I woke up extremely early on Monday, but forced myself to sleep til 8:30. The five-hour time difference was really disconcerting, but it meant I managed to get up bright and early almost every day we were there.
We walked to the nearest ABC store (‘nearest’ usually means within about 50 feet), got coffee, and went to see Waikiki Beach. This was Matt’s first time in Hawaii, and I was excited to show him around!
We wandered down the street looking for a place for a quick breakfast. We didn’t find anything great right away, but we did find a guy with some birds. One of which went on my head. It was already my greatest day ever, and it wasn’t even 10am.
(I’ll remember that green parrot forever. He struck me as the nicest animal I’d ever met, and I wanted to steal him. A lot!)
We finally found a patio restaurant offering a Hawaiian ‘plate brunch’, which had bacon and a Kalua pork patty. Matt was very happy with that, and I was excited for my muffin and local fruit.
We walked back to the hotel for our bags, checked out, and waited out front for our shuttle to the airport. It was time to go to Kauai! Steve and Colleen were waiting for us there, after all.
There were only four of us on the shuttle, so we got to the airport really early. We went to the bar for a beer and watched California high school football on TV. When the plane arrived, we got to walk out to it on the tarmac. That will never not be extremely exciting for me, especially when there’s open seating like a bus.
The flight was 37 minutes long, which is enough time to take pictures of both islands from the air, and read the in-flight magazine. It was alright that they didn’t have Skymall, because there wouldn’t be enough time to even start laughing at it.
Honolulu from the air (Diamond Head on the right in the distance)
Kauai
We boarded another shuttle at the airport in Lihue; it was supposed to be shared, but we were the only people on it. On the way to the resort, we saw about a million wild chickens on the side of the road, and it was funny every single time.
The driver dropped us off at the Sheraton Kauai on Poipu Beach, where we were greeted with shell leis and led to the front desk. We went to the room and stood on our lanai peering at the garden pool, trying to locate Steve and Colleen. We saw a guy who looked kind of like Steve with a woman who wasn’t Colleen, so we decided they were swingers. It was the only explanation, really.
It turned out they were at the beach pool instead, so we changed into our bathing suits and headed over to find them.
Before swimming, though, there was very important business to attend to: our first mai tais in Hawaii. And some food, because we were dying.
After eating, we went to swim in the ocean. The waves were pretty high, and there was a sharp dropoff near the beach. We floated around for a long time, talking about Sharktopus and high-fiving waves (which eventually led to wavepunching). After a while, we went to go swim in the pool instead.
Round about dinnertime, we showered and changed, met at a daybed in the lobby which would quickly become our customary meeting spot, and went to the Point for food. I had a cheese pizza and a couple mai tais. (While everything else about the Sheraton was excellent, their vegetarian options were incredibly subpar: caesar salad, cheese pizza, and unappealing vegetable pasta. Not good at all.)
We went to hang out in the lobby and talk til around 11pm, at which point we were all ready to doze off. Something about mai tais and the ocean will do that to you, so we headed to bed on Hawaii’s 6th largest island.