Another day of my favorite things, walking, eating, and swimming.
I got up with the sun again this morning -- this is because I like the window open at night so I can see out and feel the breeze, etc., etc. and that means that as soon as the sun comes up it is shining smack in my face. John is sleeping in the other bed farther away from the window, so it doesn't hit him.
I took the opportunity to go for a nice long walk to the lighthouse (but not all the way up the hill, I did it on the beach) and eventually walked almost all the way to Shangri-La,
Doris Duke's house, which takes about 40 minutes to get to in a car, but about the same amount of time to walk to on the beach -- including looking for glass and shells.
After my walk, there was
a "native Hawaiian" fair in the park, so I met John there and we did a little shopping and had a plate lunch of chicken, rice and corn. It's very hard to get a vegetable around here, by the way.
And then, of course, we spent the afternoon at the beach. Life just doesn't get better than this. I don't know how long it would take me to get tired of it.
And finally, we met our "boys," River and Tiger, on Kalakaua. I have looked for them every night and didn't realize they had moved down a block and across the street -- because the police asked them to move because they draw too big a crowd. I didn't get a video, but here's a link to a video of them. They are such good singers and players, and they just have wonderful personalities, as does their father, who is also in this video.
We tried to go to Eggs and Things this morning, but they were closed because of a power outage. So we went to the other Eggs and Things, and predictably, there were dozens of people waiting. So we walked down the street and stopped at a little crepe place. The crepes were wonderful. John had sausage and eggs (scrambled) in his crepe, and I had tuna and boiled eggs in a crepe.
There was a guy there -- one of the many people on the street who stand around trying to get people to sign up for tours or timeshares or whatever. I made the mistake of being sort of smartass friendly with him, and he decided to tell us a whole long story about a Romanian gypsy woman who scammed him out of all his money. I have no idea if this story was true or not, and if it was, he was truly an idiot. Without going into the 20 minutes of details, he was taken by a pretty face who constantly needed money in large amounts to take care of legal bills, smooth the way to get an inheritance, etc. A lot like how they drag out a Nigerian scam, except he actually met this woman. The people in the restaurant were getting a kick out of this (we were sitting on an outside seating area) and when he got a phone call, we got up and left. Some of them said things to us like "good chance for a quick getaway." But then he followed us down the street. He wasn't trying to make any sales or anything, it's like he just couldn't stop telling this story.
We spent the rest of the day at the beach.
Tonight we went over to the Hilton to watch the fireworks. We got a bit closer than I would have liked -- and fireworks are extremely loud in Honolulu, because the sound reverberates all around the tall buildings.
That's it. Tomorrow will be even slower.
We got up at 7:30 this morning (right after sunrise) and putzed around and finally got on the bus at 9 a.m.
Here's a picture of how crowded the bus to Hanauma Bay is.
These people are waiting for the bus but were told they had to wait for the next one because this one was too crowded.
This is at Hanauma Bay. This is why when I come home, you won't see a tan. This is generally how I sunbathe.
We took a little walk over to Ala Moana Park tonight, which is a big city beach and probably more frequented by locals because even though it's not a very interesting beach, it has a lot of parking, which there isn't much parking at some of the other beaches. We did take a nice picture of the marina near the park.
There aren't going to be any tadpoles in today's blog, though you might see a tiny fish or two, I just liked the alliteration of the title.
We went back to my "take a walk" beach today, because I wanted to get a few more treasures to pretend I'm going to make into jewelry.
John isn't feeling too well -- tummy upset -- but he didn't want to be left at the hotel either, so he agreed to go walk with me, even though he finds beachcombing incredibly boring.
However, there was something for everyone today. I got a bunch of tiny branch coral, which is white and bleached out, but I like it anyway and I know I didn't kill any animals to get it. So that made me happy. This particular beach has few access points and is along a road where there is no parking, so it doesn't get a lot of heavy use.
It alternates sandy beaches and lava flow areas that are under water enough of the time that coral is growing on them and there are cool things in the tidepools. I'm uploading a video of these guys, which it took me a long time to convince John were animals and not seaweed.
Again, I apologize for the poor quality of the video, but if I put it on the good quality, the file is too big and it won't upload.
Another charming thing on the beach was this lovely girl who was getting her picture taken and allowed us to take it too.
I'm not sure what this was for, they are pretty sexy poses (more than just what I took). Maybe she has a killer facebook page.
And finally, on the way back we walked through one of the little parks and discovered that there is a beach walkway that connects the two parks.
Near the second park we looked down from the walkway (about 10 feet down) and saw these people with whatever their catch.
They told us they are sea cucumbers and that you cut them up, add onions, soy sauce, vinegar, let it ferment for a day and eat them raw. It sounds kind of good, though probably doesn't meet my standards of not eating raw fish. The people were really friendly.
What a wind!! Usually when we look out our window there are a few surfers out there on smallish waves far out.
Today, because of the wind it was all white water -- and Waikiki has small 3-5 waves even on high wave days.
Also, there were at least five guys out there windsurfing with kites. And they were ripping across the water.
We were going to go to the new Eggs and Things this morning, since Hanauma Bay is closed on Tuesdays and we didn't have any more "have to's" to get in. But it was so windy we could hardly walk down the street, and when we got there, there was a pretty big wait, and you didn't know if you'd get a seat or not.
Seemed like it was going to rain soon, so we just went into McDonald's. This is the altecocker heaven. There was nobody under 65 in the whole place except the employees, and every table was full. And just as we got our Egg McMuffins, and just then the sky opened up and rain came down by the bucket. Typical tropical storm.
We were going to go for a walk, but rain was predicted for the whole day, and the walk I had in mind was kind of long and far away if we ended up getting drenched.
We came back to the hotel and John went to work out and I took my packages to the post office to mail. I hope I'll get my glasses back the week we get home. I'm really mad that I broke them.
When I came back, John was still working out, so I decided to take my beads down to the beach and make a babe or two. I had no sooner set my stuff up than the wind came up and the rain started pouring down again, in another downpour that lasted about 15 minutes, with the wind blowing the rain straight into the covered area. Afterwards, I dried the table and bench off and sat and made a few babes. It was kind of nice working on the beach, but it was also kind of windy.
Check out the cool way this guy decorated his bicycle.
And that's our big day.
Tomorrow is supposed to be quite cool, which means no Hanauma Bay for me, so I've got to look up some bus schedules and maybe we'll go up to the flea market at the Aloha Stadium. Here's a picture of how we manage our bus trips. We have all these little slips of paper with bus stops and bus routes that we write out from the computer. It's old fashioned, but cheaper than a smart phone.
We are so predictable. Every time we come here, we have to go to the north shore, and we always go to Shark's Cove, Sunset Beach, town of Haleiwa, and Dole Pineapple. We had a slight deviation this time.
First of all, we had rented a car from Thrifty. It was a pretty good deal, $35 for the day, coming to $44 with the various taxes. But then, for the absolute lowest level of insurance (the one that protects them if the car gets dinged) It was another $32. Highway robbery. So then they tell you you have to bring it back with the same amount of gas you took it out with, in this case 1/4 tank.
John can't stand to drive around on a little bit of gas in the tank, so we compromised and bought 6 gallons. Keep in mind, this trip to the north shore is about 60 miles round trip, and large portions of the trip are at 35 mph speed limit. By the time we were taking it back, I wanted to sit and let it idle to burn up the extra gas which is $4.03 per gallon here) just so I wouldn't have to give them an extra $12 worth of gas.
When we picked up the car, it started to rain. And by the time we got out on the freeway, it was pouring rain. We eventually stopped in Wahiawa to buy gas. Turns out that Wahiawa is a shortcut on the way out to the north shore, and you avoid going through Schoffield Barracks that way.
Moving on, it's a really high surf day at the north shore, has been for about a week, and is always high surf at this time of year anyway.
It was spectacular. There's a place we love to watch the waves crash, called Shark's Cove. Not only is it great wave watching, but there's a little food truck type restaurant that has great ahi sandwiches right across the street, and you can sit and watch the waves. This little cove is a natural cove created by lava. Even when the tide is coming in, you can usually swim in the cove because it's quite protected, but not today. My pictures of this aren't that good, but the wave action was really fantastic.
The new thing we did today was to go to Laniakea Beach which is a place where turtles go to bask in the sunshine. We got there about 10:30 and hung around for an hour or so. The turtles were there, but they were in the water.
These are giant green sea turtles, called honu in Hawaiian. We could see them in the water, but they didn't want to come out of the water. There were at least seven we could count in the water. I'm putting one picture in. I can see the turtle, because I saw it in person, but probably nobody else can.
We were kind of disappointed, and went on up to Sunset beach where we watched some hot shot body boarders and two surfers ride some pretty humongous waves. As time went by, though, the waves got closer and closer together, lots of white water, and I think they were pretty hard to ride. But very exciting to watch.
We finally tore ourselves away from this beach, and decided to stop by the turtle beach and see if any of them had come out of the water. THEY HAD!!! It was so cool. There were three of them loafing on the beach.
There are volunteers who man this beach 365 days a year from about 9 a.m. to sundown. This is really good because once the turtles come ashore, they have to keep people away from them. So the volunteers put red ropes in the sand and then, because they can recognize the various turtles, they put up signs with their names and histories. We were really thrilled and happy we stopped back there.
After we watched the turtles sleep for awhile, we went into Haleiwa, where we stopped at Matsuda's General Store and had a shaved ice and bought some groceries.
Not much rain on the way home -- it kind of sprinkled off and on all day but as we were coming into Honolulu, it started pouring down so hard I could hardly see the road. Then when we got back to the car rental place, I made a turn into the front, which was blocked off. This meant that I had to back out onto Kalakaua Avenue, which is a VERY busy street. It is all one way, except for one lane which is for buses. So I had to back across the bus lane into a busy traffic lane, and every time it appeared there might be a break in the traffic, there was a pedestrian walking behind the car. Jeez. I tried to get the guy from the rental agency to move it, but he was having nothing of that. Finally John got out and kept the pedestrians out of the way and I managed to get out. It was very scary, though. Fortunately, no damage to the car, and it wasn't raining while we were walking back to the hotel.
This morning I saw the sun rise again, and promptly went back to sleep and slept til 9 a.m. Then I took my malasada from last night and a cup of coffee and went down to the beach to watch the water while I had breakfast. John went to the gym.
After breakfast, I went for a walk up to the lighthouse while the tide was kind of low. You walk a ways on the road, then you can walk down to the beach and walk along the beach, which is a wonderful beach with tidepools. A lot of divers go here, and some spear fishermen.
I found some really cool corals and sbeach glass here, which I think I can put into jewelry.
Further down the beach I saw a guy who had put a chair out in the water and was just sitting there tanning. He had reached the state of super tan about 15 years ago, and really didn't need any more sun. But I imagine he is addicted.
This is a really nice beach, and not super easy to get to, so it's mostly frequented by a few locals. If you walk all the way up to the top of the hill on the road, you can get down to a nice beach, but you can also walk to it at sea level at low tide, which is what I did.
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John watched the Super Bowl this afternoon, and I went to see The Artist, which I liked a lot. I didn't actually expect to like it. Had to wait a long time for the bus coming back, and then a drunk got on it who was so obnoxious I ended up getting off the bus and getting on another bus.
When I got back from the movie, the game still wasn't over and I stopped and got a video of this new game that's inside the International market place.
When I woke up this morning, I looked around the room, and John was up and dressed, had organized the towels, the mats, the fins, the goggles, the snacks, packed them all in bags and carryalls, and was ready to head out to Hanauma Bay. All I had to do was put on my suit and make sure I had my hat, sunglasses, and bus pass.
We even had enough time to walk up about four bus stops so we could get on the bus before all the riff-raff got on.
This is an important thing to know about if you're going to Hanauma Bay in the morning, because by the time the bus gets to our stop they have to have somebody standing outside the bus to cram people in. But because we got on early, we even got to sit down.
I am the happiest woman in the world when I am at Hanauma Bay. I am even happy getting up before 9 a.m. to go. It was a little windy today, but the water was pretty clear, and I finally got to see one of those giant wrasses which I love, the rainbow colored ones. I also finally went to the big sort of lagoon over on the left side, where I've never gone before (I put an X on the picture to show where it is) and saw some really interesting fish over there, including one of those lobster-ish looking bottom crawlers that pretty much matches the sand.
Alas, we couldn't stay there forever, because we both have been somewhat sunburned, so we came back. We got exceptionally lucky, because just as we got to the bus stop, the bus arrived and there were only about 15 people going back to Waikiki. I don't really care if the bus is full anyway, though. It's still fun.
We came home, checked out the bus schedule and decided to go up to Punahou School (President Obama's alma mater) and go to the festival. This is an annual event and I think half the people in Honolulu go to it. They have some big rides, like the giant swing thing, and a ferris wheel, and some things that turn you upside down, plus the usual little kids' rides, and also carnival games like ring toss, and stuff like that.
In addition, they had a farmers market, a treasure trove and a white elephant sale. The treasure trove was mainly things that were older than, say the 70's like waffle irons, film cameras, typewriters, and things that were a little more valuable, while the white elephant sale was pretty much a flea market of old junk. Both had a line out the door, as they wanted to be sure it didn't get too crowded inside.
I think they also had entertainment inside the school, but we didn't go inside. The only bad thing about this was the level of noise was hideous. They had a DJ and loud amplified music everywhere. On the good side, you could pay one scrip (50 cents) and get the DJ to announce anything you wanted, which seemed to be a pretty popular thing to do, and resulted in there not being so much "music."
They also have food -- we had a teriyaki burger, and Portuguese bean soup, which is one of the iconic dishes, and also bought malasadas. I think that at least a third of the people who come to this come for the malasadas. They are a kind of a donut, in that they are made of flour and deep fried, and coated in granulated sugar.
It's very labor intensive, and they have dozens of people working in the tent. This is the pure version -- apparently you can also buy them with filling, but nobody will admit to liking those and they don't sell them here, either -- and part of the appeal is that they are fresh, so fresh that they are almost still too hot to touch when you get them. So of course they are delicious. The lines to get these tasty treats go on forever, and they have large warning signs that NOBODY can buy more than a dozen. And most people were buying a dozen.
Of course, that's because we were standing in the "bulk" line because we didn't see that they had an express line for people buying from 1-3 malasadas. Oh, and there were two different malasada tents.
After the fair, we came back to Waikiki, and I went over to Seattle's Best to see if I could get some more game cards. (Seattle's Best coffee is having a contest that you can enter every day, but you have to get a new game card every day with a unique number on it.) I found that one of the baristas over there was pretty nice and would give me a few at a time. Today I got really lucky. .
Anybody who came here today to look at pictures of Hawaii is going to be disappointed, because I hardly took any. We had one of those days where we kind of had to take care of business. The main business we had to take care of was to get John a new bus pass because he lost his last night.
That meant a trip all the way out to the Kahili transit center, which I think is farther away than Kailua, even though it's still in Honolulu. He had to pay for the card and the ticket all over again. Bummer. I still think he'll get his money's worth out of it.
On our way back we were riding through the downtown area and could see that there was a farmer's market there. This one had flowers in the front, and since this is Hawaii, they were all orchids. We bought a delicious chicken curry sandwich from a vendor and sat on a bench and ate it. It was kind of cool people watching.
A number of senior Asian women obviously had a regular date there, and they all sat around, surrounded by their bags of groceries, newspapers, and other colorful bags of stuff that ladies of a certain age carry around with them.
There a number of jewelry vendors, a few vegetable vendors (and veggies are very expensive here) and a couple of tables of freshly baked bread. We wandered the whole market, which wasn't too big and then came home and, surprise, went to the beach.
The weather is of course, beautiful, the water warm, the waves gentle but big enough that you can pretend you want to body surf, and I still can't move my arm fast enough to catch a wave, even a little one. It's now been a month since I fell. I am getting OLD. It has NEVER taken this long for me to heal from anything before.
Tonight was First Friday, which seems to have followed the trajectory of Second Saturday in Sacramento, in that it started as a chance to visit art galleries, which later turned into a giant street party. This street party is so big that they close off the streets for it. One of the artists told us that they now have "soft Thursday," much as they have done in Sacramento.
We did get to look at some nice live/work art space which seemed quite cool. Mostly, the art wasn't very interesting.
On our way home, we realized that we would probably arrive back in Waikiki in time for the fireworks show. We literally got off the bus and heard the fireworks exploding. Sorry the picture is so crappy, but I figured I'd put it in anyway, since I really didn't take any pictures today. So we stood in the little park and watched them between the buildings. Close enough for me. (They have a fireworks show every Friday night in Waikiki)
Our favorite boy singers were on the street, and I wanted to get a video of them, but we stopped to eat first and when we got back there, they weren't singing because their battery had gone dead and they were recharging it. They are so popular, I'll bet they make about $400 a night when they are there. And they are such nice boys.
And finally, as we were walking back to our hotel, there was a tiny farmer's market across the street from our hotel, and they were selling malasadas, which are an iconic treat. They're sort of like a beignet, but they are round.
I think tomorrow we'll go back to Hanauma Bay, and then tomorrow night we'll go to the Punahou school festival. It's supposed to be really fun, with good food and some pretty big carnival rides for the kids.
Yesterday's trip to Kailua resulted in my getting my neck and chest sunburned, so now I'm a real redneck. So I decided to stay out of the sun today and not go to the beach.
We had heard about this place that's supposed to have the best breakfast in Waikiki. We tried to walk over there, but I thought it was on Kalakaua, and John didn't say that he thought it was on a different street. After wandering around for quite awhile, I said that since I knew we had seen it from the bus, why didn't we just get on the bus and get off when we saw it. One of the desireable things about having a bus pass is that you can use it for a 2 block ride if you want to.
We found the place, and the breakfast was good, but it became obvious that it was another altekocker heaven, though that could have been becasue Tuesday and Thursday are senior discount days. Anyway, it was full of a whole bunch of people who looked like us. The breakfast was pretty good -- we had corned beef hash with eggs. And we might go back some night and have their salmon burger, which didn't look half bad. Since it's an iconic place, I wanted to take a picture, only to discover I had left the camera card at home when I was sending pictures of my broken glasses to Jeffrey's Manhattan Eyeland.
This afternoon I went to the Hawaiian fabric store, which is a treasure trove of Hawaiian and tropical print fabric. I got some really nice stuff to make a tablecloth for the glass-topped table in the sunporch. I have currently made it into a tablecloth in our room, though, just as at home, the table is always covered with so much junk, you can't see the cloth anyway.
While I was out, I thought I'd walk around on King Street and discovered an Italian restaurant called Mediterraneo. It looked cute, just a sort of a hole in the wall place on King Street.
When I got home, I looked it up on Yelp and it had pretty good reviews, so we went there for dinner. It was really wonderful.
It's a tiny place, only 8 tables, and the food is really good. Not that I don't like the Asian-influenced Hawaiian food, but it was nice to have something different. I had chicken ravioli which was good, John had pasta di mare, which was excellent. Our waiter was both charming and funny, and since there were only three tables full, we got a lot of attention. He forgot to bring us our wine, and when we asked for it, he said it needed to age a little bit more. Later he told us he works two jobs, he has a hair salon and this job, and tomorrow between jobs, he's getting married. He and his girlfriend are having their second child in three weeks, so decided it was probably time.
The only sour note to the evening was that John lost his bus pass on the way to the restaurant, I guess, so we will have to spend about three hours tomorrow getting another one. Probably means we won't go to Hanauma Bay tomorrow, but we still have time.
We have rented a car to go to the North Shore on Monday.
I'm going down now to see the Bikes in Waikiki, sort of a critical mass bike ride on Thursdays. If I get any pictures, I'll post.
I'm starting this with a video I took from TV of surfers, because who doesn't love surfing videos?
For the first time in a few days, we got up kind of early today (this means before 9 for us) and decided on the spur of the moment that we would take the bus to Kailua today. We checked the schedule and decided we could make it to Ala Moana Center (where we would catch the 56) by 10:30. This sounds ridiculous when you realize Ala Moana Center is only about a mile from here, but the bus takes a really roundabout route. As it turned out, we got there one minute later than it would have been to take the 56 bus at 9:40, but we ended up getting the 57 at 10:12. Once again, we got the last seats on the bus, and everybody who got on after us had to stand. My idea is that Kailua is about 30 miles from here, based on having driven over there about 10 years ago in a pouring rain. In actuality, I think it must be only about 10 miles. But it's over the mountains.
When we got there, the bus driver told us we had to wait for the #70 bus, which would be along in about an hour. Well, we had the whole day to spend, so we stopped at Starbuck's for a coffee. We were sitting outside, because we were frozen from our trip in the over-air-conditioned bus, and while John was sitting holding a piece of banana bread in his hand and not paying attention to it, a little sparrow came and hovered and took a bite of it. Scared John to death, because he just felt something yanking his banana bread. Spilled coffee all over the table.
By the time we finished, we didn't want to wait for the bus, so we walked to the beach, which someone had told us was a mile, but didn't seem that far to me. One of the cool things in Kailua is that they have these bike rental kiosks all over town where you rent a bike, ride it to a destination, and lock it up there. We didn't rent one, but it would only have been $5 for the whole day.
Kailua has a beautiful beach. So inviting, plenty of shade to sit in should one desire. We had taken our swim suits, but never put them on, because there weren't any waves to ride.
We didn't bother to take towels or grass mats, because we thought we would spend more time walking around the town so the only thing we took with us for the beach were the pareus which we have been using for just about everything -- sun screen, tablecloth, beach coverup, bus blanket.
By the way, this is the beach where President Obama stays when he visits Hawaii. It was really a nice day. The only bad part of the day was when I went to put my glasses on and took them out of the case and the leg piece fell off. When we got back to Honolulu, I took them into an optician at the mall, and he told me they weren't reparable, so I'm going to try sending them back to Jeffrey's in NY and see if they can send them back to the factory, or whatever.
After we left the beach, because we had really had enough sun, we went to Buzz's which was celebrating 50 years, and had a fish sandwich. It was one of those kind of places that struggles to be modern and yet keep the funkiness that it probably started out with. It generally succeeds, and the food was good, too. We had a fish burger that was some kind of fish that tasted like shark. There is a canal that runs into the ocean here. John took this picture from the bridge, and I can't believe how cloudy and threatening it looks, because it was a nice day.
Hhere's a wonderful video of these two dogs who loved swimming way out in the waves to fetch a stick, and then insisted on carrying it back together.
