Our final day, which, before it is over, will become two days rolled into one. We both slept in because we had no plans for the day so there was no point in getting up early. I was up buy 8:30 and went out on the balcony to write the post for the previous day. An hour later Erin was up as well and we began preperations to leave the Hilton. We had both decided we wanted donuts so I found a dunkin donuts near the hotel. We checked out and left our bags with the valets for the afternoon. Dunkin Donuts was a couple of blocks away so we starte walking. It soon became clear that the Dunkin Donuts was no longer there so I tried to look up where it was in relation to us. Turns out, AT&T Internet was down, we were blind in Honolulu. Right next to us was a Burger King so we decided to eat there. Internet was still out but I knew the free shuttle to Hilo Hattie stopped in front of our hotel so we started back for the Hilton. Sure enough it showed up and we were on our way to the Honolulu Hilo Hattie. We didn't need to go again, but the fact that the schuttle was free and would then take us to Ala Mona was hard to resist. We shopped a little at Hilo Hattie's, Erin found a zip up hoody, I had been looking for one the whole trip, never did find one. 45 minutes later another shuttle arrived to take people back to their hotels, but it does stop at the Ala Mona mall, the second largest mall in the U.S. With a good amount of the afternoon left to kill we began to walk around the mall. It is all outside which was neat, you walk from store to store outside and enjoy the weather. It had a strange layout and took us a while to get a handle on it, but once we did we walked every floor. We couldn't fit one more thing in our lugauge so we were not out to buy anything but we knew we wanted some neck pillows for the flight so we kept our eyes out for them. After a while it was time to eat so we went to the fourth floor where the restaurants are located and had lunch at Islands. They have burgers and salads, it was very good for our last meal in Hawaii. When we were done it was time to head back to the hotel so we went back to the ground floor. I had stopped at the Apple store to confirm the loss of AT&T's interent and used their wi-fi to get the bus scheduale so we could take the bus back to the Hilton. We were looking for route 8 and it arrived right when we did. We paid the $2.50 and boarded the bus. As we began to move into traffic Erin realized she had left her new hoody at Islands so we had to stop the bus, get off and walk all the way back to the fourth floor. Thankfully they had it. Turns out you can make one route change per ticket, so we just re-borded route 8 and went back to the hotel. The Hilton let's you use a courtesy room for an hour if you need to shower or freshen up. It was a very nice touch and extremly convieniant. We got ready for the flight and headed to the back of the hotel for our Roberts shuttle to the airport. We had called the required 24 hours ahead to arrange for a pick-up and Roberts was going to pick us up at 6:00 where they dropped us off behind the hotel. When 6:30 rolled around we called and they told us they had been there and we were not where we were supposed to be. It would be another hour before they could come back. We talked to the front desk and they said they have had this problem before and called us a taxi. $45 later we arived at the airport. Thankfully we knew Roberts was going to pay us back but it was still a huge inconveiniance. It took quite a while to get through security but we were in the terminal by 7:30. Erin bought some Cold Stone and I went to Burger King, our official last meal in Hawaii. The flight was packed and we borded early. We had found some neck pillows at the airport and waited for take off so we could sleep. We were headed to San Fransisco so the flight would be shorter than the initial one to Hawaii so we knew we had to get our sleep now. Sleep was slow to come for me so I took a dramamine to help. It worked but when we landed in San Fransisco I was so tired I wanted to just sleep in the terminal. Our layover was very small, 45 minutes I believe, so it wasn't long before we were in the air on the way to Denver. I slept some more but Erin was kept up by the man sitting next to her, some chatty guy from Michigan. Thankfully our layover in Denver was under a half an hour. We rushed to our terminal and I ran to Starbucks to get some chai, we hadn't eaten in so long and I was dragging from the dramamine. Our terminal was an entrance to a lower level of the airport that was just a long hallway with doors out to the tarmac. An airport employee showed us out and pointed us to our plane. We had to walk across the tarmac and board the plane. Thankfully Erin asked the pilot if this was the plane to Des Moines because turns out, the airport worker was wrong and we had to run to the next plane. Some people must not have noticed because the stewardess was saying they were missing some passengers. A short flight that felt like a lifetime later we landed in Des Moines, finally back in Iowa. It was now 3:30 PM in Iowa, we had lost almost an entire day. Fortunatly our bags were better directed than us and were in the right place. My parents were there to pick us up and we stopped at Applebees to eat before the drive home. Our trip was over, we are glad to be home but of course would rather be back in Maui. Counting down the days untill we get to go back!!! Aloha!!!
-- Post From My iPhone
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