Day Seven- Waikiki Beach

We spent our last full day in Hawaii sitting out at Waikiki beach. We went to a different part of the beach this time. The water gets deep pretty quickly, but the bottom of the ocean was much sandier. It wasn't until I got out in the water up to about my neck that I started to see bits of rock again. The waves were pretty big, but they only seemed to break much further out than we were or right on the shore. Definitely not a beach you'd have children playing at near the edge. This was the part of the beach that the surfers were hanging out. We couldn't quite talk ourselves into renting a surf board to try it out, but I did rent a beach umbrella so we wouldn't blister in the sun. When we weren't in the water, Michael read under the umbrella while I knitted, people watched and took a brief nap. When we had enough of the sandy beach, we returned to the hotel deck area and used the pool and jacuzzi.

Our last dinner in Hawaii was at The Big Kahuna, which is a Hawaiian burger/sandwich place. Our waitress ended up being from Maine, which is one of the few people we have run into here in Hawaii that knows that New Hampshire is still in the United States. Our waitress allowed gave us the update on the Red Sox game last night, but more importantly she let us know the Yankees lost.

On the walk home, we found a cafe selling bubble tea. I am really surprised we haven't seen more bubble tea since I believe it to be a Japanese drink and there are a lot of Japanese tourists. Oh, and we saw our first doggy boutique as well. Michael bought Elleigh a little collar/bandanna in a pink Hawaiian print.

Day Two- Hawai'i

Michael and I started Saturday morning off with the local favorite breakfast of Spam and eggs on white rice. Spam shows up in a lot of places and dishes in Hawaii. I intend to try the Musubi before I go, which is two slabs of Spam on either side of a square of sticky rice, all wrapped in a seaweed wrapper so it looks like a piece of sushi. When in Rome, right?

We took the rental car around the southwest corner of the island yesterday and saw some beautiful terrain and coast. Sadly, many of the most beautiful things I could not get photos of since the road was so narrow by the cliff edge to the ocean that stopping was not an option.

We drove past Diamond Head and then Michael took me back by Hanauma Bay, which is where he took the teaser photo that he sent me earlier in the week. We plan to go back there for a day trip to snorkel above all of the coral and look for sea turtles. We drove through Waimanalo, Kailua and then wrapped around inland by Pearl City. We were looking for groceries to stock the kitchenette in the room, so we "toured" Pearl City and Honolulu until we found a grocery store.

We had a quick bite to eat at McDonald's before grocery shopping. Interestingly, they don't serve apple pies in Hawaii at McDonald's, instead, they serve Haupia pies. Our curiosity caused us to order two pies and the filling is a coconut cream type middle. I also noticed that on Waikiki Beach that the McDonald's seemed to be serving a Udon Noodle dish, that I have never seen in a New England McD's, that seems to cater to the Asian crowd.

We hung out early evening on the recreation deck until a light rain actually did make it to the pool area. And that quick shower of course brought another Hawaiian rainbow with it.

While Michael napped, I found the makings for Mai Tai's in the mini mart of the Resort and whipped up the best Mai Tai's I have ever tasted. I think it was the fresh Guava juice that is abundant here that made it so tasty, and the coconut rum. For dinner, we had garlic beef over brown rice and then a big oriental green salad, mostly made with the fresh produce and the entree I bought from the street vendors on Saturday.

It is amazing how different the view is from the room's balcony. Many of the photos in the blog so far have been from approximately the same place on the landscape, taken from the balcony. The first morning photo, the rainbow photo, and the night view photo, so compare them fore yourself. I played with my exposure length on the camera last night and got a good photo of the view in lights. I like how you can see the lights on the homes up the hill abruptly stop where the terrain becomes so steep that you couldn't possibly build there. If you click on any of the photos, you can look at a much larger version, and then use the back button to return to the blog.

As is usually par for me on vacation, I went to bed by 9:00 pm. Which technically was 3:00 am on the East coast. Michael was able to stay up later because he had a nap.