Since we had a 3:30 flight out of LaGuardia, we had a bit of time to see more of New York on Monday morning. We checked out, left our bags at the hotel, and met Wendy and Amelia at the Millennium. Wendy talked to the concierge to arrange a shared ride to the airport in an SUV, rather than having to deal with the two-taxi thing again.

Down the street at the Belasco, the Neil Patrick Harris signs had all been replaced already.

We walked down to Bryant Park for the Subway. For the first time, I realized you could see the Empire State Building from there. You know, we’d only walked around there about 8 times already.

We rode up to the stop just south of Central Park and walked the couple blocks over to one of the outposts of the Momofuku Milk Bar. Momofuku has played a big part in our lives, since we ordered a Crack Pie and had it shipped to our wedding. Plus David Chang is awesome.

The staff there acted like it was their first day, forgetting to do things like give us the coffee we ordered, but at least they were really nice about it. We finally left with everything we’d purchased, and walked a couple more blocks to a fountain next to Central Park. We sat down and ate our delicious breakfast. (Blueberry bagel bomb, you’re the best.)

Jumi headed off to do more nerdy things (sorry, Jumi, but it’s true!) and the rest of us walked back over to the subway to take Bally on an important adventure. Conveniently, the West 4th Street Courts (aka The Cage) were located directly above the subway platform in Greenwich Village. We didn’t have to go far to find them!

There were a bunch of teenage girls playing, and they were way better than any of us could ever hope to be.

We headed back downstairs to the train, and rode to Grand Central station. Because Shake Shack was there, and we were hungry again. I have a deep love for train stations, and I liked Grand Central even more knowing that their Shake Shack’s lines weren’t very long, and they had very nice bathrooms in the basement.

Plus Shake Shack sold beer. That’s just plain civilized. (My mushroom burger was great, too.)

We still had a bit of time to kill after lunch, but wanted to be near the hotel, so we went back to the Algonquin for a cocktail. I was really hoping Matilda would be awake so that Amelia could see her! She seemed to be missing, however.

We heard from Jumi that she was on her way back, so we walked back over to our respective hotels and got our bags from the front desk. Our SUV was waiting for us out front, and we quickly realized that was the way to go as far as LaGuardia. If it had been JFK or Newark we’d have taken the train, but this was pretty easy too.

I was briefly annoyed that LGA didn’t seem to have a PreCheck line, but then the agent checking boarding passes handed me and Matt crumpled sheets of paper. They stated that we didn’t have to take our shoes off, so I guess that’s their version of PreCheck (unsurprisingly). There was nobody at security anyway, so we were through quickly. Matt and I went to hang out at a bar while the others went to the gate, and got to witness a lady so drunk or stoned she couldn’t get on the plane. We showed up for the lineup process, and the plane boarded very quickly. I think I’m a fan of Southwest Airlines!

We stopped long enough for dinner at Midway again, then flew back to Minneapolis and were landed by 9pm. We hopped the train, walked the long block to Matt’s car, and then it was a quick drive home from there.

Saturday morning around 9:45, our friend Bill picked us up and drove us to the airport. I felt a little bad about making someone get up so early on the weekend, but he had a new baby at home. He said he was used to it.

We got to our gate just in time for the agent to announce the flight was delayed due to “a mishmash of mechanical issues”. (If there’s any way to instill confidence in travelers, it’s not that.) A bit later, they told us that the plane had a broken windshield, so they were going to replace it at some point. With nine flights scheduled over the next week and a half, we’d expected to spend some time in airport bars, but we hadn’t been counting on that quite so soon.

Delta managed to do something right, because the new plane was delivered fairly quickly, only about an hour delayed. We boarded, and the captain said we could blame him for not wanting to fly with a broken windshield. We were totally fine with that decision; I’m more alarmed that Delta was willing to leave it at the pilots’ discretion.

We touched down at LAX around 2:30, picked up our rental car, and headed into Beverly Hills via Santa Monica Boulevard. Our plans kept adapting to the time we spent in the car: we were hungry and hoping to find an In-n-Out Burger or Del Taco, but eventually we became so tired of driving and being hungry that we were just looking for anything decent. We ended up finding Good Microbrew and Grill on Sunset Boulevard, and it turned out to be an excellent choice.

We sat out on the patio having awesome beer and really good (i.e. California) food. (I can never get over the huge difference in the quality of produce between here and there. It’s very noticeable.) There were Minnesota beers on the menu, too!

After dinner, we headed a few blocks down Sunset toward our primary destination: Tiki-Ti. I won’t bother trying to explain it, since the website says it all. It was even more spectacular than we’d hoped.

The bar sat 12 people, and there were tables for maybe 20 more at most. An old guy propping up the end of the bar scooted over and greeted us with, “Hello king, hello queen.” He’d obviously spent some time in Jamaica.

We had some tiki drinks, then I got up to use the bathroom. When I got back, Matt had made friends with the guy on the other side of him. He introduced himself as Ken, and told us that his dad was Filipino and his mom Scandinavian (hence the Minnesota connection). We spent the rest of our time there talking to him about his experience living in LA and his visit to the Philippines.

We didn’t really want to leave, but knew we’d never get out of there alive otherwise. We said bye to Ken and the bartender, and went to go check into the hotel.

We picked Stay because of its proximity to the places we wanted to visit on our short trip to LA. It’s very conveniently located right in the middle of downtown, on Main Street. The building is very strange but awesome: the rooms are updated with modern art, and everything is very clean. Half the rooms have shared bathrooms in the hallway, but we got one with a private bath. The only downside, though, was the lack of air conditioning. While it wasn’t too terribly hot, the importance of that fact wouldn’t become apparent til later.

After we became situated, I started looking up our other stops on the map on my phone, only I couldn’t make sense of anything on there. I couldn’t even figure out where we were. I finally laid down when I realized I was having a huge blood sugar crash, obviously due to the tiki drinks. It was very strange because I’d felt totally fine til right then; usually you can feel any blood sugar disturbance within half a minute. At any rate, I passed out for 20 or 30 minutes, and experienced the very unpleasant delirium of the rush of insulin. Within the hour, I felt fine again, just really exhausted.

We walked to a nearby pizza place for a slice, then moved on. We’d initially been planning to go to Caña, but it was about 2 miles roundtrip and I wasn’t sure I could make it. We added that to the ‘next time in LA’ list, and went here instead:

(We’re both graduates of the University of Minnesota, and huge Gophers hockey fans. The bouncer asked for our drivers licenses and made the connection right away, so we loved him.) The Golden Gopher is a super-classic bar, though it didn’t look too much like it on the inside. We got there around 9 and it was fairly empty, so we grabbed seats at the bar and ordered manhattans.

Around 11pm, the bar started to fill up. It wasn’t hatefully douchey or anything like we were expecting in LA, but it was still pretty different from our usual crowd; the most common drink ordered was Grey Goose and Red Bull. Seriously, you’d pay $11 for a drink involving Red Bull? At least don’t bother with the Goose. Once it became crowded to the point that people were leaning on us, we headed out.

We got back to the hotel around 12:30 and had to switch our usual places in the bed so that Matt could be nearer the open window (he’s the one who’s always way too warm). It was then that we realized the true downside to no A/C: not the heat, but the noise. It was a combination of people yelling, cars honking, music, and possibly even a brass band from 1am til sometime after 4. Needless to say, it was not the greatest sleep of our lives.

Our hotel starting blasting dance music from the lobby at 8am. It would’ve been way more painful had it not been for the time change that made it feel like 10am, and the vacation adrenaline. I get up way earlier on vacation than I ever voluntarily do at home!

I went to get coffee and a giant croissant in the lobby while Matt finished showering, and then we headed out to see more of LA. Stop one satisfied the geology nerd in both of us: the La Brea Tar Pits.

(It’s always bizarre and confusing that that exists right on Wilshire Boulevard in Los Angeles. Before the first time I visited, I assumed it was in the middle of nowhere.)

From there, we drove up to Hollywood Boulevard for the obligatory super-touristy stop.

It was gorgeous outside, but apparently not gorgeous enough for all the impersonators to be out hassling people for photos. We were pretty glad about that.

Matt and Bally picked their favorite stars on the Walk of Fame. Shortly thereafter, we named our rental car ‘Ponch’.

We stopped at Jack in the Box for a quick lunch (we’d still been unable to find In-n-Out or Del Taco, even though California ads led us to believe they were on every street corner). Matt visited the restroom on the way out, and said he’d seen a guy enter the stall with his hamburger and heard him continue eating on the toilet. CLASSY.

We hopped on I-10 and drove to Santa Monica, where we sat in the same insane traffic as the two other times I’ve visited Santa Monica. What the hell? We finally found a parking spot and walked down to the Promenade so Matt could check out the dinosaur topiaries and awesome street performers, the best of whom was Biggie Smalls painted completely silver.

From there, we walked down to the pier. Though these pictures make it look really overcast, I don’t recall it being that dark at all! It was just the typical Pacific coast fog.

I’d told Matt that the first time I visited the Santa Monica pier was on my three-week solo roadtrip, and it was one of the only places I was sad to be alone, because it was kind of romantic. I wanted to fix that, so we did.

The pier was as crazy as I’d remembered. There were buskers (including Mongolia’s only pro contortionist), the amusement park, and vendors selling things like unflattering caricatures and your name on a grain of rice. It’s basically exactly what you want from that kind of spectacle. We walked down to the end of the pier, saw the fishermen and the end of Route 66, then headed down to see the beach, which had a different kind of spectacle:

(The crosses represented the number of soldiers killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Horrible.)

We went down and dipped our feet in the ocean. It was freezing, so we were pretty excited to be heading to Hawaii very shortly…

…or so we thought.

As we climbed the steps back up to the pier, I got a phone call from Delta. I missed it and called right back, knowing what it would inevitably mean. The agent said our 6pm flight was delayed 2 hours, but that we would still have to be at the airport at the correct time, ‘just in case’. AARGH.

We still had some time to kill before heading there, so we did some shopping at an awesome British grocery (the snacks we got there made it through the entire trip with us, on various flights), then stopped at the TNB BBQ truck for Korean tofu tacos. We may not have made it to In-n-Out, but we did get to experience one of LA’s finer taco trucks!

We took highway 1 down the coast toward the airport, passing through Venice (which was awesome) and Marina del Ray. By the time we arrived at the car rental place, Delta had called again to notify me (via friendly robot) that the flight was now delayed 3.5 hours. That would put it into Honolulu dangerously close to midnight, and I knew we were starting to run the risk that it wouldn’t leave at all that night. While I’d have loved an extra night in LA, I’d prefer it to not come at the expense of our trip to Hawaii (and also missing the next day’s flight to Kauai).

We checked in, and the Delta machines spit out a couple of $6 meal vouchers as apology. (Nice work, guys.) We decided to turn them into drinks, and headed to Malibu Al’s Beach Bar, to attempt to pretend we were somewhere tropical already. Also, it was right by our gate. We ordered long islands, played cribbage and canasta, and later ordered pizzas from CPK (located across the way… they just carried them over).

We eventually got sick of Malibu Al’s and crossed over to the Cantina just for a change of scenery. There, we ordered margaritas and watched the Giants game. We were so tired and punchy that everything I saw was the funniest thing ever. Finally, after 5+ hours at LAX, they announced the boarding of our flight.

We were glad to be in row 19 near the front, and to have already been supplied with blankets and pillows. I was also really glad to have the window seat this time. I napped on and off for 4 1/2 hours or so, then spent some time staring out the window at the stars and ignoring the reruns of stupid comedies on the overhead screens. We landed in Honolulu around 12:15, and the passengers on our flight were the only people left in the airport.

We grabbed our bags and headed to the shuttle bus, which of course had to wait around for a long time for other passengers. We finally headed off into Waikiki. Matt and I were dying of exhaustion, and kept ourselves awake by counting the number of ABC stores we saw on the way to our hotel (11 of them!). We arrived at the Castle Ocean Resort, close to 2am. They’d roped off the lobby and were cleaning the floors, but there was still someone waiting at the desk to check us in.

When we got up to the room and found that our keys didn’t work in the door, I thought Matt was going to die. I left him with the bags and ran back to the lobby, and thankfully everything worked the second time. We barely took time to plug in our phones and brush our teeth before collapsing in bed. This time, with air conditioning!

Tuesday morning, I got up early and sat on the lanai to write and watch some more swingers at the pool. (I knew they were swingers because the dude had speedos and a ponytail. Duh.) Even at 9am, it felt like the sun was strong enough to burn! Around 9:30, we met Colleen and Steve for brunch at our resort. They had an awesome deal where if you agreed to skip room-cleaning for a day, you got a free buffet meal. Also, this was the view:

Brunch was by far their best food selection. Mine consisted of things like a mini waffle with macadamia nuts and coconut, papaya, cottage cheese, and miso soup.

While Steve rented a car for the day, we watched the fishing bird from our daybed. He seemed really annoyed that we were watching him not catch fish.

Since we’d arrived in Kauai, I’d been talking about Old Koloa Town. Mostly I liked the sound of it, but I decided that Old Koloa Town was obviously where everything awesome happened. Matt and I had driven through it on the way to the resort, but that was all I really knew about it. Regardless, I was convinced that it would be fantastic.

We got the car and headed south to the Spouting Horn, Kauai’s very own blowhole! Since our friends had arrived on the island in the dark, it was also their first chance to see the feral chickens everywhere (apparently the Sheraton bans them).

These were all over the ground. What are they? I need to find out.

We watched this rooster wander into a sprinkler and flop around on the ground, taking a bath whenever it passed over him. It was beyond hilarious.

Blowhole ahoy!!

We went to go check out the local vendors set up nearby, and found both ukelele-playing and surfing Obama bobbleheads. We each got one, of course. I also picked up a cute cooler bag that would serve us very well at the beach over the next week or so.

From the Spouting Horn, we headed down around the south end of the island, toward Waimea Canyon; it’s known as the Grand Canyon of the Pacific.

Along the way, Matt became obsessed with the campaign signs along the road, and decided he liked Duke Aiona because of his name. We had other favorite candidates for various offices, but Duke was far and away the favorite. How could you not vote for someone named Duke? We went so far as to research his life story on Wikipedia. (When we got home, Matt checked the election results: Duke did not win, unfortunately. But politically, the other candidate was more awesome.)

The Hawaiian ‘red dirt’ thing is not a joke. Sometimes it’s even purple.

We stopped to buy a coconut from a couple of dudes in a truck on the side of the road, who hacked it open with a machete and gave it to us to drink. Then we went up to the canyon overlook. Photos don’t really do it justice:

There was a guy set up in the parking lot selling all kinds of Hawaiian treats, like dried coconut, mango, taro, macadamia  nuts, and lots of candy. We picked up several bags of it, then went down to do some hiking on the nature trail.

Colleen and Steve love nature!

We descended from the mountains, stopped at a subpar gift shop, and then drove into Waimea. Our map showed a Captain Cook monument (at the place he landed and discovered Hawaii), but we were completely unable to find it. There were only about 4 roads in Waimea, and all of them seemed to lead to construction. I’m not convinced that monument exists.

We stopped at the unusual-but-delicious Island Tacos in Waimea, then Steve and Colleen went to get shave ice while we waited outside, watching the local high school football team practice. I did not envy them wearing full uniforms and pads in that heat.

From there, we stopped to see the Old Russian Fort outside of town. This and a pile of rubble that used to be walls is all that’s left of it!

We headed back in the direction of Poipu, with one very important destination in mind: OLD KOLOA TOWN. We needed to do some souvenir shopping, and wanted to pick up some non-resort-priced booze for the beach.

Our first stop was the wine store, which had a decent selection of local liquor and beer. We picked up some Koloa Rum to bring home, and got some six-packs of beer and cheap rum for the hotel. We hit up a few more shops for souvenirs, and Steve picked up a boogie board for $9. As we were walking down the street, Colleen noticed a sign that was like a beacon to us all: $3 mai tais for happy hour at the pizza place. We couldn’t get to a table fast enough.

We ordered drinks and half-price appetizers. The bruschetta was gone within a couple of minutes, and Colleen used the pregnant lady excuse to order more, even though it was us who really wanted them. We had another round of $3 mai tais, then walked over to the grocery store to stock up on sunscreen, snacks, pop, and red cups. At that point, it was clear that I was correct about Old Koloa Town: it did, in fact, have everything we could ever want.

Back at the resort, we decided to meet at the garden pool near our room, because it was never crowded. We brought the beer and rum along, even though I’m sure the resort would’ve frowned on that. As it approached 9pm, we decided to head to dinner. The resort had long since stopped serving in the restaurant, so we drove over to Josselyn’s Tapas Bar in a nearby shopping center.

The place was less than half-full, but the service was remarkably slow. Soon after we arrived, a huge group of very loud, very drunk people gathered near the bar and proceeded to have a party. The food was pretty decent, but the server screwed up our drink orders repeatedly. It was supremely annoying, so at least dinner was good!

By then it was close to our 11pm bedtime, so we headed off to our rooms. There was no adjusting to the time change, it seemed! Matt and I had a Coconut Porter on our lanai, then headed to bed.