Friday, September 19, 2014

40th Wedding Anniversary 64 day Round the Planet Trip- Sydney to Hawaii



Retirement has its advantages in that we had time to plan and book our trip ourselves which saved us a lot of loot.  It also helps to have a brother who can get you a great deal on a cruise from Vancouver to Alaska.  I had so much fun planning and booking the trip.  Did get Ian to double check dates and times with me so that I didn’t make mistakes.  All worked really well. We booked for 15 kg of luggage everywhere – and we made it! On last leg my bag was 16.4 (due to Ian’s books).  We are taking less next time.  Although the only things we didn’t wear was thermals in Alaska and we would always take them just in case.
Our cruise was booked first so that we had dates to work with.  We had also decided that we did not want to spend hours and hours in planes.  www.bootsnall.com was a great site to check our flights, flight plans, hours in flight and costs.  We didn’t use this for all our flights, however my brother did and it worked very well. 
Most of our accommodation was secured through booking.com and we didn’t end up with The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel at all. Not once.  We also signed up for Australian Youth Hostel Association and then booked Hostels in England as we would be travelling in the English school holidays. 
13 July 2014 – Day One
Caught the train out of Morisset for Mascot Station.  We had bumped into a guy who told us not to go to Central and get the expensive airport train.  Just go to Mascot Station and catch the bus to the airport – worked really great for $2.50 each!
Met my sister, Neroli who had flown in from Adelaide at about 12 noon.  We were very early for our 6 pm flight to Honolulu, however thought we wouldn’t leave Neroli to entertain herself for all that time.  It worked out well, as we used and sorted our Travel Sim Phone etc.
Jetstar dropped us into Honolulu early on the Sunday morning.  We popped into Waikiki Beach for a look around after booking into the Waikiki Wave Hotel.  Phew!!  Could not move on the beach – so walked around the town and familiarized ourselves with eating places and supermarkets.  We swam at the beach about three times in the protected walled in area as it has no stones and rocks there.  No warnings about the rocks and Neroli got her foot punctured by a starfish.  Not terrible, but not nice either.
We had lots of fun in Waikiki – took a really good tour of the island – Discover Hawaii Tours which picked us up at 6 am for a trip to Pearl Harbour – emotional and impressive exhibits of that most dreadful bombing.  From 10 am we started up the West coast, ate pineapple ice cream at the Dole Plantation.  Viewed lots of mountains and beaches and ate a lovely fresh lunch which they preordered for us on a cattle Ranch. Called into a coffee plantation just in time for a much needed coffee – tasted lots of varieties.  Needed the boost as after viewing beautiful scenery we were dropped at the hotel at 6 pm.  Good value tour.
Lots of fun in Waikiki the hopon, hopoff bus for $2 was great.  Saw most of the city and could go shopping if we wanted too.  The three of us are NOT shoppers.







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