Back in the middle of November, Karen was checking out prices at Noelani Condominium Resort for next year. You see Karen will be celebrating a big birthday and she would like to spend it on Maui. While she was looking, she saw that prices for this year were really cheap. Hmmmm … how much could a flight be. $658 CAD total and it was a direct flight from Toronto to Maui.
She messaged me this information and then I looked at prices of rental cars. On the Costco Travel website I saw that we could get a car for under $250 USD for the week. What to do. Opportunity was knocking and we decided to answer it. Within an hour, we were booked. We ended up using Aeroplan points for this trip since it was only 36000 points plus $163.49 CAD in taxes and fees.
Now you are probably asking yourself why are you going to Maui. There was a devastating fire which destroyed much of Lahaina back in August. At that time, they were asking people not to visit. With more of the area opening up now, they are welcoming visitors. So in a way, our visit is helping them.
Karen and Maui came by the house just before 10:00am. Nana, Maddie and Maui will be spending the week together. After getting my bags loaded into the car, it was a quick drive to Toronto..
Once again Ross and Susie (Karen’s brother and sister-in-law) were gracious enough to let us leave the car and provide transportation to the airport. But before we left, we did have some cake in honour of Karen’s birthday which is tomorrow.
We got to the airport around 12:10pm and by 12:30pm we were at the elevator to take us up to the Maple Leaf Lounge. Thank you to our NEXUS cards and the American Express Aeroplan Reserve Credit Card.
Over the next hour and a half, we were able to enjoy all the food and drink that the Maple Leaf Lounge offered. It was pretty busy but we did manage to find a couple of comfy seats. As we were leaving the lounge, we checked the departures board and it said that our flight was now boarding.
Now normally we do not book our seats ahead of time and just leave it up to chance as to where we end up. But we thought for this ten hour flight, we wanted to control where we were sitting. So a week or so ago, we were looking at the seating chart and saw there were was a row at the very back of the plane and it only had two seats (45A and 45C). Even though it was next to the washroom and galley, being able to have a place to stand and stretch outweighed the location.
Ten hours is the longest flight that I have taken. I spent much of the time watching movies like Barbie (which I enjoyed) and the four part documentary called Menudo: Forever Young. We did get a meal and this time they did not run out of chicken when they got to us. I tried to sleep but I just could not get comfortable.
We landed in Kahului to a beautiful 21 degrees Celsius at around 7:40pm. It took us about half an hour to get off of the plane and get to the baggage claim. I decided to head over to Alamo to pick up our compact SUV which we booked with Costco Travel ($228.79 USD including taxes and fees, 614 miles driven) while Karen waited for the bags. It took about an hour for the bags to finally appear. I picked up Karen and we were on our way.
It was about a forty-five minute drive to the Noelani Condominium Resort. We walked over to our unit which is 115 ($1343 USD which turned into $2019.02 USD after taxes and fees) and Karen punched in the code and the door would not open. We each tried a few times and then Karen got on the phone with the emergency number. While she was on hold, I walked over to the office and saw on the wall a number for security. We called and a gentleman showed up a few minutes later. He tried the code as well and then ended up calling someone who gave us likely the master code. Finally we were in. By this time it was 11:30pm which is 4:30am back home. Time to hit the sack.
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