If you think all five-star resorts have soundproofed rooms, you clearly don’t work in the hospitality industry. The yahoos in the room next to ours stumbled in around 6 am and spent the next 45 minutes whooping and hollering before presumably passing out. (It’s a good thing we passed out at 9:00 last night, or they might have actually woken us up.)

Those guys next door could probably use the Hangover Heaven service I saw advertised at the airport. For as little as $160, a van will come to wherever you are (hotel room, street corner, whatever) and provide you with a specially prepared blend of hangover medicine through an IV. “Dr. Burke and his team are experts at hangover cures and IV hydration,” according to the website. You can even pre-book a group session if you’re planning a big night. Only in Vegas.

Vegas is not all about casinos, of course. It’s also about the mobsters who used to control the casinos. We learned all about the history of gangsters in America at the Mob Museum today. I have great respect for the way Americans go all-out with the theming in their museums — they transform entire rooms into exact replicas of whatever theme is on display. They’re also fairly interactive. We got to stand in a police lineup, fire a machine gun, and sit in an electric chair. We also got to see the actual courtroom where the Senate hearings on organized crime took place in 1950 (the room still has the original furniture, including a bulletproof judge’s bench). I call that two hours well spent.

The guy handing out towels on the pool deck said it was supposed to be 105 degrees today. I assume he meant Celsius, since that’s about what it feels like. We walked around the Strip for a few minutes this afternoon and had to make a pact to stop complaining about how much we were sweating. Whew.

To the Grand Canyon tomorrow…

We don’t gamble, I don’t really drink, and we rarely stay awake past 9:30 pm…so naturally we came to Vegas. In the middle of the summer. With the Canadian dollar at its lowest level in over 10 years. Huh.

I know it sounds crazy, but we had an opportunity to get away from the kids for a few days, and we wanted to go somewhere we’d never been, and we wanted to use our loyalty points to get a cheap flight. Vegas fit the bill. (It turns out most people don’t want to go to the desert in July. Go figure.)

Let the adventures begin…

To be clear: I hate boats. I discovered that 15 years ago when I went sailing off the coast of Australia and nearly lost it over the railing. I had similar issues on a sightseeing boat in Alaska, and on a semi-sub in Aruba, and on a snorkelling ship in Hawaii 12 years ago…ugh.

So yeah, I hate boats. But I love my children, and my children wanted to see whales, so I sucked it up and booked us on a whale watching cruise. It was crazy windy, and even Brayden wanted to hide in the cabin for most of the trip instead of standing out on deck, but persevering in the wind paid off: a baby humpback breached multiple times right in front of us! I’ve been on other whale watching trips, and I’ve seen whales’ tails come out of the water, but I’d never seen a full breach before. Very cool.

None of us really wants to go home tomorrow (especially when we see the weather forecast…groan). The kids may have missed a few days of school, but they’ve definitely gotten an education here. Justin seems fascinated by the Hawaiian language and is much better than any of us at figuring out how to pronounce street names and remembering to say “aloha” and “mahalo” rather than “goodbye” and “thank you.” And Brayden absorbs facts like a sponge — he still wants to learn more about the Mighty Mo and all the animals we saw at the zoo. He even claims this vacation is better than the one to Disneyland, which is really saying something.

Aloha!

The kids got to walk through a real-life battleship when we toured the USS Missouri today. Launched in 1944 and in and out of service until 1992, the Mighty Mo has been a museum ship at Pearl Harbor since 1998. It was the last battleship ever commissioned by the U.S. Navy and was the site of the surrender of Japan at the end of WWII, a fact that Brayden found particularly cool.

We opted for a guided tour, hoping to get an insider’s view of the history and workings of the ship. Unfortunately, our guide had such a thick Phillippino accent that we could hardly understand a word he said. Justin was so bored that I had to warn him not to yawn while the guy was still talking. When the tour ended, though, we were free to explore on our own. Both boys enjoyed seeing the massive guns, and the various missiles, and the Combat Engagement Center, where they could sit in the chairs and pretend to control the ship.

There were some neat exhibits around the visitor’s center, too. Brayden loved the torpedoes and machine guns on display, and both kids seemed fascinated by the submarine con tower where they could push buttons, spin wheels, and even look through periscopes. Cool stuff.

Brayden was so interested in everything that he spent most of an hour researching the Missouri on Wikipedia when we got back to the hotel. Huh.

One more day in paradise…

At the Dole Plantation in central Oahu, you can tour the gardens, see how pineapples are grown, and take a mini train ride through the site to learn about the role that pineapples have played in Hawaii’s history. We didn’t bother with any of that, though. The kids were only interested in one thing: completing the world’s largest maze.

The maze consists of 2.5 miles of paths through three acres of pineapple plants. The staff tell you not to worry about getting lost, since they give you a postcard-sized map of the route, but we were too busy chasing the kids to notice if we were anywhere close to where we were supposed to be. We finished the maze in 45 minutes, which didn’t set any speed records, but which felt like a huge victory. We celebrated with lunch in the cafe and of course a special treat of pineapple-flavored ice cream. Good times.

When we got back to Waikiki, Brayden and Chris went off to the U.S. Army Museum. We walked past it every time we went to the beach and Brayden had been wanting to check it out. They got up close and personal with tanks, missiles, and even a Cobra attack helicopter — all for free. Awesome.

To Pearl Harbor tomorrow…

I'd like to note for the record that I left today basically unplanned (gasp). I've never been good at sitting around, but my only plan for today was to relax on the beach. Which was fine for the first three hours, but then we had to get some lunch, which meant we had to get out of our swim gear. (The waitress asked how our day was going, and we said great, we'd been at the beach, and she looked astounded: “Already?” Clearly no one in her household gets up at 5:30 am.)

We needed something to do after lunch, so we walked down to the zoo. I was expecting to spend maybe an hour looking at animals, but there was so much to do and see that we ended up spending most of the afternoon there. Justin started off sour because he wanted to play iPad and was annoyed that we dragged him away…but he quickly got over that once we started finding animals that you don't normally see in Canadian zoos, like alligators and Galapagos tortoises. Brayden was so excited to see everything that he insisted I take pictures of every single animal, along with some of the vegetation. It was a crazy good outing.

The day ended, as usual, at the pool (with free drinks and snacks — this hotel rocks!)

One of the main reasons we chose to come to Hawaii was because we wanted to experience South Pacific culture without having to fly for 16 hours. So when I discovered we could learn about six different cultures at the Polynesian Cultural Center on Oahu’s north shore, I was sold.

The center showcases native cultures of Samoa, Aotearoa (New Zealand), Fiji, Hawaii, Tahiti and Tonga. The place is basically a theme park with different villages. There are shows in each village, but our boys wouldn’t sit for those. They were much happier doing the hands-on activities such as long poi twirling in Aotearoa (which was pretty hilarious), ancient bowling in Hawaii, and weaving in Tonga. Brayden and I even learned how to dance the hula, though thankfully no one got photos of that.

We also took a canoe ride through the villages, saw an IMAX show about Hawaiian scenery, and watched a canoe pageant in which people from each culture wore traditional garb and performed various rituals and dances. I really enjoyed it, but the kids were slightly less impressed — Brayden thought the best part was when one of the Tonga guys accidentally fell into the water.

Back to the beach tomorrow…

Tropical vacations have never been my thing. I’ve always preferred to explore cities with historical sites, palaces and museums, generally in Europe, and generally without kids. But I’m older now, and I’ve seen most of what I want to see, and I felt like it was time to show the boys a bit of the world beyond our borders. So we brought them to Hawaii. Aloha!

Day one has been a smashing success, except for the fact that we didn’t get to bed until 11:45 last night and Justin was up at 4:45 am this morning (cursed time change!) We played in the waves at Waikiki Beach, went for a nice lunch, and then took a submarine tour of the waters around Oahu. We even got to see three humpback whales on our way out to the submarine, so Brayden was pretty stoked. His day was almost ruined when we failed to get a picture of the first sea turtle we saw from the sub (the horror) but thankfully a second one turned up and we quickly snapped a photo.

Justin has been picking up random Hawaiian words and adding them to his mental database. On the walk back to the hotel, he said (with no prompting), “Mahalo to Mom for planning this vacation!”

Yup — this one rocks.

Today we took a side trip to Slovakia and toured the Hapsburg imperial treasury in Vienna. We saw lots of old stuff. We learned lots of new facts. And we didn’t especially care about any of it. We are soooo ready to go home tomorrow.

Here are five tell-tale signs that you’re ready for your vacation to be over:

All you want to do is sleep. You don’t want to climb another 200 steps to see another thousand-year-old monument with great historical significance. You want to pass out in the back of the bus and drool on your spouse’s shoulder. Nothing is more precious than a nap at the end of a vacation.

“New adventures” become “irritating inconveniences.” Public washrooms that require coins, TVs that don’t speak English, and drinks that aren’t chilled almost have you in tears. You’d rather buy a stale sandwich at the hotel gift shop than figure out how to get downtown on the subway. You’re done.

Restaurant food makes you gag. No menu anywhere will satisfy you. You want a simple home-cooked meal piled high with vegetables accompanied by the biggest glass of ice water you can imagine. You’re tired of deliberately dehydrating yourself in order to avoid having to find a bathroom.

There’s a powerful stench coming from your suitcase. You pity the airport security official that chooses to pull your bag aside for a random check. You still have to figure out how to explain to your friend that you packed three pairs of your dirty socks inside the souvenir mug you bought her in London.

You can’t imagine ever wanting to get on another airplane. You wish you could just beam yourself home. You dread dealing with three flights, 19 hours of travelling and a nine-hour time change. You’re convinced that once you finally make it home, you will never want to leave again.

(You are wrong.)