then she had something to eat, which was a relief.

At this point we decided to just go back home and have dinner there cause it was just getting too late.

Soooooo... you would think that this was where the story ends.. oh no..

We hit the highway, which was great cause at 55mph (90kph), we would eventually get back to Waikiki in about an hour, but of course Josie hadn't been to the toilet in a long while and havign been asleep for some time earlier when we eventually thought to stop beside the (now real) highway we discovered she had already quietly gone some time ago (probably in her sleep). So.. well.. wet rental child seat.. uh oh! And to my great pleasure Tony discovered this when he carried her out of the car to the roadside to go. Tony cleaned the seat up when we got back and it dried overnight on the balcony.

So we got back to the hotel and we were just starving. Josie was still up and full of beans so we went to one of the restaurants at the hotel and had dinner. It was yummy but we got out of there around 1030pm so Josie didn't actually get to bed till about 1130pm!!! Luckily she had that couple of hours sleep in the car.

Needless to say we all woke up pretty late this morning.. 9am when we had a lovely call from Harri ;-)

Soooooo.. that brings us to now.. Its 1pm, Tony, Josie and Gloria have gone to the Scrapbooking shop to give it another go and I am having a few hours to myself to calm down from yesterdays shenanigans.. lets just say I am OVER driving on the wrong side of the road ;-) Tony's turn today. Wonder how he's going.. lol..

When they get back today we are going swimming for the last time in the hotel pool, and then packing for tomorrow. We have to be at the airport at 830am tomorrow morning for Gloria's international flight back to Sydney. Mat don't forget to pick your mother up from the airport ;-)


~Aloha~