Travel days are never awesome - but must be endured for the joy of the holiday!

This day started like a normal day - Bear waking me up at the crack of dawn to go for a walk . .. I couldn't really deny him this as I've been away for 6 weeks and now after only 2 weeks at home both Rodd and I are leaving for 3 weeks.

Ok walk done and animals all fed now it's time to get the house ready for our house/pet sitter Jeanie to come in. Stripped and remade the bed, with Rodd throwing them in the machine and out on the line and of course the kitty litter box needs to be fresh and new so that was also done.

There was a couple of last minute things to go in the bags and then by 8.30 we were packed, dressed and ready to leave! Jeanie arrived just after 9 which was great so we managed to get out the door by 9.30 to drive to Brisbane airport for our 4.15 pm flight to Sydney.

We had a great run down and were parked in the Long Stay Car Park at the International Terminal by just before 12. This is where things got a bit confusing because when I checked in yesterday I hadn't looked at the boarding passes so I had no idea our first leg actually left from the Domestic Terminal! As soon as we stepped out of the lift in departures Rodd turned to me and said "shouldn't we be in the Domestic Terminal"? I said no and that I thought since it was an international flight booked from Brisbane to Honolulu that we would have to check bags in International.

Anyway - long story long - I checked the boarding pass I had saved on my Apple Wallet and sure enough it said Terminal D!! Fine, no worries, we'll just catch the Air Train to Domestic ... which we did but it cost us $10.20 for the trip which is a bit of a rip off and quite disappointing Brisbane as most airports I've been to in other countries have free transport between Terminals.

Once at Domestic we discovered the "International Transfers/Check In" counter and got our bags checked through to Hawaii and also boarding passes for both legs printed. Through security which is fairly easy as you don't need to take out liquids just aerosols, computers and empty pockets.

Time for lunch... airport $$ definitely in play here as we paid $93 for 1 burger, 1 linguine, 1 bottle of water, 1 glass of wine and 1 Mimosa!! Holy Dooly we may have to eat salad for the next week!! Whilst eating lunch Rodd started looking for his phone and after a frantic search through his backpack I casually asked if he'd taken it out of the car. The look on his face was answer enough! Luckily we're here hours too early so I'm still sitting here at The Common sipping my Mimosa and writing this!

From here I went to the Aviary and ordered another Mimosa whilst I waited for Rodd - he eventually text to say he was on his way - Only took him just under an hour!!

Unfortunately there was a few delays with our plane so we wandered about the Terminal, stopping for a few more drinks and finally nearly an hour late we departed. Thankfully the arrival time wasn't an hour later as well because we only have a short layover before our next leg ... as it was we got off this flight and by the time we got the transfer to International terminal and arrived at our gate just as the flight was boarding.

We flew with Qantas and honestly we've never had a fantastic experience flying with the Internationally but the only thing I'll say about the flight is that I liked the seat configuration of 2 - 4- 2 as we got an aisle and window seat and there seemed to be lots of room both in the width of the seat itself and the leg area!

Long boring flight later we arrived in Honolulu just after 9 am on the same morning we'd left so we get 2 1st Novembers this year!