My Passport’s Travels

Friday, October 4

Well, evidently all this relaxing has caught up with us – we were in bed by 10:30 and slept until 8:30 this morning!  We had a late breakfast at Ulu Cafe (fantastic breakfast flatbreads!), and were visited by a sweet little dove who found some crumbs under our table and a red-vented Bulbul wh was a bit more brazen. Ah, the life of an Aulani bird!

Eve decided to spend the day enjoying the resort. Floating in the lazy river, playing in the pool and meeting a couple of old friends!

Mom and I stopped by the DVC lounge before heading out. I practiced my Wayfinding skills!

We headed back towards the North Shore. First stop – the Dole Plantation. They have a huge hedge maze with a pineapple shape in the middle. If we had chose, we probably could have spent half a day exploring between the maze, the gardens and the train tour. 

We continued on to Hale’iwa, the little town we visited briefly for shave ice yesterday.  We did a little shopping and I had a great macadamia nut and coconut latte.  Sadly, we were still too full from our late breakfast to enjoy any of the shrimp trucks today.

We continued down the shore, stopping a couple of times for some pictures.

We found this angry looking guy at one of our stops.

And these pineapple fields!

Time to head back to Aulani (with a quick stop at Target on the way – we had remembered last visit there were lots of souvenirs in the store, but they don’t have them anymore).  We met up with Eve and walked across the street to wander the shops and have dinner.

We found a great Mexican place!

The resort is even prettier at twilight!

After dinner, we (well, Mom) did some packing, then I wandered the resort taking some night pictures. I ran into Stitch along the way – and had a Dole Whip!  Time for bed and one last night of Disney Dreams!

Saturday, October 5

Sadly, it’s time for all the fun to come to an end.  We had a final breakfast in the room from the Ulu Cafe, checked our bags with bell services, then Eve settled into a comfortable nook overlooking the lazy river while Mom headed out to find someone to gift the unopened bottle of Prosecco we brought from the ship (Mom came back to join her afterwards).

I headed to the Laniwai Spa for a Magical Manicure. Trish did a lovely job helping me pick colors and adding some fun nail art!

We slowly made our way to the front of the resort to load up the car and head to the airport. When flying out of Honolulu, all bags have to go through agriculture inspection – and if the bags are being checked, they have to have the special green sticker that shows they were inspected. However, if you don’t tell the inspector you’re checking a small bag, they don’t put the sticker on it.  Eve had to make a quick run back through for re-inspection to get the needed stickers on two of our bags.

Bags checked and through security – we found a great restaurant for a leisurely late lunch. I had one final meal of Kalhua pork – this time in a quesadilla, Mom had a spicy(ish) chicken sandwich and Eve had fish and chips.  After lunch, the nice cart lady found us and offered us a ride to our terminal – which ended up being a good thing, it was quite a haul to get there!

Our flight boarded and departed on time. We were given box lunches (turkey and sliced hard boiled eggs on white bread with chips and a cookie). We all saved ours for later in the flight.  We slept, played games on our electronics and I watched Encanto. 7 hours (and 5 time zones) later we landed on time at DFW at 6am. Scott picked us up, ran through McDs for us and dropped us off at home where we all promptly laid down for a nap!  It was a wonderful trip, but it’s always good to be home!