A traveling day

Well, I’m back, and I must say that I am happy about it. Hawaii is very beautiful and restful, but there are downsides to that. Always beautiful, and too restful soon translate into “boring.” The aunties are a year older, and thus, less willing to do much. So our primary activities were reading and working crosswords. I didn’t even do that much knitting. I finished Sylvia’s Lovers, read several mystery books from the library, and listened to most of Vanity Fair, which is one of my top favorite books. I also started an E Nesbitt book which I read on the airplane. I caught up with the Sunday New York Times puzzles that I hadn’t had time to do earlier. None of that sounds very exciting, does it. I also ate a lot – eating was another of our favored activities – and am now banting to make up for it. To illustrate this tale, here is one of our dinners. The little black things are roasted beets. They are not actually as black as they appear. Could eating this sort of food make one gain nearly five pounds in two weeks, you ask. Well, probably not, but it was followed by a huge bowl of ice cream with chocolate or passion fruit topping every night. That was the kicker. I swam laps every day to combat the effects of the ice cream, but was not entirely successful.

The airport ordeal is much less of an ordeal at the Hawaii end, as the airport is very small. One walks across the tarmac and climbs movable steps just like presidents do on their state visits. The only thing missing is the reporters recording our farewell waves. Pauline and I made Dakki order a wheel chair at the airports. She didn’t want to do this, because she might look old, but we insisted. Consequently, she got lifted into the airplane - wheel chair and all -on a terrifying little portable elevator. She was blasé about it, but I would have been very frightened. I wanted to take a picture of her going up, but couldn’t manage. As you can see, the airport is much less frantic – actually, not frantic at all.