Another morning run with Courtney - today we just did 2.5 miles on the canal, which is better than most people at 0430! We did the usual stop at Starbucks and I again splurged and got theHawaiian nitro cold brew with coconut cream. It's stupidly expensive, but really good! Every day we also saw this older (older than us, not necessarily old) gentleman who also ended his morning workouts at Starbucks and today we finally asked him his name. Shea. Shea greeted us by name the rest of the mornings!
After Courtney left for work I grabbed a scone from a different coffee place nearby and ran into Shea again. We briefly chatted and he told me he was "getting his second breakfast." I walked over to Bikeadelic Waikiki Bike Rentals on the edge of the strip just as they opened and rented a pretty solid Trek hybrid bike. Also, isn't that just a great name for a bike rental shop? First I biked out to Diamond Head, which is a local surf break that you have to hike down to from the cliff. It was right about high tide so the local surfers were out and I watched them for a bit. I had sent Jim (see The Craziest Venn Diagram post) a text message and he got back to me and offered to meet me going opposite directions on K-Highway to head to Koko Crater. Eventually we ran into each other and biked over to his house, which was on the way to the crater, and made some sandwiches to bring for lunch.
I definitely have to thank Jim not only for being an awesome, friendly person, but because I would probably not have found the Koko Crater Botanical Garden on my own. It was really beautiful and unique! We parked the bikes at the entrance and there was about a 2 mile loop in the crater. I took way too many pictures, but here are a few:
We took so many pictures. I had no idea there were so many varieties and colors of the same flowers, and there were some crazy looking cacti in there. We hopped back on the bikes and rode over to Sandy’s Beach, which is a huge shore break that is not safe for a weak swimmer, or even someone who just isn't experienced with the local breaks. There were mostly boogie boarders and body surfers, and in the short time we were there two of the surfers we did
see came in with snapped boards. The lifeguards there definitely have their work cut out for them. One of them headed off a group of tourist teenage boys who looked like they were about to run in, and kindly informed them that if they were going to go in it had to be directly in front of the lifeguard stand.
Jim convinced me to try a Hawaiian shaved ice. Courtney and I had discussed several times how we did not understand the shaved ice phenomenon. Isn't it just a SnoCone? What's the big deal? So the shaved ice is finer than the coarse, crushed ice of a SnoCone, and the Hawaiian thing to do is put vanilla ice cream at the bottom underneath the ice and then condensed milk on the top. So essentially it's a SnoCone. With ice cream and condensed milk. I'm glad I tried it, but it was a bit overly sweet.
Next we biked to Bubbies Homemade Ice Cream and Desserts, which is another place many people had told me about for their mochi. It's in the same shopping plaza as Kona Brewing Co. I love mochi, and although I was just going to try one, you apparently have to buy them in sets of three. I had a chocolate coconut and a passion fruit mochi and Jim had something else (sorry, I forgot!). We split there and Jim went home and I biked back to Diamond Head Park then over to Waikiki to return the bike. After another much needed shower I read for a few minutes before Courtney came back from work.
We were both pretty beat from the day so for dinner we went to Duke’s Lane Market and Eatery just across the street from the hotel. We sat outside and it was still happy hour - woo! Our dinner consisted of a cucumber gin cocktail for me and a beer for Courtney, pork belly bao buns to share, a burger each, and a veggie pizza. Since it was happy hour it was about $30 for all of that! Score! All of it was delicious and we had way too much food, so we ended up eating the roasted veggies off of the pizza once we had our fill of dough. Inside the market I bought some 100% Kona Coffee beans to take back to the mainland with me. I'm definitely looking forward to them!
Courtney had a craving for matcha ice cream
, so we stopped by this super highly rated, extremely popular matcha ice cream place. The lady working there looked liked she was an Anime cartoon. I have no idea what kind of crazy wrap she had going on in her hair and she had on tons of bright makeup, but she was nice! Plus, they had all these weird little signs to take pictures with. I
had never had matcha, so I was interested to see what this tasted like. Courtney loved hers and I well, I thought it tasted like what it looked like. Poo. Yuck! Mine ended up getting dumped into the sink because I just couldn't eat it.
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