Hawaii- Thursday Friday and Home

Thursday was our time to go to the Polynesian Cultural Center in La'ie. We were to meet a brother of someone I work with as he teaches at BYU  Hawaii at 11 am. He could get us discount tickets to the center. That gave me some time in the morning to walk around the resort and take some pictures before we took off. This is the tree lined street to the hotel.

 There were flowers blooming.

 The views of the ocean

 The hotel from the lagoon.

 And the flowers and ponds next to the main lobby.

We made the 1.5 hour drive to La'ie and met him. It was a very nice gesture to do this for us. We then had some time before the park opens so we went to a local diner called the Hukilau Cafe. It is off the beaten path on a small, narrow road. As you can see it was a small diner but the food was great. It was so hot inside the place though as there was no air movement but it was a good adventure.

  It was then time to go over to the PCC. We started off going to the various centers that represented different islands an learned about the cultures.

There then was the floating parade which was an island review filled with dancing on the boats.  Before the parade Connor and Payton played at the edge of the water.

Then it was back to see the various cultures represented. We saw a Tahitian wedding ceremony 

Then it was off to see Samoa.

Connor got called out of the crowd to try a coconut that  was cracked open.

Then there was some fire dancing.

And tree climbing.

After that it was time for the luau. As we sat at our tables there was a Hawaiian ceremony to welcome us.

Then it was time to eat.

After dinner and before the evening show we took the tram over to the Temple and walked around the grounds.

It was then back to the center for the evening show. It was a wonderful program and we are glad we had this opportunity to use this great facility as our last full day in Hawaii.
The next morning was Friday and our plane was scheduled to leave at two in the afternoon. We used this time to do one final swim at the pools and lagoon at KoOlina. We had slide races and Maddie ended up winning with a time of 4.9 seconds.

This was our official time keeper posing with the group. Maddie wanted to take him home with us; he was that cute.

We then went out into the lagoon to take one last ocean swim.

 When we got into the cars to leave Payton was heart broken. She had enjoyed it so much. The rest of us did to. It seemed to be so quick but it was so fun. 






















We were suppose to leave at 2 but our plan had not arrived yet and we had over a two hour delay. The airlines gave us food vouchers which we put to good use in getting ice cream and treats.

 Finally we were on our way home. We had one last look at Oahu out our window.

A few hours later we watched the sunset off our wingtip.

It was after midnight when we got to San Jose and the large group of Asian tourist in the back of the plane was loud and obnoxious. It made for some good laughs especially when they all got up and tried to force their way to the front of the plane while we were still taxing to the terminal. The next morning Connor and Payton took advantage of the pool at the hotel before we had to board the plane for our final leg back home. It was a wonderful family trip.