So after all the singing and dancing at the airport terminal in Phoenix, I proceeded to have a very pleasant 6 hour flight and I was in Hawai'i! This makes 49 US states visited for me, with only Alaska remaining. We did fly past most of the other major islands on the way in and I could see that there was no snow on Mauna Kea, etc. Very nice view. Good weather.

The Honolulu airport has two terminals—an international terminal and an "inter-island" terminal. Nina and my flights showed up withing 10 minutes of each other, but at different terminals. We were using cell phones to try to figure out how to get to each other, but it turned out to be more of a challenge than we figured. No worries, we found each other. Yay.

Mikki (ex-roommate, now living on Oahu, for those of you just joining us) arrived and picked us up at the airport in her cool Camaro convertible. She drove us to our hotel (The Waikiki Grand) where we dropped off all our bags and then went in search of "fancy drinks." We ended up at a place called "Lulu's" on the Waikiki beach strip, which was just down the street from our hotel. From there I got to see my first Hawaiian sunset out over the bay and my first sumo wrestling on TV. We went and walked along the beach after dinner but by then it was dark and uninspiring. Waikiki is clearly not the part of Hawaii that is interesting to me. For dinner we walked a mile or so away from the beach to a sushi place recommended in Nina's guide book called Tokkuri Tei. It was amazingly good. The waitrons there were tiny, but mighty.

The Waikiki Grand has no wireless, free or otherwise. Suffering from 3 and 5 hour of jetlag, we said farewell to Mikki and went to bed early. It was a great first day in Hawai'i.