Hawaii - Day 5
Sunday, March 6
This was our second-to-last day on the island, and Joe had already expressed his readiness to go home. I think he missed his video games (enough, at least, to play the games on my Sidekick for a bit) and I know he missed our bed.
The mattress at the hotel was quite firm, while ours at home is nice and firm but has a pillow top to soften the blow. While I'm talking about beds, I have to mention that even with the king sized bed in the hotel, Julie was still quite the bed hog. The kid loves to lay sideways and spread out all her limbs. The other cute story relating to the bed is that at home, Julie is able to climb on and off our bed at will since we've put the mattress and box springs directly on the floor for her safety. In the hotel, she definitely needed our help to climb up and would try to get down, but would start sliding off and when her feet didn't reach the floor she would say "thtuck thtuck thtuck" until one of us came over and helped lower her the extra two inches. "thtuck" is one of her favorite words lately as she's been obsessed with climbing up on chairs and tables but then unable to get down.
In any case, as great as Hawaii was, we were all starting to miss home, albiet just barely in my case. There was one more goal for the trip that we hadn't fulfilled. Joe hand mentioned before we left that he might like to try surfing. I thought that was great, and although I kept bugging him to get on it, he had put it off. Today was the day. We had breakfast, packed up all the beach paraphrenalia and headed off. There was a surf board rental and instruction kiosk just a couple blocks from our hotel, and there we met Joe's instructor who introduced himself as Winnie the Pooh. I shit you not. He was a super-nice guy, though, and in a flash had Joe paddling out to the waves while Julie and I staked out a spot to dig more sandcastles in between trips down to the water to splash around.
Joe and Winnie getting ready to head out. Too bad the sun was rising behind them - you can't see their faces very well.
Joe looks like a pro here. Once they were out in the waves, I couldn't see them well enough from the shore to tell who was who. Luckily, there was a photo service taking pictures with a deeper lens than mine and they caught some good ones.
Oops! Joe said later that he ended up getting quite a bit of water up his nose. Ouch. Although he had paid for an hour, they were back after only 30 minutes or so...Joe's arm muscles were super-tired from all the paddling. I guess playing video games doesn't work out the same muscles as surfing. Winnie offered to finish out the lesson later if Joe's arms felt better, but by the next day they were super-sore and stayed that way for several days even after we got home.
Here's what Julie and I were busy doing while Joe was out surfing:
That afternoon, we took care of our souvenir obligations by heading over to Ala Moana Mall, where we heard there was a drug store with the cheapest prices on macadamia nuts in their various incarnations. We found the store and I stocked up on chocolate-covered, honey-roasted chocolate-covered, dry-roasted, and wasabi-flavored varieties. I have to admit that some of them were for me. Joe is allergic to macadamias, so I can't even claim that they were somewhat for him...but we did bring back some for family and friends as well. I wanted to get the higher quality ones, as I'd had some with crummy chocolate and tiny pieces of nuts, and one of the locals pointed me to the right brands - Mauna Loa and Hawaiian Host. Both did have very tasty chocolate indeed.
We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the mall, and I felt like an idiot tourist wasting my vacation shopping. The thing was, we had already fulfilled our beach quota for the day and I was leery of exceeding my sunburn threshold. We just didn't know what else to do with ourselves off the top of our heads. I suppose we could have figured something better out, but we followed the easy path instead. After all, they had a trolley that transported people from the hotels to the malls every 10 minutes all day and evening. It couldn't have been much easier.
That evening, Joe helped me satisfy my craving for another Mai Tai by taking me back to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner. This time I regretted it a bit - it's that whole thing where once you've had one of a good thing, the memory of it is better than any future experiences of it can measure up to. On the way back to the hotel, we took our time watching the street performers - guys dressed up to look like statues, standing still for minutes straight and then moving to a different pose; there was a poor dog dressed up in hawaiian gear; some people playing instruments; a group of Hari Krishnas, which made me laugh and also entranced me with their annoyingly repetative music at the same time. There was also a guy selling handmade palm-leaf baskets for only $5 apiece. I bought two - one for Joe's mom and one for me. I had been looking for something to take back to her all week, this was the best thing I had seen so far and the price was definitely right.
Once Julie was asleep, I did my best to start packing all our stuff back in the bags and then we called it a night.
This was our second-to-last day on the island, and Joe had already expressed his readiness to go home. I think he missed his video games (enough, at least, to play the games on my Sidekick for a bit) and I know he missed our bed.
The mattress at the hotel was quite firm, while ours at home is nice and firm but has a pillow top to soften the blow. While I'm talking about beds, I have to mention that even with the king sized bed in the hotel, Julie was still quite the bed hog. The kid loves to lay sideways and spread out all her limbs. The other cute story relating to the bed is that at home, Julie is able to climb on and off our bed at will since we've put the mattress and box springs directly on the floor for her safety. In the hotel, she definitely needed our help to climb up and would try to get down, but would start sliding off and when her feet didn't reach the floor she would say "thtuck thtuck thtuck" until one of us came over and helped lower her the extra two inches. "thtuck" is one of her favorite words lately as she's been obsessed with climbing up on chairs and tables but then unable to get down.
In any case, as great as Hawaii was, we were all starting to miss home, albiet just barely in my case. There was one more goal for the trip that we hadn't fulfilled. Joe hand mentioned before we left that he might like to try surfing. I thought that was great, and although I kept bugging him to get on it, he had put it off. Today was the day. We had breakfast, packed up all the beach paraphrenalia and headed off. There was a surf board rental and instruction kiosk just a couple blocks from our hotel, and there we met Joe's instructor who introduced himself as Winnie the Pooh. I shit you not. He was a super-nice guy, though, and in a flash had Joe paddling out to the waves while Julie and I staked out a spot to dig more sandcastles in between trips down to the water to splash around.
Joe and Winnie getting ready to head out. Too bad the sun was rising behind them - you can't see their faces very well.
Joe looks like a pro here. Once they were out in the waves, I couldn't see them well enough from the shore to tell who was who. Luckily, there was a photo service taking pictures with a deeper lens than mine and they caught some good ones.
Oops! Joe said later that he ended up getting quite a bit of water up his nose. Ouch. Although he had paid for an hour, they were back after only 30 minutes or so...Joe's arm muscles were super-tired from all the paddling. I guess playing video games doesn't work out the same muscles as surfing. Winnie offered to finish out the lesson later if Joe's arms felt better, but by the next day they were super-sore and stayed that way for several days even after we got home.
Here's what Julie and I were busy doing while Joe was out surfing:
That afternoon, we took care of our souvenir obligations by heading over to Ala Moana Mall, where we heard there was a drug store with the cheapest prices on macadamia nuts in their various incarnations. We found the store and I stocked up on chocolate-covered, honey-roasted chocolate-covered, dry-roasted, and wasabi-flavored varieties. I have to admit that some of them were for me. Joe is allergic to macadamias, so I can't even claim that they were somewhat for him...but we did bring back some for family and friends as well. I wanted to get the higher quality ones, as I'd had some with crummy chocolate and tiny pieces of nuts, and one of the locals pointed me to the right brands - Mauna Loa and Hawaiian Host. Both did have very tasty chocolate indeed.
We spent most of the afternoon wandering around the mall, and I felt like an idiot tourist wasting my vacation shopping. The thing was, we had already fulfilled our beach quota for the day and I was leery of exceeding my sunburn threshold. We just didn't know what else to do with ourselves off the top of our heads. I suppose we could have figured something better out, but we followed the easy path instead. After all, they had a trolley that transported people from the hotels to the malls every 10 minutes all day and evening. It couldn't have been much easier.
That evening, Joe helped me satisfy my craving for another Mai Tai by taking me back to Cheeseburger in Paradise for dinner. This time I regretted it a bit - it's that whole thing where once you've had one of a good thing, the memory of it is better than any future experiences of it can measure up to. On the way back to the hotel, we took our time watching the street performers - guys dressed up to look like statues, standing still for minutes straight and then moving to a different pose; there was a poor dog dressed up in hawaiian gear; some people playing instruments; a group of Hari Krishnas, which made me laugh and also entranced me with their annoyingly repetative music at the same time. There was also a guy selling handmade palm-leaf baskets for only $5 apiece. I bought two - one for Joe's mom and one for me. I had been looking for something to take back to her all week, this was the best thing I had seen so far and the price was definitely right.
Once Julie was asleep, I did my best to start packing all our stuff back in the bags and then we called it a night.
posted by Shelly Kang at 8:19 PM
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