Despite my many travels, I had never been to Hawaii. It always seemed a little far to go just for some palm trees and a beach. But after a mere twelve hours in the air, we landed in paradise...and then found we were not done traveling.
Upon checking in to our hotel, we were escorted to our room on the fourth floor by the bellman who explained that since the hotel was built on a hill, we had actually checked in on the sixth floor and had to go down to get to our room
On the way, we passed the bar, one restaurant, the concierge, the lounge, shopping arcade, a real estate operation and the gym. I've been in towns that were smaller.
We made all the usual chit-chat: where are you from? How long are you staying? Let me tell you about the hotel, give you the unabridged history of Hawaii and explain, in detail, nuclear physics. And all that was just until we got to the elevator.
Once on the fourth floor, we started down the hallway toward our room which was apparently located somewhere on the opposite side of the island, or in Siberia. By the time we came to the next hallway, we had covered politics, religion, literature and conducted an in-depth analysis and comparison of Hawaii 5-0 and Magnum PI. Somewhere around the halfway mark, I began wondering when they had built the bridge over to California that we were apparently on.
At the end of the next hallway, our room was still nowhere to be seen and we had moved on to exchanging fondest childhood memories, complete medical histories and family trees going back to the Norman Conquest with the bellman, who was now our best friend since we had known him longer than pretty much anybody else we had ever met, including family members.
As we turned down the third (or was it fourth) hallway, I began looking for the complimentary shuttle bus or hoped that I could hail a passing cab or maybe even flag down an ambulance to see if they could administer some oxygen.
Meanwhile, Tim, who was bringing up the rear in our happy little parade, was looking like a very grumpy bear who had been prodded out of hibernation somewhere in about mid-January and muttering dire imprecations involving our travel agent, the woman at the check-in desk and me who was somehow to blame for the fact that he was developing a blister on his left foot and some kind of "-itis" in his knee/ankle/hip.
Finally, before we had to resort to the Donner party buffet special, we arrived at our room where we were given the grand tour and had our passports stamped.
Unfortunately, although we had checked in at breakfast, it was now dinnertime and the restaurants were all back on the other side of reception, two thousand or so miles away. Arming ourselves with packs of trail mix I had taken from the plane (which is what passes for a meal nowadays), we began the loooong trek back to civilization, leaving a trail of peanuts, pretzels and sesame sticks to help us find our way back.
And so it went for the next five days, except the whole being on a hill thing added to the degree of difficulty.
We found that if we stayed on the fourth floor, we eventually came to the spa after only a two hour hike where there was an exit to the top level of the three-level pool...after you walked down a flight of steps, took the path through the garden, marched over hill and dale and followed the yellow brick road.
Or, we could take the elevator that was only a one hour jaunt away to the first floor and come out by the kiddie pool and jungle gym. Then we just had to walk around the entire circumference of the seventy-two acre pool to get towels and a seat (I thought Texas was the state where everything was supposed to be big.).
And if we wanted to go to the beach? Hey, no problem. We just slipped into our hiking boots, packed a lunch and two snacks, headed out past the pool, the one restaurant, the ancient Hawaiian burial grounds, headed for the first star on the left and then went straight on till morning.
But the good news here was that the return trip was uphill all the way, so that by the time we got back to the room, our suits had dried completely and the thirty pounds of sand that clung to various body parts had done a fabulous job of exfoliating things that weren't ever meant to see a loofah and it had dried to the consistency of hardened concrete! Jackpot!
All in all, it really cut down on the number of trips we made back and forth. Hmmm. Forgot the sunscreen? Let's see...make the trip all the way back to the room or risk skin cancer and third degree burns. Wait a minute, I'm thinking. Yeah. I'm thinking that by the time I make the trip, the sun won't even be out anymore.
Dinner reservations at eight? Better head out from the beach somewhere around, oh say, noon After all, we'd have to leave the room by five just to make it to the lobby by 7:59.
The upside of it all though was that we got plenty of exercise without ever going to the gym. Not that we would have been able to get there anyway before coming back home once you factored in the travel time involved.
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