let me tell you a little bit about hawaii

i've been back on the mainland for a few days now, and i've had some time to reflect about my recent jaunt halfway around the world. was it worth it? the concert was awesome, so i am leaning towards yes. i like to travel, and the weather was beautiful, and i got to see all the sights again and of course spend time with matt. but i would have really liked to spend more time there, really get to enjoy the beach and get a tan and adjust to the time difference.

the concert was the main reason we went there. like i said, it was amazing. let me fill you in on that first, and maybe i'll get to the rest later.

first of all, i have to back up. thursday night, before shipping out to hawaii, i partied a little with coworkers at our holiday party. five glasses of wine later, matt piled me into a cab and i passed out for three hours before the alarm went off.

drinking + flyin- a good night's sleep = disaster

i was tired and hung over the whole trip! we got picked up around 4 by a car which took us to newark. we flew from there to chicago, and our flight was early! we got to chicago a little after 7 a.m. central time. we walked around the airport a little and got bagels. a nice midwestern couple gave us there secondhand newspaper, so that was nice.

we boarded the 9-hour flight to hawaii around 10 a.m. and landed around 3:45 p.m. hawaiian time.

we went straight to our hotel, but it took over an hour to get there with the crazy traffic. we got dinner and passed out...around 8 p.m.!

on saturday before the concert we were up by 7:30. we made a pitstop at starbucks to get coffee, breakfast and lunch and matt picked up some beach chairs for us to sit in on line for the concert. we caught the bus, which took 2 hours to get to the stadium. we arrived around 11 a.m. and they started letting people in around 3:45. while we waited we read our books.

when they eventually let us in, there was more waiting. around 5 we go into the field level of the stadium, and ran to get to the front part. they let about 3,000 people in that section, and we just made it! they stamped our necks with this weird red ink so we could get in and out of the special section.



around 7:30, the first opening band, rocky and the devils, came on. the lead singer of the band was u2's stage manager. they were ok, so happy to be performing their first show!

pearl jam came on next and played for about an hour. they were awesome and we were so so close to the stage. we squeezed as close up as we could, about 7 or 8 people from the stage.



after that we pulled back a little. we decided to watch u2 from the back of the section, which was still close to the stage, but you could see both ends of the horseshoe part, and we could move around easily.

because we were in a special section and it was the last show of u2's vertigo tour, there were a lot of celebs around. first i saw ari from entourage. people in the stands were yellling "hug it out'' at him. then i spied alyssa milano, and during u2's set i noticed hurley from lost standing right in front of me.

now i'm sure matt has his opinions of the concert that differ from mine. i was just overwhelmed by the showmanship and high spirits of the band. they were so energetic and excited, even though it was the last show of the tour (or maybe because of it). bono started the show by rising out of one of the ends waving an american flag.



the stage and lighting was incredible, and the audience (filling up the entire stadium, plus thousands on the field) was so loud sometimes that you couldn't even hear bono singing. i loved it. i had so so so so much fun. matt said i couldn't fully enjoy it because it was taking photos, but i got some really cool ones. here are my favorites.







my favorite song, with or without you, was played as an encore. i took a 19 second video on my camera, but i'm not sure how to upload it here. it was so so good though :)

as a bonus: we stood behind u2's drummer, larry mullen jr., and his family at the airport when we were waiting for security. matt was in heaven.

check out my previous post for links to the full album with more photos from the concert and all my pics from the trip.