My intentions while on vacation are always to blog every day or at least every other day, but it seldom happens. I’m either too relaxed or too caught up in things to blog.
It’s Sunday; let me see if I can think as far back as Thursday. My habit while in Honolulu is to sunbathe by the pool for a few hours in the morning, have lunch, run errands, take pictures and/or go shopping or whatever. I’m usually down by the beach for sunset. True to form, I was ready to sunbathe on Thursday morning. It was not to be, however, as the pool was being renovated or fixed or something. Instead I ran a little errand in Chinatown, then was back in time to meet my friend for lunch. We ended up at Phuket Thai for tom yom goong, som tom and pad thai. He likes their pad thai, as he says the noodles have a flavor reminiscent of Cracker Jacks (i.e. like caramel), which it does. The food was great, and so was the conversation. We then went and sat in the sun at Ala Moana Beach Park to continue our conversation for awhile. Later that afternoon, I went down to the Mai Tai Bar (my home away from home) at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. I go there often enough that the bartenders there generally recognize me and greet me with “Welcome back!” I had big plans for that evening, but was still too tired to go out and make them reality.
Friday morning DID find me at the beach for a few hours of sunbathing. That made for some very interesting people watching. Four American guys pretended to be beached whales. In other words, they planted themselves lying prone close to the water’s edge and waited to be washed out to sea. In the meantime, a particularly arrogant French woman drew a “moat” with her foot around her space on the beach, while telling the Middle Eastern couple closest to her to move further away! Let me tell you, that would NEVER fly in L.A., but I digress. I chose that afternoon to wander down Kapahulu. I finally located the Rainbow Drive-In, Zippy’s, the big Safeway store and Ono Hawaiian Foods. My mission, however, was to pick up some malasadas at Leonard’s Bakery, followed by poke at Ono Seafoods. The line at Leonard’s Bakery was long; mostly Japanese tourists. Rather than their regular malasadas, I decided on cinnamon, custard, haupia and dobash. As of today, I’ve tried the dobash, cinnamon and custard. I did NOT care for the latter, but the other two were really good. My next stop was Ono Seafoods for their shoyu ahi poke bowl. You’re given a choice of white or brown rice, plus a drink and the poke for a mere $7.00. I’m not an experienced poke eater, though. Since I was taking most of it back to the hotel, I wondered how I would eat it later. My thoughts were that the rice is supposed to be hot, but the poke is served cold. So if they weren’t being eaten immediately, that would require separating them to be eaten later! That night was First Friday in Chinatown. My first stop was at Bar 35, but it was too crowded. Then I went to Indigo, but it was closed. I know that they had a fire awhile back, but thought that they’d already reopened; maybe not. After watching some bands and art on the street, I went to The Dragon Upstairs, where I had the pleasure of listening to a great jazz band, followed by a very good funk band. People were really friendly and the vibe in there was quite chill.
Not surprisingly, I was a little tired on Saturday morning. “Why, oh why,” I asked myself, “did I ask the shuttle to pick me up at 7:00 a.m. to go to the Aloha Stadium Flea Market?!” In reality, I prefer to go earlier to avoid the worst heat of the day. I did a little minor shopping, then immediately jumped in the pool back at the hotel. My friends, L. and R., were meeting me for dinner. They took me to Kit N Kitchen, a little place in Moili’ili. They both had ribeye, while I went for the seared scallop spinach risotto. My entree was really good and a healthy portion, too. Since there was a Cinco de Mayo celebration going on in Chinatown that night, we headed over there after dinner. Chinatown was actually busier for Cinco de Mayo than it had been for First Friday. We stopped in at Smith Union Bar first. Let me warn you, do NOT go there if your ears are sensitive to or can’t handle incredibly bad karaoke. When we couldn’t handle the bad karaoke any longer, we went back out on the street to imbibe there while listening to a salsa band. Our nightcap was at Murphy’s Irish Bar.
I actually slept late this morning! It was scheduled to rain. Every time I checked outside, the skies remained overcast and gray. I almost thought I was back in San Francisco!!!
At 12:30 p.m. I’d scheduled a tour of the North Shore. Not that I haven’t seen the North Shore, but I wanted to do it in a more timely manner than taking the bus, which would take all day. Mostly, I was interested in taking photos with my DSLR. We went to the Byodo-In Temple, Chinaman’s Hat, Sunset Beach, Laie Point, somewhere near Haleiwa to look for sea turtles and then to the Dole Pineapple Plantation. I didn’t really have time to take much in the way of creative photos because we were always on a time limit, there were 24 other people on the tour that often managed to get in my shots and, whenever it was raining, I had to continually clean off my lens. The places that I really wanted to take photos of were Shark’s Cove and Waimea Bay, neither of which we stopped at.
Tonight was dinner with my cousin and her husband. We decided on Romano’s Macaroni Grill in Ala Moana. I had a bowl of minestrone (very good), penne rustica (good) and glass of Sangiovese (average). We had lots of catching up to do, though. After dinner, we wandered by the Mai Tai Bar in the mall. M. seemed like he wanted to dance, but passed because he has to get up really early in the morning. I told him that it’s Motown Night at The Dragon Upstairs tomorrow night with a live band. If he wants to dance, they can meet me there tomorrow and he can show them how it’s done. If they show up, I promised to do the Bump, the Freaky Dekey and other long ago-retired dances with him!
In the meantime, here’s what I managed to spy with my point-and-shoot camera today; none of these were taken with my DSLR.
