Day 23 Wednesday 19 November

Our last swim in Hawaii this morning & a couple of more Japanese brides being photographed on the beach. These stretch limos & wedding photographers have a roaring trade. It was blowing fairly strong this morning so not as pleasant as other days but Ron was a brave boy & went for nice swim. One thing we did notice, lots of locals are wearing jumpers & coats today, it must be all of 23-25C very pleasant to us. We did smile at times. There are many people in T/shirt & shorts – must be the tourists.

After another late breakfast, I would call it brunch at 11 am. A lazy walk to Ala Moana Plaza for our last spot of retail therapy in Hawaii. We watched some hula dancers & a singer do Christmas songs – it was different but good.  Every night since our arrival there has been lots of people queued up outside the Red Lobster Restaurant just across the road from our apartment, so we got there around 6pm & didn’t have any trouble getting a seat. Ron had to find out why the restaurant is always so busy & he loves sea food, the serve of food is big & it was very nice & tasty. We had a glass of champagne to start as it is 12 months today since I had surgery for cancer (then all the subsequent chemotherapy) & my last set of tests was good. A year ago we could not have imagined that we would be in Hawaii now. Life is so precious, we appreciate every moment we have. Co-incidentally, it is also 55 years today since Tereza arrived in Australia. Double cause for celebration.

I have a correction to the gossip column, there are approximately 24,000 Jehovah Witness’ attending the convention in Hawaii, but they are not all here at the same time because the convention centre is huge but not big enough for that many. Apparently they have 14 of these conventions a year in different parts of the world. We bump into them everywhere & they are so happy to tell us about it.

Reading the newspaper here it’s almost the same as in Australia, trouble with the politicians, uni students are out striking because of financial cuts & fee increases, the American dollar is high compared to the Japanese Yen, Australian dollar, etc. so decrease in tourism, they will have to chase after the Chinese & Koreans. Etc. etc….

Well, we had a fantastic time on the cruise & Hawaii but sadly the taxi will come & pick us up (HOPE) at 5.30 am & we are flying home – really we are looking forward to that too, it has been a long time since we have seen the family & we have been missing them a lot.