Hawaii 2008!!!

Hello all,

Firstly I must apologise as I did say in a different thread that I would have my trip report up by Monday, and it is now Wednesday morning…but better late than never!

This is the first half of my report…second half will follow shortly once I have sorted the images out for it!

So, here goes…

In case you were not aware, I spent two weeks in Hawaii. It was a special trip arranged by my grandparents to celebrate my sisters 18th and my grandfather’s 75th birthdays which occurred in May. What made it even more special was that whilst I was away, both my Dad and I also celebrated our birthdays as well!

11/07/08:

We arrived at Heathrow at around 7.30am and met up with the rest of our group (my grandparents and cousin!) outside the main entrance to Virgin Atlantic’s check-in area in Terminal 3. The area just outside the main terminal building has had a makeover and I must say it now looks very nice indeed.

We were greeted by very friendly and helpful staff, and because we had used online check-in the day before, they allowed us to use the Premium Economy check-in desks (even though we were travelling economy!). We did enquire about upgrading to Premium as Virgin sometimes have special upgrade offers on the day of departure, however, they only had one seat available and as there was eight of us in total we could not do it. The bag-drop process was reasonably quick and painless, so we headed off to security straight away. My grandmother has recently had knee-replacement surgery, so we knew we would get caught-out and she would be subject to a search. I too was selected (at random!) for a search as well.

Once in the departure lounge, we went to O’Neil’s for some breakfast. We then found some seats and waited for the screens to show us which gate we were travelling from. Eventually the screens changed stating Gate 40 was in use and that a 15-20min walk was necessary. Worried that my grandmother would struggle, we tried to find a buggy to take her to the gate, however there was no Virgin representative around to ask. Nevertheless, we enquired with a man who was sat in an American Airlines buggy, and he kindly offered to take her as he said it was very long walk! As there was enough room on the buggy, I accompanied my grandmother for the ride (I got the driver to beep his horn at my parents as we whizzed past them…lol!).

We had a couple of minutes wait before boarding commenced, and once we had sat in our seats, we were informed by the Captain that the aircraft had developed a minor technical fault on its last sector so it was late arriving into Heathrow from Dubai, and combined with the usual LHR congestion, we would be departing a little bit later than anticipated and apologised for the inconvenience. Sure enough, it was not until 12.20pm that we actually departed down runway 27L on our way to Los Angeles.

The Airbus A340-600 type aircraft that we were flying on was ‘Cover Girl’ (G-VOGE), which currently has Virgin’s old seats and configuration (more about this later!). Overall the flight was fine, great service as usual from the cabin crew and nice food. I have flown with Virgin once before, but this is the first time that I have used their ‘v-port’ IFE system, which offers a wide choice of movies and audio entertainment options. This was fantastic, as it helped to keep bordem at bay during the 10hr flight.

Upon arrival into LAX, we had to go through immigration/customs, claim our luggage and get our boarding passes for our onwards flight with Hawaiian Airlines. We had this done pretty quickly, however the airport staff at LAX were not so helpful when it came to providing directions to the check-in desks for our onward flight, but we eventually found them.

We had about a two hour wait at LAX before boarding commenced. Terminal 2 at LAX is appalling in my opinion; there are very limited facilities in the departure area, consisting of 2 shops, a newsagents and a couple of bars/cafes offering food and drink. Its a good job that we did not have an even longer wait for our next flight, as I got really bored waiting, although I did manage to read a number of chapters in my new book (‘Panic’ by Jeff Abbott), which was a bonus.

Virgin A340-600 ‘Cover Girl’ (G-VOGE):

Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 767-300ER ‘Akekeke’ (N591HA):

Our Hawaiian Airlines flight was parked right next door to the Virgin flight that we had just arrived in on, and boarding began on-time and was very quick. There was a slight delay to departure as we had to wait for some First Class passengers that were running late from a connecting flight, but their baggage had already been loaded onto the aircraft and the ground staff decided to wait for just a few moments to give the passengers a change of getting to the gate, rather than having to search the aircraft hold.

The Boeing 767-300ER type aircraft that we were flying on was ‘Akekeke’ (N591HA), which had a 2+4+2 configuration in economy. The seats were not as comfortable as on the Virgin flight, but legroom was the standard 32in, which was fine for the 5.5hr flight to Honolulu. A food and beverage service is offered about 2hrs into the flight and consisted of a choice of a cold turkey roll or hot pesto pasta. As I was not feeling very hungry at the time, I opted for the roll, which was rather dry as there was no butter. Instead I was given a sachet of mayonnaise, so that helped a bit. I had pineapple juice to drink.

The flight went rather quickly, and I managed to get a couple of hours sleep. The only major issue in general is Hawaiian’s in-flight entertainment because they charge passengers $5 for headphones (even if you use your own!) in order to watch the IFE that is shown on the main TV screens in the cabin. They do also offer a portable IFE system which offers a wider collection of movie and audio options, and this is charged at $15 per unit, so I decided to listen to my iPod instead!

Upon arrival into Honoloulu, I had expected to be greeted by staff offering the traditional lei’s (flower necklaces!) and hula dancing as I had read in a magazine that they offer a vibrant welcome but there was nobody around at all, and I assumed that this is probably because we arrived at night-time (8.30pm). After we collected our baggage, we took a transfer coach to our hotel, the Hilton Hawaiian Village.

Things did not get off to a good start at all when we arrived at the hotel because the queue at reception was massive and there were only 3 agents on the desk, all of whom seemed to work incredibly slowly. After waiting for about an hour to be served, we were told that no rooms had been assigned to us, even though the holiday had been booked over 12 months before our arrival! My grandfather understandably got rather angry with the reception agent, as we had been on the go for over 24hrs and we were all rather tired and just wanted to get to bed to rest!

After speaking with the Duty Manger we eventually established that there were no rooms that we had originally booked available because there was a big conference going on; the best that they could offer us were rooms with just one bed…so this resulted in me having to top ‘n’ tail with my brother for the night! As a gesture for the hassle, the Duty Manager offered us all a free breakfast in the morning (normally $26 per person!).

12/07/08:

Today, we were setting off on our cruise around the rest of the Hawaiian islands, but as the ship was not due to set sail until the evening, we had some time to spend exploring the hotel complex and took a stroll along Waikiki beach and stopped off at a bar which we were due to visit in the second week of our holiday for a drink!

View of Waikiki beach, with Diamond Head volcano crater in background:

A close-up of some palm trees!

Below is a brief itinerary for our cruise:

• Sat 12th – embark cruise ship; depart 8pm from Honolulu
• Sun 13th / Mon 14th – arrive 8am on 13th in Maui (Kahului); depart 6pm on 14th
• Tue 15th (my birthday!) – arrive 8am in Hilo; depart 6pm
• Wed 16th – arrive 7am in Kona; depart 6pm
• Thu 17th (my Dad’s birthday) / Fri 18th – arrive 8am on 17th in Kauai; depart 2pm on 18th
• Sat 19th – arrive 7am Honolulu; disembark cruise ship

A map showing our journey (image from NCL website http://www.ncl.com):

Our cruise ship – Pride Of America; capacity 1,900 passengers! (image from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pride_of_America):

I will not bore you all to sleep by going into great detail about the cruise itself, but all I will say is that is a fantastic way of seeing as much of each of the islands as you can. Trips can be booked through the cruise company directly or through a separate company that offers the same trips but at cheaper prices.

I managed to do loads of great activities, including snorkelling in Molokini Crater, visiting Rainbow Falls and the Volcanoes National Park in Hilo and also taking a helicopter flight around the island of Kauai. Below is a selection of images (all authors unless stated!)

Molokini Crater (image from http://www.molokini.com):

On the second day in Maui, we got up extraordinarly early and took a minibus trip to the top of Haleakala crater (10,023ft elevation!) to watch the sunrise – this was simply breath-taking, as the following images will show:

Rainbow Falls:

Whilst in Hilo, the cruise ship was docked about a mile away from Hilo airport, so I got some great views of various aircraft taking-off and landing. Interestingly, the airport is classified as an international airport, but it does not yet have any international services currently in operation!

Hawaiian Airlines Boeing 717:

Go! Bombardier CRJ200:

And a very nice surprise indeed to catch this aircraft…Aloha Boeing 737-200:

I am not sure what it was doing here, but it landed, parked up at a remote hanger and then departed about an hour later!?

Stunning views from the helicopter of the Na Pali coast on the island of Kauai:

A secluded beach (now that’s my idea of paradise!:cool:):

And finally, a nice picture to end the first half of my report – the sun’s reflection on the ocean, taken from the balcony of our stateroom on our cruise ship:

Hope you’ve enjoyed the report so far, more to follow soon!:D