It's Good Friday but didn't start very well for us. I went down to ABC Store to buy two bowls of instant noodle, a ham sandwich and a Hawaiian T-shirt. I didn't have appetite to eat rich breakfast at Shor, so was to have instant noodle. My son initially took my suggestion to plan to go eating by himself but changed his mind to stay in the room to eat the sandwich. After coming back home, I suddenly thought about to check my e-mail, which I hadn't done for a week and read the notice from Delta that our flight would delay to 3:10 in the afternoon. Because I had planned to leave the hotel for airport at 9:00 am, it was a 6 hours delay for me.
Pulling the phone number from Delta website, I planned to call them to verify because the arriving time at Seatac was scheduled at 10:00 am on Saturday morning, which seemed for a multi-stop flight instead of non-stop one we booked. Glancing a online chat icon, I clicked on it instead of calling. The instruction reminded me to key in my questions first, so I did it: "Flight 2210 delayed to 3:10pm? Why will this flight arrive in Seattle 10:00 am on Saturday? Will it stop somewhere else instead of directly flying back Seattle?" The Delta representative named Scott M (I didn't catch the full last name) responded:"Thanks for contacting Delta Airlines", then left Chat Room immediately without chatting with me. Subsequently, a text message was sent to my cell phone to update the flight to be delayed to 4:35 pm and arriving time at Seatac to be reasonable at 1:09 am. Anyway, we were going to be above the ocean while Good Friday was progressing to the end.
After eating the quick breakfast in the room, I took the last clip in the balcony before checking out. As I had shared the first night we checked in, the multi-story parking garage just faced to our balcony and I even could see the rental Volkswagen Jetta TSI parked on 8th floor across the air. It's so convenient to stay in Hyatt Regency Waikiki Beach Resorts & Spa in this Holy week.
Yes, it's too early to return the car at the airport, so I decided to drive back to PCC to view the coastline we didn't appreciate in the darkness while we were driving back to our hotel on Monday night. However, I missed several exits on Freeway H1, eventually, I decided to drive on H1 to its end.
We did reach the end of freeway but the road was heavily congested on the extended local route. Seeing a restroom, I turned into the parking lot on the left-hand side of the road. Using the restroom real quickly, we walked to the nearby beach to appreciate the tides for several minutes and had to run back to the car because it was raining harshly. The weather on Oahu had been amazing until this morning.
As you may notice, I am a sports fan, so visiting stadiums is one of my hobbies while traveling. Aloha Stadium is one of the most famous ones nationwide due to NFL Pro Bowl. My son was annoyed by my hobby and urged me to leave as quickly as possible. He had an excuse to do it because I parked on a forbidden spot. It's offseason, the stadium was not set for visiting.
Parking in a lot at nearby McDonalds', we replaced shorts with long sports pants and long sleeves sweatshirts. It's pretty close to airport, we returned our rental car at Enterprises several minutes later.
There were still 2 hours and a half to go, we planned to eat two meals at the airport to consume time. The first one was at PGA Tour Grill near Gate 23 where we were going to board Delta 2210. I ordered a beer on Tap and Pasta, my son ordered something else I can't remember. It took us almost an hour to finish. Jimmy called me during the late lunch. I was so grateful for his hospitality especially this was the first time we ever met. It's all because we went to the same college when we were young: China University of Mining & Technology. He was enrolled in 1980 and I was in 1984, so we never had a chance to know each other because he graduated in July, 1984 and I hadn't moved into the college in Xuzhou from my hometown Beijing until September in that year.
After lunch, we walked to the other parts of the airport and saw the airplanes operated by Hawaiian, United and Delta parked on the slots. The rain stopped and the airport was washed so freshly.
Finally, we walked back to Gate 23 to wait for our flight. Delta served free sandwiches and drinks at the waiting area. I grabbed a sandwich but not drink because I had bought a venti latte at Starbucks before coming to the area. My son went to the nearby station to charge his cellphone. I said in this clip the stores being duty-free, which was probably wrong because we were in the area of domestic flights.
Eventually, we boarded on the flight and it would carry us back home after delayed by 4 hours. Yes, the true delayed hours were 4 because the originally scheduled Departure time was 12:38pm. On board, I learned that the coming flight from Seattle was actually on time but a mechanical issue was discovered one hour later, so it returned to Seatac and original 757 was replaced by a 767-300 to resume flying to Honolulu 4 hours later. Safety is key, I didn't mind to come home a couple of hours later especially we were on vacation, supposedly very layback.
During the flight, I watched The Big Short but fell into sleep in the last 20 minutes and just woke up before it ended. I need to rewatch it sometime. Almost 6 hours flight wasn't that long because I consumed it very well.
Picking up my van at Masterpark Lot C, I was so happy that the van didn't fail us. Staff at Masterpark seemed not encountering any problem to start it because it was parked by the side of the office waiting for us to come back to Seattle. Driving on I-5 to head home, we had our hearts settled completely. Yes, we were home. The weather seemed very nice, though it's so dark at 2:00 in the morning on Saturday.
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