The Adventures of Sunsette -- Texas Travels, Part II— Apr. 12

[Alliecat]

"Aloha, everybody!
Mum has finally started sorting nearly 2000 photos (she lost count) from 3 devices, so here we go with some more of the story of our Hawaii adventure!
(This is gonna take a while...)

You may recall we started off in a cold hotel room on a yukky snowy night..."



"Mum ventured out in the snowstorm to a chaotically noisy restaurant, and got a stupid amount of food for one person... (what's with these not-we-sized serving sizes??) ... and she hates waste so she had to figure out what to do with it the next day.  Another bag to carry on the plane, and eat before we hit U.S. customs."


"Oh, and there was a bug in the spinach.
Live."



"Here we are at our first airport, waaaaay too early in the morning."
"Wait, where's the rest of the plane...?"



"Toronto.  Yuk.  Marginally warmer.  Tropical dreams about to come true..."



"Finally, a trip on a bigger plane.  We liked the seat-back screen.  Mum smoked all the previous trivia-game players.  We liked watching where we were, since the entire country, coast to coast, was covered in cloud and we didn't get to see ANY of the Rockies."



"Talk to me, Goose!"



"Vancouver airport has a big aquarium display."



"And there was a Chinese New Year display..."



"...and some cool art by native sculptors.  This is made out of whale bone. The longer you look, the more details you see."



"... and this chess board..."



"...and, um... these bears."



"Mum found a quiet spot for our SIX-hour wait.
We are sadly aware that if we lived on this side of the country, we could BE in Hawaii in just six hours."



"Mum shot this because she thought it would make a cool doll outfit.  Anybody wanna try it?"



"On our way again.  Mum was going to do a Thing where we took pictures in every airport we passed through, all NINE of them for the trip, but some were just way too much of a rush and in some she was too tired."



"We get our own seat?!!  Wheeeeee!
... Mum was pretty bummed though, that some guy came and sat in the previously-unbooked aisle seat, so she couldn't lie down.  The last few hours were pretty hard.  We could snooze in our case travel pod, but Mum was awake about 25 hours."



"Finally!  We're here!!  The beach in Kailua-Kona."



"Of course Mum had to photograph this shop."



"And we guess this is one of the alley cats."



"Here we are at a vanilla farm in Kona.  Vanilla orchids by the zillions, and we got free ice cream!"



"Seriously, how could one not want to live in a place with this much wonderful flora?!"



"This is the Ocean Rider seahorse farm in Kona.  We did not get to go swimming with them."



"And we went shopping.  This is where Mum got us the surfboards.  (And later she was mad because they were so much cheaper in Waikiki.)  She introduced us to the shop owner, and she took our picture too."






"Our first beach visit, in Kona."



"...with a we-sized tree."



"It's not really pono to take rocks and stuff (although the source of this belief is unclear)... so this was how Mum ended up taking souvenirs of sand from all the beaches we visited!"

"Aside from the bugs and the screeching midnight rooster, our first Airbnb was good.  Alo and I are getting much better acquainted."


"Well, this is pretty sweet digs."
"Wow. We're in Hawaii."
"Yup..."