As we spend more and more days in beautiful Hawaii we have slowly settled into a routine. Resort life is pretty easy. It’s a lot of relaxing, doing what you want to do (within reason) and swimming, but some things that the rest of the population does without being on vacation also need to be done. One of these things is the laundry. We can’t be wearing dirty clothes!
Our Friday started with going out for breakfast at a small restaurant where we have been before in our resort complex called the ‘Tropics’. It was very enjoyable. The service was great, the food was great and we had a good time. After heading back to our apartment and squeezing past the service trolley (they were cleaning our room) we got our orange bag of dirty clothes and headed out to the laundromat. The first time we headed out to the laundromat we were unsure of where we were going but the second time round we knew exactly where we were going so the trip seemed to go a lot quicker.
It takes about an hour for the dirty clothes to be washed, dried and for us to fold them so to pass the time while we were there, all of us brought books, paperback and digital.
Dad is currently reading Ready Player One by Ernest Cline, a sci-fi book that was recently turned into a motion picture movie. I (Amelia) am also reading this book and Dad and I often enjoy discussing where we are in the book.
Hamish is currently reading a biography called Chasing Space by Leland Melvin. He is very interested in space history and is really enjoying this book.
While in the laundromat, Mum booked our Magnum helicopter flight tickets and made videos for her business.
On our shopping trip a few days ago we visited Barnes and Noble. It’s a giant bookstore and any bookworm’s dream place. You can only imagine that I was in heaven. I had a lot of fun browsing all the books and even found a fellow fan of some of the things I enjoy reading and watching. But the main reason we originally went to Barnes and Noble was because I was looking for two books that I had added to my Goodreads ‘To read’ booklist a long time ago. These two books were ‘Eleanor & Park’ by Rainbow Rowell and ‘Alexander Hamilton, A Biography’ by Ron Chernow. I’m a big fan of Rainbow Rowell’s book having already read ‘Fangirl’ at the Echuca Library over the Easter holidays. However, I have never read any of Ron Chernow’s other biographies but he is an award winning author. You might be wondering about what motivated me to read a biography on an American founding father particularly considering because I am not an American. I’ve always enjoyed musical theatre and a modern musical called ‘Hamilton’ by Lin Manuel Miranda recently came to my attention. I’ve fallen in love with the musical and have learnt a lot about early American history without realising it. Ron Chernow’s biography of Alexander Hamilton inspired Lin Manuel Miranda to start writing the musical. I was also interested in learning more about early American history so I bought the book.
That was the book I was reading that day in the laundromat, my legs sticking to the plastic seat in the humidity, turning page after page. Finally the washing finished and we headed back home stopping at Starbucks on the way. We opted to have Starbucks instead of having lunch because we would be having a big dinner. After finishing our drinks (why don’t we have more Starbucks in Australia? I’ve really been enjoying my green tea frappucinos) we went back to our apartment observing the results of our apartment cleaning. Sometimes we don’t get four towels despite there clearly being four of us. The Hilton Hawaiian Village also has a few movie rental kiosks and we rented a movie called Geostorm which before seeing it I believed it was more akin to The Day After Tomorrow or other natural disaster movies. However, after seeing it, the movie is very sci-fi meets natural world disasters.
The rest of the afternoon before we had to get ready before our dinner cruise was filled with relaxing, writing, reading and more. We had decided not to swim that day because we didn’t want to get more sun burnt after yesterday’s adventures in the Lagoon. After having showers and getting into nice clothes we caught an Uber to our cruise boat. We are quickly enjoying the freedom that Uber gives us across the world and we are starting to use it more frequently. Our Uber driver was really nice and we had plenty of enjoyable conversation.
We checked in at the dock and were quickly on board where we were showed to our table – table 36. After trying to make small talk with the two couples already at the table we were invited to the buffet. After getting food the Ingram’s entrance to the conversation was easier and not as forced. I know Dad had a lot of fun talking and meeting other people. We learned a lot about the lives of the people on our table (one currently serving in the U.S. Army and the other a former submariner with the U.S Navy) about how people’s entrance and exit of the military went, dad shared his own father’s experiences with this. One young couple on our table were celebrating their fifth wedding anniversary. The husband is in the military and has been posted to Hawaii for three years (this is the second of the three years.) I wish I had found more about what the life is like of a woman married to an army soldier. We have all been impressed with how American’s celebrate their military. You can find a military discount in almost any store or restaurant.
I really enjoyed all the food and conversation and standing on the open air deck of the boat to watch the sunset and the Hilton Hawaiian Village’s weekly Friday fireworks. It was kind of funny that we traveled across the island to our boat to only travel back to the place where we were staying and back and forth again. We took a lot of pictures and videos and had a lot of fun. If you are ever in Oahu, Hawaii on Friday I would highly recommend catching an Atlantis Cruise and also do their submarine tour as well. I’ve throughly enjoyed my time in Hawaii and I can’t believe it is coming to a close.
