Our flight wasn’t until the early afternoon. So we knew we had some time to kill this morning. Thankfully Ty researched and found a go cart, amusement type place that was actually near the airport. Taroko Park is a smaller amusement park with go carts, rides, and trolleys to ride on. Sounds like a perfect way to spend our morning.
We had breakfast in the hotel, and then relaxed a bit, while playing cards.
Oh did I completely forget to mention it was Christmas Day?!? The kids woke Ty up about 4am. But he promptly told them to go back to sleep. I had a hard time falling asleep so I put in some ear plugs. This enabled me to avoid all this and sleep in. They woke up for good about 6am and he gave them an audio book to listen to while I got some sleep. So kind! Finally about 7am they couldn’t handle it any more.
We finally left the hotel about 10am since the park opened at 11. We stashed our bags at the subway in a locker. Based on the walkway we were starting to get really excited.
The kids did this ‘driving school’ for these electric motorcycles. They had them put on elbow and knee pads, gloves, special caps under their helmets, and even special shoes instead of their crocs.
R really wanted to do this driving school ride. We waited in line like 25 minutes to do it. It was so terrible! You got points for driving correctly, but we couldn’t tell what we were supposed to do since it was speaking to us in Chinese. I think we did ok, but who knows?! Totally not worth the wait in line.
As we were waiting in line Ty discovered this park has free WiFi, so he turns it on, and notices he got a message from our hotel. They had found a bag of clothes in our room. So he asks me, and it dawns on me, we didn’t pack R’s clothes! We had unpacked the kids into the drawers in the hotel. I had packed up my clothes and L’s but got interrupted and obviously never packed R’s clothes. UGH!! So Ty jumped back on the subway, and went back to the hotel to grab everything. We were so lucky that we had found out when we did. It was a hassle, but so much better than it could have been. The kids and I did one more ride each, before we found a nearby Indian restaurant for lunch.
Ty managed to make it back by the time we were finishing up lunch. We had time for one more ride before we needed to head to the airport. L wanted to do some Pokémon Go instead of rides so that’s what he and I did. While Ty and R, waited in another ridiculous line for a so-so go cart experience
We raced off to the airport. Ty and R’s line had taken a bit longer, so we were nervous were were cutting things too tight for our flight. However, when we got to the airport, there was no one in line at the check in counter. We actually had plenty of time, and we got a quick moment in a lounge. Which of course meant, more ice cream!
Our flight too Okinawa was blissfully easy. Just over an hour long. It was nice to relax a bit, and watch a show. The kids fussed it wasn’t long enough, and they didn’t get to watch enough shows. I swear, only our kids would complain about an hour long flight.
We got through customs quickly but finding our rental car was tricky. Apparently the rental car shuttle only comes to the domestic terminal, but trying to find this out wasn’t easy. So after a bit of wandering we finally figured it out. The rental car set up was relatively easy, and the car seat rental I must say was wonderfully cheap. This saved us from having to drag around seats for the rest of our trip!
We only messed up briefly, once on the way to the hotel. Ty is a natural now at driving on the opposite side of the car, and the road. We were so happy to get to our hotel, order some over priced room service, and tuck the kids into their floor nest. Two ‘queen’ sized bed in Japan, are two plus sized twins in the US. So we requested some spare blankets and pillows from housekeeping and thankfully had room to make the kids a bed on the floor.
Tomorrow we get to explore the north side of the island and see a friend that I’ve known since I was little!
