Waikiki!!

We arrived in Honolulu late last night after a relatively uneventful flight. Well, when I say uneventful, there was the issue of the green immigration cards. Quite soon into the flight, an announcement came over the PA that flight attendants would be moving through the plane giving out US immigration and customs cards which had to be filled in CORRECTLY AND WITH NO MISTAKES OR CROSSINGS OUT. If we did make a mistake we were to ask for a new card. Oh the stress, the pressure!! OK, I got my card, and managed to fill it in correctly despite the discombobulating turbulence ... until I got to the very last line, the DATE, when I got the year wrong. I mean, doh! Ok, so I asked the nice lady for another card. Here we go again. I wrote the date in first. Name, passport number, date of birth .. oh no! Written in the wrong place! By now I was starting to really lose confidence that I could do this thing at all and I asked Al to get me a new card. The new card eventually came and I had another go. Got my name wrong on this one. (You can see I was beginning to be seriously affected). At this point I was starting to hyperventilate, imagining the border security officer denying me a visa waiver on the grounds that I was too stupid to fill in the immigration form. However on the fourth go, I managed to fill in the card, with Al sitting next to me coaching me (slowly slowly, name ... yes, that's right, now date of birth ...). Actually I didn't get it right even then because you are supposed to only put your first given name and I wrote both of mine, but I decided at that point that it was time to stop, and if I was deported on the grounds of idiocy then I would just go quietly.

We did eventually arrive in Honolulu, and after a bit of a wait in the line at immigration, a very pleasant and courteous Hawaiian officer looked at my card, then CROSSED OUT my second name! We only need the first one, he told me nicely. Then he took my fingerprints and my photo and stamped my passport and I was in. So I guess it's ok for the immigration officer to cross stuff out ... I'm confused ...

We love Hawaii,even if we are only seeing Waikiki. The smells (soft, warm, fragrant), the warmth (balmy with a light breeze), all the jandal jewellery ... Al did really well with the hotel booking - we are a block away from the beach, and our room is on the corner of the building facing the ocean, so we have sea views from the balcony (the lanai!) and from the side windows. We hit the beach this morning. It was pretty darn crowded, but we found a place to sit in the shade and we all went for a swim. Pancakes with coconut syrup are my new favourite food and the hash browns are the size of a plate and made with real potato. (I haven't lost any weight yet ...) I wish we were staying longer than 2 days ...