ALOHA - 18th DECEMBER

We woke up in the sunny and worm morning. First we were posing a bit with the lei’s we’ve got and then went to the market. This time I took the camera with me!

The main market is located near the football stadium (American football of course).

Even though we were there during the week it was quite colorful and alive. I loved it and I will definitely go back during the weekend also because prices are much lower that anywhere else. But until than here are some shots…

After a couple of hours we went through Honolulu. Here’s a quick look…

…and these are student dorms...

We finally got to Waikiki and I immediately went into the sea. It was a long way in I have to say ‘cause I was already quite far from the shore but the water was still below my waist – for those who don’t know me – I’m rather small…

So there in this shallow water I started talking to an American. From Ohio he said. He was, naturally, acting really smart but I was not surprised when he didn’t know anything about Slovenia and Yugoslavia. According to him we were a part of USSR. So like many times before I repeated the history and tried to show him that we are a part of Europe. I luckily managed to do so and he started talking about Europe. He said he’d like to go there but that he’s afraid ‘cause there’s a lot of Anti-Americanism in Muslim countries – I’m not sure if he really thought that European countries are Muslim countries or he just mixed it all up… But that’s not important so I ignored this comment and just affirmed that there’s quite a lot of Anti-Americanism in Europe and that it’s logical. But at the same time I pointed out that he shouldn’t be worried about it ‘cause Europeans are hospitable. But he was still looking at me with skepticism – I got a feeling he thinks people in Europe would gladly kill him if he’d set a foot on that ground. So besides the weather that was it. (Have in mind that I mentioned in the beginning that he was American – that says everything.)

On Waikiki you can see all sorts of people. Japanese who are afraid of the sun…

… men in white socks…

…kids plying with the send…

…and treasure hunters (but that’s another story)…

We stayed on Waikiki until the not very beautiful sunset and took the night walk around…

ALOHA - 17th DECEMBER

We woke up not so early ‘cause we were quite exhausted from the day before. The morning was cloudy but at least it was not raining. We soon headed towards nearest beach called - Kailua Bay. When we got there I was a bit disappointed ‘cause the sea was not as blue as I’ve seen on my friend’s pictures. The problem was that it was raining for more than a week so that the see was mixed with the sand and it looked a bit brown.

But anyway the beach was still sandy, with palm trees and typical life guard houses. At that moment I already missed my camera. I left it in the house ‘cause I thought it was better first to only explore the area. Mistake!!! Big one!!! And I sure won’t repeat it.

But we had fun anyway (picture taken by Mario; from left to right Ana, Manca, me and Tjaša)…

It was a bit windy so we decided to go to the North Shore to watch the surfers. On the way we stopped to see the view of green Hawaiian forests and that’s when I borrowed the camera from my friend Manca and took this picture…

After around one hour driving firstly through Honolulu and then across the island we got to there. We stopped at turtle coast were we saw a big pile of rock. At least so it looked like until we approached and saw that in between there were lying a sea turtle, which was typical and a seal which was a rare coincidence…

We continued to North where we were talking and observing the sea–sand game. That’s when the waves cover the sand and the bubbles appear…

…after that the wave moves back and the remains slowly disappear somewhere into the sand…

After a quick snack we ended up on the Sunset beach. Unfortunately this time we were too early to actually see the sunset, but well stay there longer some other time. Instead we were observing surfers (picture taken by Ana).

The day ended in the shop (more abut that topic some other time) and home made pancakes. Mmmm…

(I'm sorry I can't put the photos up here more often but I have some problems with the net... I hope it'll be better soon...)

ALOHA!

But let’s firstly start with my long long trip… All together it took more than one day and it started already at 1.38 in the 16^th of December when a friend woke me up after 2 hours sleeping that she’ll pick me up in 10 minutes… So I hurried, dressed up and we were already on our way first to Zagreb.

We were there at around 4 (we didn’t want to risk missing the plane for some stupid traffic or something). So we came there and surprise surprise everything was closed until 5… But OK… We waited, were then first in the line to check-in and at 6.55 were on the plane. This was just a short flight to Frankfurt so the plane was rather small but the flight still comfortable and nice, with the exception of 4 year old girl that was screaming all the time and guess what… She was sitting right behind us…

In the Frankfurt we had exactly one hour and half to change the plane and it was just enough, not even a minute too much since we had to come from one side of the airport to the other and just as we finally got to the most remote gate the queue for boarding was already so long that we had to wait and before you know it, we were already up on the plane and this time it was huge.

We flew across North Sea, Iceland, Greenland and Canada. The most interesting thing was that our sunrise lasted for at least 5 hours because of the way we were flying right in the edge of the day and the night.

Unfortunately we didn’t have luck to sit by the window but it was still ok. Our neighbors were a nice couple from India, living in Dubai and going to see their son in San Francisco where we were headed.

We were mainly listening to the music, watching nice movies on the TV, some were also able to sleep quite a lot, but I only closed my eyes for an hour or so… I don’t know why, I liked the movies I guess… And I also liked observing two babies in front of us. One was a boy and the other wan a girl. Already in the beginning of the flight I said that they will definitely fall in love in these 11 hours and 35 minutes on the plane. And they have! In the end they were talking with each other in to me unknown baby’s language. So cute!

Under us were the see, snow and finally American land. And the view that opened was extraordinary. So we spend quite some hours standing in the back of the plane looking through the window.

But take a look at it yourselves…

Try to find the heart on this one...

The borders between the properties in the USA are straight and can be many times seen even from 11 kilometers above...

And I'd really like to know which mountain this was...

One look at the river flow...

And the mountains...

And the last one to remind you that we are still on the plane...

We landed smoothly and on time even though we took off with a half an hour delay. Arriving in San Francisco we had to fill in millions of different forms containing almost all the information you can think of, but that was not everything. Even though we don’t need visa we still had to give fingerprints (all the fingers) and they even took our picture (it probably looked terrible after the flight). But ok, at least the guy let us in… So we spend 4 hours that we had walking around drinking water with a coffee flavor as my travel buddy Ana would say.

And soon we were on the last flight to Hawai’i. Again not by the window and instead next to the not very pleasant American that thought he was the best and the smartest… But the mood got better when we’ve heard the first message from the pilots: “Hello everyone! Welcome on the flight to Hawai’i. If you don’t understand something just ask your neighbor or our personnel. Don’t worry and be happy!” In the next moment we’ve heard a bang from somewhere underneath us and it started to smell of the gas, but obviously it was nothing serious. All in all the flight was nice. We played a game and I spend almost the entire time sleeping. After 5 hours and 25 minutes at 20.20 we landed in Honolulu Hawai’i!!! By the way it was still the 16^th of December ‘cause in this direction we got 11 hours!

Our friends were waiting for us and they gave us lei!!! Yeeeeee because that is not something you get as soon as you step of the plane as the Hollywood movies would like to make us think! But we got it anyway… :D

The rest of the evening was spent eating pizza (a good one I have to say) and chatting since we haven’t seen each other for almost 4 months. We fell asleep at around 2 in the night.