Best airport. Ever.

Today we made the short - 45 minute - hop from Kona on the (imaginatively named) Big Island back to Honolulu for our last two nights.

The best bit was Kona International Airport, which has no walls and the most laid-back attitude I have ever seen. Every airport should be this good.

Check me out, typing frantically while waiting to board.

I am, however, already missing the view from our Kona hotel room (below).

But putting on my Pollyanna hat, I'm looking forward to the next couple of days and the activities arranged by the O'ahu Visitors Bureau including, wait for it, a ukulele lesson tomorrow. This should make for an interesting story....

Hau Oli La Hanau

Or happy birthday, in Hawaiian.

Today it's my beloved's birthday (yesterday in NZ). And I could not think of a better place in which to celebrate it with him.

There was a late start and breakfast on our balcony with this view.

Later we went for a walk and drank up the 30 degree heat. There was a drive into the hills, a long, lazy lunch and tonight the Animator is going to swim with the manta rays. It's not my kind of thing so I plan to sit on the balcony, watch the waves roll in and drink wine. And, boringly, do some work for a story due in last week.

Here's the birthday boy:

And again, refusing to pose in front of the hilarious 'muscle' car we've been driving around for the past few days:

US readers will no doubt laugh, but we've never been to a Walmart store. So when we drove past one, I insisted we stop. And it was all kinds of novel - there is so much stuff in there I never knew I needed. Such as this avocado slicer/masher that I just had to have. Yeah, I know.

The Animator trailed behind me, laughing like a crazy person. But hey, it's his birthday so he can do what the heck he likes, no?