Thursday 26 March 2015

Kauai 2014- Day 1


Our travel day went very smoothly. We flew out of Kelowna on Alaska Airlines at 6am. I was a little nervous because we only had an hour and forty minutes to make our connection but everything went smoothly. We had to clear customs in Seattle and that was very easy as well. Canadian and U.S. citizens do not have to fill out customs declaration cards any more when entering the U.S. You exit the plane, grab all your luggage from the carousel, go through the automated kiosks which print out a receipt with your picture on it. The customs official stamps your receipt then you give your checked bags to the luggage handlers on the other side proceed through security again (everyone goes through the full body scan here by the way) and you're through. All in all it took about 20 minutes. This was very early morning though...peak travel times during the day I'd probably want a little more of a time cushion. Our flight went very smoothly.  Alaska airlines has a new onboard entertainment system. You download the gogo player to your device and then you connect to their onboard wifi and watch movies or tv shows. I'm not quite sure of the cost as its free until the end of March. You can also rent their Microsoft tablets which are preloaded with games, magazines, tv shows, and movies for 10 dollars. Just over 6 hours of flight time and we land in Kauai....our first sight of the island is trees blowing in the wind and rain pouring down. That's ok though we knew that it wouldn't be like this for a full 2 weeks. We collected our luggage and went to get our rental car. I had managed to get a full size car from Alamo via Costco for 327 dollars for the full 13 days. The day before we left I went online and joined Alamo Insiders and checked in. Lihue has bypass the counter and kiosk options available. I entered our drivers licence info and credit card info and printed out the ticket at home. Once we got there we went out to the lot, picked a car from the full size row, hopped in and gave our paperwork to the gentleman at the gate. Easiest car rental ever!
Originally we'd planned on stopping at Costco but we were too tired to face it. Even though it was too early to check in we decided to go find our condo and somewhere to eat. I knew I wanted to go to the farmers market at the Shops at Kukui'ula so we went there. Our first meal on Kauai was tacos and margaritas at Tortilla Republic and it was amazing. Food and alcohol gave us a second wind and we bought a bunch of fresh fruits and vegetables from the different stands. I wanted a slice of pie from the Right Slice pie lady but the line up was a mile long.  We'll get some on Friday night at Hanapepe when we go to the Art walk.
Some pictures of The Shops at Kukui'la


After our shopping we went to our condo at Kuhio Shores to check in. This is an older building but the unit we rented has been nicely updated. There is no pool or concierge but you can't beat the views. I took all these pictures from our lanai.
 By the time we got unpacked and touched base with everyone at home, it was almost time for sunset so we took our Bloody Mary's and parked ourselves in front of the Beachouse Restauarant and enjoyed our first sunset on Kauai.

No comments:

Post a Comment