I'm back from my vacation!
Full disclosure, I've been back for a week already, but I didn't have the time or the energy to write anything because of jet lag, backup of work stuff, and what I can only assume is some kind of radioactive pollen flying around my end of town due to the unseasonably warm weather that is trying to kill me, but I'm back all the same!
Have you been wondering where I went? You'll never guess in a million years. Unless we're Facebook friends, or if I texted you photos, of course. :)
I FINALLY GOT TO GO TO HAWAII!!!!!! Not an EPCOT version, not a town in Tennessee or Georgia called Hawaii, but the real, actual state of Hawaii. The one in the Pacific Ocean!
Last year, Steve and I went to Florida for Disney (of course) and for a conference, and we accidentally stayed in a Hilton Resort property. I say accidentally because we didn't know it was a resort; we just thought it was a nice hotel until we actually got there and saw it was a full-on condo. While we were in the lobby, a lady asked if we wanted to attend one of their time-share events (we didn't) and if so, they'd give Steve an obscene amount of points on his credit card to raise his status (which he wanted) so we agreed, knowing full well we didn't want a time share. We attended, sat through the torture of the presentation and repeatedly told them we didn't want the timeshare. However, they did give us the option of paying a one-time fee that would allow us to visit any other of their time-share resort properties in the US for a reduced cost to see if we'd like to reconsider. We still didn't want a time-share, but it was a good deal, so we did that. We knew they had some resorts in nice places, so why not?
Part of me didn't think we'd actually use the voucher, but since we paid for it, and it would be our 25th anniversary that November, I made the call that we should use the voucher for an anniversary trip, and I told him I wanted to visit Hawaii. Shockingly, he agreed. The only catch was that we couldn't take the trip on our anniversary because he was traveling for work in November, plus the holidays were right after that, so we planned the trip around my birthday instead.
My job was to pick which resort we were going to visit, as they had different ones on different islands. I initially told him that any one of them would be fine (this is important to remember) but after talking with one of my friends who was in the Navy and stationed out there, who went through the brochures with me and told me what was on each island, I decided O'ahu would be the best bet. Yes, it was touristy, and yes it would be crowded, but I figured that we might as well try that one since it was the one most people visited and we'd see if we liked it. It would have lots to do, and we'd be able to see all of the things we'd heard about, like Pearl Harbor, Waikiki, and the like. So I went back and told Steve to book the resort on that island.
February finally rolled around and it was time to go on the trip. I was peeing-in-my-pants excited, not gonna lie. I even offered to splurge and get the really good first-class seats on the flight from LAX to the island (they were not available on the Huntsville to Atlanta, or Atlanta to Los Angeles flights) which made the last leg of the trip awesome. We were 10 minutes to landing when I noticed something off about our destination, though.
We were watching the flight tracker when I saw we were landing at the Kona Airport. Now, if you aren't familiar with Kona, it is not on the island of O'ahu, it is on the Big Island of Hawai'i. I mentioned this to Steve and he said "Well, they're probably dropping off some passengers there and then going on to O'ahu. Besides, I booked the flight at the airport closest to our resort." However, our tickets ended in Kona. This is how we realized that he had booked a resort on a completely different island than we thought. We had no idea where we were going.
We landed late in the day, and the shuttle took us to the car rental place. As we drove, there was NOTHING around. No lights, very few cars, and it looked like miles and miles of nothing at all around us. I wasn't angry, yet, but I was confused. We picked up the car, headed towards our resort, and checked in. Still, nothing was around us. No cities, no houses, and not even a convenience store. Everything we could see was closed. We were hungry, but the resort restaurant was closed. Our condo was very nice, but I was on edge, which made Steve on edge, and so he decided he didn't want to hear me freak out about not knowing where we were, so he went to bed. I followed. Once I got settled, I cried.
Now, before you say "Oh, you spoiled bitch, you were in Hawaii, but not on the right island so you cried? Boo-fucking-hoo" let me just explain it like this: For 8 months, I'd planned on being in O'ahu. My ex-Navy friend and I had talked at length about the things to do there. What to see, what to schedule once we were there, places to go...all of that. He and his wife even put together and texted a long list of things for us to do and see while we were there. That had been the plan all along. Now I didn't even know where I was in relation to anything, much less all the things that I'd been planning couldn't be done because were nowhere near any of it. It was black as pitch, seemingly in the middle of nowhere, I hadn't even looked at the Big Island on a map, and the map I did see on the plane showed nothing that made sense. Imagine booking a trip to New Orleans, making plans to see very specific things, and when the plane touches down, you realize you're in Montana. That's how I felt. I wasn't angry with Steve, believe it or not. We'd sat down and talked about the trip! We talked about the reservations! The biggest problem was that I had told him to reserve any of the resorts to visit, he picked what he thought was the nicest one, I went back later to tell him that O'ahu was where we should go, which he agreed to and said he'd already made the reservation, and the entire time, we both thought we were talking about the same place. A failure to communicate, if you will.
So, yeah, I cried. However, if there is one thing you need to know about me, is that I generally need to overreact at first about anything that upsets me and then I can think rationally afterwards. I have to clear out the panic bugs and then I can move on quite decently! So that's what I did. I woke up in the middle of the night, made lunch reservations and reservations to attend a luau the next day, and went back to sleep knowing that I was going to make the best of this trip if it killed the both of us. :)
We got up, and I told him the plans I'd made. I told him I wasn't angry, just disappointed that we had to retool our plan, and that we'd have to fly by the seat of our pants for the week, which was fine with me. We, of course, had to sit through another time-share thing (which was part of the cost of being allowed to stay there) which we had purposefully scheduled first thing on our first full day so we could get it over with. We respectfully declined the offers, and then we finally got going on our Hawaii vacation!
More to come...
