Millies for breakfast! I had the pancake sandwich again, but Russ decided to end his stay at Anaheim with French toast.

We collected all our baggage, checked our room for the last time, then headed down stairs to wait for the Super shuttle at 9.25am.  We had a lady driver this time and she was 100% improvement on the last driver. We picked up more Aussies (2 adults, 2 kids) from one of the Disneyland hotels, then a local on her way to Alburqueque. There can’t be many Aussies left at home because they were all in the USA (three more busloads had arrived at our hotel yesterday).

I don’t know if I have previously mentioned the fact that behind the front desk on the wall are four clocks. One of those keeps Sydney time.  Therefore, an awful lot of Aussies use this hotel.

We got to LAX with plenty of time to spare, and ended up chatting with a little boy and his Dad who were on their way home to Victoria, Canada, and had been to Universal Studio Tours. This lad was about six to seven years old, and he did the Jurassic Park ride seven times. Russ and I decided he was our hero!

Next were the Aussies (more of them) – 2 adults, 3 kids – who were on their way home to McKay, Queensland, after a 12 months stint in Canada. Noel is a fireman, and he swapped with a family from Saskatchewan who went to Queensland and stayed at their place for the duration. Each was supported during their stay, by the other’s family.

During the 12 months they flitted to England, USA, and to many other parts of Canada. However, they were ready to go home. The two older girls had picked up Canadian accents and were horrified to find out.

When we arrived at Vancouver we had to clear Customs again (without our luggage – again). Then we wandered the corridors for a while before making our way to the Boarding Gate for the leg to Honolulu. Whilst sitting there we had heaps more conversation with Noel, Sue and the girls, and at 7pm we grabbed some Chinese for tea. Actually tasted nice. The girls loved Emma’ dinosaur.

We were called onto the plane at 7.45pm and left at 8.15pm. We immediately turned our clocks back to 5.15pm Honolulu time, and took a Temazapan so we could sleep. Russ had an aisle seat which helped him as it was on the left hand side of the plane.

We ignored the meal, which was passed around (airplane food can be as tasty as cardboard most times, unless you are in first or business class) and slept for a while. We arrived at Honolulu at 11pm and had to hurry up and wait as we went through USA customs. Lucky we already had our green card from the bus trip, and we passed straight through.

We grabbed a taxi and only said the name of the hotel. The taxi driver, instead of double-checking with us, headed off and we ended up (after 30 minutes) in Waikiki at the Pacific Monarch. We told him it was the wrong place and he checked our booking voucher and took us back (another 25 minutes) to the Pacific Mariner.

Instead of the $5 that Karen had said we would pay, the fare came to $35. Russ asked the driver how he wanted to handle the situation and he said he would take whatever we were prepared to pay. We settled on $20 and by this time we were dying to go to sleep. The Pacific Mariner is the pits, but at least we could sleep in the horizontal position.