We'd been traveling for about 17 hours and I was exhausted, but we were in Hawaii! YAY! As I exited the plane, I looked for the line of greeters - beautiful Hawaiian women and men with leis, but there were NONE! What the heck? They are in every Hawaiian movie. 

Even though I am allergic to flowers, I was excited about the "traditional" greeting. So disappointing!

When I got back home, I did some research - we could have hired someone to give us a "traditional" Lei Greeting for about $30-50 a person at the Kona Airport. However, something about that upsets me. How is paying someone to welcome us "traditional"?  

No wonder the greeters in Hawaii are so happy. At $50 a person, they can make $1,000 an hour!   

Another surprise...the airport was very small and it didn't have walls! For the most part, it's open air. It was dark when we got there, but here's a picture I found that was taken during the day.

We headed over to baggage claim and found my dad parked on the curb. Price waited with Pappy at the car and Matt and I went to get our luggage.

A ton of luggage came over the convey belts, but ours was not there when it stopped moving. I was starting to panic a little. What would we do without our clothes? Fortunately, the conveyers restarted and our luggage showed up in the last group.

My dad had rented a Nissan Versa Hatchback so it took some creative packing to get our bags in the car. While we were driving to the condo, I asked my dad how far it was from the ocean.  He said it was about a mile. Awesome! We could walk there. Yay! 

It was very dark on the way to the hotel as there were no lights on the highway. Along the way, dad told us that food was very expensive and he'd paid nearly five dollars for eight slices of bread. I was pretty sure he was exaggerating, but when we got to the condo he showed me the bread. He wasn't lying! Dang!

After quick showers, we went to bed. It was around 9:30 when I drifted off to sleep.