NY –> Honolulu

Wednesday, February 26, 2020:

Today began our looooong travel from New York to New Zealand. For the first leg of our trip, we caught a flight out of NY from JFK at 10:00AM and flew to Honolulu. The flight was scheduled to be 10.5 hours, which would put us in Hawaii at 4:30PM HST, but ended up being only 9.5 hours.

I was optimistic about this flight because it was during the day (I have a hard time with red-eyes). As as accountant, I’m used to sitting and working on spreadsheets for 8 hours at a time, so I figured sitting and watching movies or reading on a plane would still be an improvement.

We boarded and were greeted by our adorable flight neighbor, Penelope.

As wonderful and generous as Penelope’s family was to us on our flight (sharing snacks, giving us tips for Honolulu), I couldn’t help but be saddened by our meeting. Penelope was given 3/4 bottle of Pepsi to drink at the start of the flight. When her mom would put the bottle down for a moment, Penelope would start to scream and wave her arms for more. It was clear that Penelope has a severe addiction to sugar, and she is only 9 months old. Moments like this make it very apparent why we are seeing such staggering rates of childhood obesity in America.

About 2 hours into the flight, we were served a complimentary hot meal. As a vegan, I was expecting the worst. To my surprise, we were served vegan chili, white rice, and a cold vegetable noodle salad. This was the only meal option (sorry carnivores!). Everything was delicious – probably because it was my first meal of the day – but for airplane food, it was definitely above average.

The rest of the flight was seamless. Hawaiian Airlines caters to Japanese travelers, and as a result, offers a number of movies in Japanese (with English subtitles). Since my plan was to study Japanese for a few hours on the flight anyway, I watched a movie in Japanese instead. I also watched “A Star Is Born,” which lived up to every positive review I’ve heard about it.

We landed in Honolulu at 3:30PM HST. Before embarking on our 23 hour layover in Honolulu, our plan was to collect our checked luggage (bike box for me, suitcase for Meryem), check in for our flight the next day and re-check our luggage again so that we could leave the airport with only our backpacks. We collected our luggage, successfully checked in. To our unfortunate surprise, were told we could not re-check our luggage until the next day. I was stuck with a 60 lb bike box in tow, and Meryem with a 67 lb suitcase. (She packed a lot of shampoo … I think).

The Honolulu airport is open air, so we got our first taste of 80 degree weather right away. We made our way to the public transport lobby to catch a bus to our AirBnb. I asked a woman waiting for the bus for directions downtown, and she told us that we would not be allowed on the city bus with our luggage. Meryem shrugged and said, “that sounds like her opinion. Let’s go for it.” Well, she was right. The bus driver laughed at us and told us our bags were too big to bring on the bus. Meryem called a Lyft and we were on our way to our Airbnb.

Our AirBnb was a condo in downtown Honolulu. The views from the balcony were breathtaking in every direction. If you’re ever in Honolulu, I highly recommend staying here – happy to give you the details.

We dropped our things and decided to visit nearby Waikiki Beach to watch the rest of the sunset and grab a bite to eat. We were allowed on the city bus this time, and made it to the beach in about 15 minutes.

Waikiki Beach is an interesting blend of city life and tropical beach. Skyscrapers sit alongside the white sandy beach lined with shops and restaurants. It was surprisingly clean considering all of the foot traffic.

Watching the sunset felt so peaceful and still. The beach cleared out and we were among the few people left listening to the waves standing in the darkness. Feeling the warm ocean breeze made the long flight feel unquestionably worth it.

We were craving breakfast food and found a place called Eggs ‘N Things. Then promptly inhaled every bite like we hadn’t eaten for 3 days. It was better than the chili.

We couldn’t find the bus route / bus stop to head back towards our AirBnb so we ended up walking just over 3 miles back. We went to bed early to prepare for an early morning hike and the next leg of travel to Auckland, NZ. Day 2 coming up next!