Today we were supposed to be doing a whale watching tour with lunch, which Stacey and Mick has bought for us for Christmas. Unfortunately this tour did not eventuate for us, but we certainly didn't give up without a fight.
After about 30 minutes of waiting for the tour shuttle, I (Tanya) ran back to our room and phoned the tour operator. Apparently my email was not a transport confirmation according to her. Ridiculous! This truly was a joke as our voucher said that we should confirm more than 24 hours in advance via phone or by email and they had even responded! The supervisor said (because yes the conversation may have escalated) that the email was only confirming that they pick up at the hotel at that time and I had not technically added the transport to our booking. She told me to take a cab there to make the tour and they wouldn't pay for it. I may have told her it was a load of crap and before I could say anything else she hung up! This is a holiday, but we were so pissed off because it was our last full day to do anything.
I jogged back down to collect Richard, who had stayed manning the pickup point in case they were just friggen late! Instantaneously a cab was there and we jumped in! It was like a movie, although we didn't say "follow that cab" or "step on it!" We did have to get the most law abiding taxi driver in history. The whale watching was far more important than his licence!
Finally, we rolled up at the peer and almost straight away could see our trusty vessel going out to sea. We were hopeful that it was just driving from one peer to the other, but found out soon after that this was not the case. After telling our story and showing them my email, the staff at the dock saw our side and were very apologetic! Good. Although it didn't bring us closer to the whales, it soothed our pain. They paid us the money for the cab ride out, but didn't offer the return journey fare. At least Stacey was going to be refunded the tour amount. We've decided to do something in Maui of a similar ilk for our Christmas present.
With no plans it was bloody annoying. We'd just had the lazy day yesterday and were really looking forward to doing something again today. At 12:30pm it was always going to be hard to book something else, so it was off to the movies again. We considered the beach but it was going to belt down with rain. It seemed kind of dumb going all this way to Hawaii and going to another movie, but again because of being so pregnant, it really has had its limitations.
From the wharf to the Ward Centre, it was about a 25 minute walk. We decided on American Hustle, which was clever but very slow at the beginning. The pregnant koala may have napped on and off in the first hour. We had popcorn, but this time only small and no extra butter. After the movie we had to walk another 15 minutes from the Ward Centre to the Ala Moana Centre to be able to catch the tourist shuttle back to Waikiki. We actually opted to do the walking, as it's been the only exercise happening and has been needed with all the food consumption.
We'd organised some snacks for the tour but didn't eat them, so once we were back to the hotel, we ate them as well as the leftover buffalo wings from the previous night's dinner and there was lunch. Without any plans it was a must to catch up on the blogging, hence loading four in one day.
For our final outing for the day, we took a nice stroll down the main road along the beach towards the zoo to find somewhere delicious to eat. We've had some good solid meals but honestly nothing great. We were sick of the lack of choice too. It's crazy how many places really just have the same thing and lots of fried stuff. Jackpot!! We found a brilliant Italian place called Arancino. It is situated near the Hyatt just down a main side road and we instantly loved the place.
They gave us lovely warm bread to start with, to put with the oil and balsamic vinegar....our fav! Yummy! We could've have just eaten the bread all night and have been happy. We had pizza and a blue crab spaghetti, which was an absolute taste sensation. Apparently we had waited a long time for our meal (though it didn't bother us), so they offered us a complimentary Tiramisu to share, which completely topped off our night. What started in a stressful and pissed off mood, turned out to be a really lovely day. We highly recommend this restaurant. It's certainly more expensive than the burger joints, but well worth it.
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