2022-02-26: Last Day in Hawaii

It was our last day in Hawaii. There is a breakfast restaurant across the street from the condo called Slappy Cakes that we headed to for some breakfast. We have been there on previous visits and decided to return. It’s a fun place for the kids. They have a griddle embedded in the tables and you can order different pancake batter flavours and toppings so the kids can make their own pancakes. Patrick was disappointed though. One of their specials was a red velvet pancake batter. But when he ordered it, he was informed that they were out of the red velvet batter. The other special was a red velvet pancake platter. They did offer to make him the platter. We haven’t figured out how they can make red velvet pancakes for the platter, but not have batter for the DIY pancakes. It doesn’t make much sense to us. Patrick ordered the platter and Michael ordered some buttermilk batter and a few toppings so he could create his own pancakes. After breakfast, we made a quick stop at the grocery store which was right beside the restaurant before returning to the condo.

Since it was our last day, everyone wanted to hit the water one last time. We got ourselves changed and headed to the beach. The kids played in the waves with the boogie boards while Darrell and Amanda did some snorkeling. The snorkeling was eventful. Several fish and a couple of sea turtles were found. Darrell’s sensitive skin was reacting to the sea water today for some reason so he was forced to head back to the beach. Patrick joined Amanda for a bit more snorkeling before we returned to the condo. Patrick wanted everyone to head into the pool. There wasn’t much interest from the rest of the family which made Patrick sad.

We got ourselves cleaned up and put our wet gear on the lanai to dry out. We had a bite to eat for lunch and packed the rest of our stuff that wasn’t outside drying. We relaxed in the condo for a bit until it was time for dinner. After dinner we finished packing and headed to the airport since we had a late flight. It was schedule to leave at 11:30pm.

We arrived at the airport two and a half hours before our flight. There was a bit of a line to get checked in at the airport. They don’t have the self-serve check in kiosks so we had to wait in line to talk to a person. They checked all our documentation (passports, COVID vaccinations, COVID test results, ArriveCAN app), checked our bags, and we were off to security.

Security went pretty smoothly. Darrell set off the body scanner for some reason but they quickly checked him out and sent him on his way. There were a couple of items in Patrick’s carry-on that had the X-ray folks concerned so they did an inspection of his bag. The blown glass jellyfish was one of the items. The other was his half-eaten giant jawbreaker that he picked up at the candy store in Oahu. The inspector thought it was pretty funny the jawbreaker was the culprit. He chuckled and took it over to the X-ray tech to show him what had them confused. After a quick laugh, we repacked Patrick’s bag and continued to the gate.

We grabbed a few seats at the gate in the airport. They happened to be beside a couple of Coca Cola vending machines. One of the machines was having an issue and it wouldn’t dispense any drinks 90% of the time. We were entertained watching multiple people try to purchase drinks and storm off when it failed to do so. Luckily, it was recognizing the issue and wasn’t charging people for the drinks. Before long, we were boarding the plane

We got ourselves comfortable on the plane and prepared for the overnight flight to Vancouver. One of the video screens in the seats we had had something jammed in the headphone port so it was unusable. Darrell was kind enough to take that seat. We watched as our departure time went by and we were still sitting at the gate. The captain made an announcement that they were waiting for some extra baggage to be loaded on the plane and we should be leaving within 15 minutes. 15 minutes later, the captain announced they were having troubles loading the bags and we’d be delayed another 15 minutes. Once those 15 minutes elapsed, we were finally on the move. Our connection in Vancouver was tight to begin with. We were getting concerned we’d miss our connection.

The flight was uneventful. The kids watched a movie and we all tried to get some sleep. Not easy on an airplane unfortunately. We MAY have gotten a couple of hours over the course of the 5 hour flight. We landed in Vancouver 30 minutes late which gave us about an hour before our connecting flight left. We got off the plane and rushed to customs. Thankfully we have Nexus cards so were able to bypass the longer customs line and use the Nexus lanes. The Nexus machines gave us a bit of grief. They wanted to update our photos for some reason. We got through that process and headed to the customs agent. Unfortunately, he informed us that Michael was randomly selected for COVID screening. Just great! We headed off to another line to register for the COVID testing. The line wasn’t very long thankfully. Since we were Canadian residents coming from the US, they gave us a take home COVID kit for him instead of having to test in the airport. We grabbed the kit and rushed to our connecting flight. We got to the gate as they were announcing that zone 3 could board the aircraft. Whew! We made it!

We boarded the flight and waited at the gate while our departure time went by. The captain made an announcement about waiting for some baggage. This sounds like Deja Vu! About 20 minutes later, we headed to the runway. Again, the flight was uneventful. 90 minutes later, we landed in Calgary. We grabbed our bags, met up with Amanda’s parents, and headed home. It was a great trip!