Honolulu

Today was an almost stressful day, as I noticed Ted was wide awake before 6am. When I asked what was wrong, he told me that our flight for Thursday has now dwindled down to 12 people, meaning our chance of getting away home on that day was slowly disappearing. If we didn’t find flights somewhere soon, we’d be stuck in Hawaii even longer!

We both frantically had a look online and Ted managed to find an airfare on Wednesday heading to Auckland, New Zealand. I similarly found an airfare from Auckland direct to Adelaide so we swallowed our pride, and bought full fare tickets for our trip home. They’re more expensive than staff travel, but without all the stress and anxiety.

After that drama, we headed to Ross for Less and bought another suitcase, mainly to replace the broken backpack I’ve been using since this holiday started. Bags are a lot cheaper here, so it was a good opportunity to increase our luggage supply!

Afterwards, we decided to go to Hula’s for a quick drink which didn’t quite go to plan. We met a few locals whom we spoke to briefly, who then decided to include us in a round of shots! That broke the ice, so when they invited us to join them at Bacchus afterwards, we happily accepted.

We ended up staying there for a while and having another round of shots, which isn’t as ideal as it sounds as we had both decided earlier we would drink less alcohol from now on! We then continued onto Inbetween, another bar we remember from our early days in Hawaii. Our original three friends needed to depart after that, mainly as they were too drunk, but we befriended a lady couple who were fun to talk to.

Ted was determined to go back to Bacchus as they had trivia that night but, as we’d arrived late, we needed to complete the first round of questions without enough thought. We got a total shock when we saw we were seated next to a guy named Lee, whom we’d befriended almost 20 years ago, and hadn’t parted with on the best terms (long story!). To describe it as awkward was an understatement, but we still managed to make polite conversation. As for the trivia, we came second last, only beating the team that arrived even later than us.

Despite trying to save money, we bought a pizza at the pub for dinner but otherwise didn’t have a late night.Read more