The Second Day Back

It is not unusual to have a good vacation if you planned it. It is not unusual to have a bad vacation with others if you did not plan it. It is rare to have a great vacation, but this past two weeks was just that. We jointly planned the time spent, we did spend some time apart, and I have reached a mellowness in my old age that accepts not getting to see everything or do everything that is in the plans.  There are a number of reasons, which I will not go into, that this trip with son and daughter-in-law could have been difficult, but it looks like we were all good and on best behavior and parted with loving hugs and kisses.  It will be a cherished memory for me forever.  We also had the parents of the daughter-in-law along, and that was a nice event as this trip was more than special for them.  They had never traveled to the Hawaiian Islands.  We spent one week on Oahu and one week on The Big Island.

I did not take enough photos of the food, because I am not thinking of taking photos when food is put in front of me.  I am super thinking of stuffing my face!  We ate many different places, but the best eating was in the hole-in-the-wall local places.  The hotels offered good food but that was also very expensive.  We ate one night at our favorite high-end restaurant, Roys, and were greatly disappointed.  As disappointed as we had been with one of its sister restaurants here in the Mid-Atlantic.  Gotta look for a new anniversary venue, I guess.  But the freshness of the fruits and seafood were never a disappointment no matter where we ate. 

And smoothies and shave ice are the perfect treats after a hot and sweaty hike and eating outside is the best!

I am currently downloading the 1000+ photos that will give me something to play with during the cold winter days ahead.  Right now the weather outside is a perfect dry fall day and I will not want to miss that in the coming weeks.  Such a nice day that a poet could write about it.

Our return was delayed by 4 hours and thus we missed our connection in San Francisco on to the East Coast.  This means that an eight hour time on planes and in airports became 18 hours!  It seems that a computer problem prevented the air traffic controllers from tracking the majority of planes flying over the Pacific!  We were glad that they paused and then seemed to assign planes various altitudes as they left Honolulu airport.  At least I 'think' that is how the Captain explained it.  I had downloaded a couple of movies to my Kindle and was glad as the United wi-fi was also not working!!  United did give each of us a $20 voucher for food at the airport because of the delay.  $20 does not go very far if you order yogurt, fresh fruit, granola, coffee, and a pastry??  Blueberries out of San Francisco are really sweet, though.