10 hour flight? In the bag!

I admit it. As excited as I was (and still am!) about coming to Hawaii, I was not a bit excited about the 10 and a half hour flight to get here. However, I can happily report that it was not as bad as I feared it would be. In fact, our adventure got off to a very smooth start.

We set out on our journey at 9am on Monday morning. My father-in-law (or BaBa as I call him) was kind enough to offer to drive us to the airport, so Mike and I departed 50 Wildey for BaBa's office, and then from there we drove on to Newark. Our flight wasn't until 1:30pm, but Mike thought it would be good to get a decent meal in us before we got on the plane, so we left with enough time to eat at his favorite Newark diner.

--Time out! Let's stop and analyze that last sentence for a second, shall we? Note that I did not say "his favorite restaurant" at Newark. Which would be odd enough. No. My poor husband (and yes-- I am going to being referring to Michael as my husband and to myself as Mrs. Anstett ad nauseum in this blog, so get used to it!) spends so much time at the airport that he actually has a ranking system for the restaurants there, broken down by cuisine and dining time available until flight.--

So we had breakfast at the Garden State Diner, which I will admit was quite good, and then got ready to board. We were both VERY nervous when we got to the gate and saw not one, but TWO children under the age of 3 in the waiting area. I mean, Seriously? Who thinks toddlers on a ten hour flight is a good idea?? But as soon as we boarded the plane and heard the Hawaiian music pumping softly through the aircraft, all cares went out the window. Continental really does it right. Although we were not flying in first, the flight was very comfortable. And by a miracle of God, the kids were well behaved and we didn't even notice them.

Neither of us slept at all on the flight, somewhat by design. We knew it would only be 7:30pm in Honolulu when we landed and we wanted to be able to sleep at a normal hour when we got here since we had a long day planned for Tuesday. 10 hours, 2 newspapers, 3 magazines, 4 episodes of Cold Case and 27 games of solitaire later (give or take), we arrived in Hawaii. And one rental car ride after that, we arrived at our hotel. Then we passed out.