Sunday morning we got a little bit of a later start since I had started to acclimate to the time change. We drove Courtney's Mustang convertible to North Shore through seas of what looked to us like sugarcane. Apparently the islands haven't
been in the business of growin sugarcane for a long time, but I'm honestly not sure what else it could have been. I'll have to do some homework! We stopped at this coffee / sandwich / BBQ restaurant called Kono's Restaurant for breakfast. As we waited for our breakfast sandwiches we went to get some water and found... Ice T & Ice Cube!HA!
Why have I never seen this before? Why doesn't everyone do this? Hilarious. I loved it. On top of the amazing drink dispensers, the food was delicious and filling for a reasonable price. If you look closely at this half of a sandwich (we were too distracted by the food to remember to take pictures earlier) you notice that even the forks say aloha!
Some chickens joined us for breakfast. I found it very interesting that all over the island chickens run around free. Maybe that's why the eggs are so tasty?
We wandered up a few blocks to the beach, miraculously found a place to park and stumbled upon a kids' surf competition. Some of the kids were riding on their own and some were riding on the same board as an adult. It was super cute and we enjoyed watching for a while.
We moved further away from the crowd to an almost empty beach to go for a swim. There were at least two turtles who kept popping up to say hi!
I bought a GoPro Hero5 Session for this trip and tested it out in the water for the first time. It takes much nicer pictures than the waterproof camera I brought to New Zealand two summers ago, so I think I'm going to be selling the camera and hanging onto the GoPro!
The North Shore is just gorgeous and in some spots the waves were pretty big. More on that later!
After we had our fill of swimming and relaxing on the beach, we went for a stroll among the shops.
I'm not big on buying too much stuff when I'm traveling, but I was in the market for a Hawaii hat that wasn't too obnoxious, and by that I mean I didn't want it to just say HAWAII in big letters across it. Anyone who knows me well knows that I love hibiscus flowers, which happen to be the state flower of Hawaii. In one of the random little shops I stumbled upon my perfect hat! It's blue (my favorite color), has a hibiscus flower and the Hawaiian islands without just saying HAWAII. I also learned from the nice gal at the cash register that it's locally made, so that made it even better. Hawaii souvenir - check!
After our big Kono's breakfast we weren't ready for another meal, but we were a little hungry and it was hot. The solution? Smoothies!
This juice place is also locally owned and the fresh fruit looked delicious on its own. Perfect find! Then we had the beautiful drive back to Waikiki, of course, with the top down.
After a full beach day we definitely needed showers and then headed to one of Courtney's favorite nearby places, Buho Cocina, for dinner. The restaurant it up a few floors in a hotel building and has great sunset views. Courtney had been raving about the pineapple pork belly tacos, so we had to get them. They certainly were not disappointing!
As the sun went down, the Taco Signal came out.
This place was really great, especially for a restaurant in a hotel. Their happy hour prices were really good, the food was delicious (except the ceviche, which was just okay) and the atmosphere was great. It was the perfect way to round out the weekend.
As another random note, a friend of mine, Seth, whom I know from working at GE, happened to be in town for work so we met him briefly at Yard House, which is a chain restaurant (there's even one in Cincinnati!) just to say hi. Unfortunately I wasn't up for a beer and Courtney had to get up early for work, so we just caught up for a bit. Maybe next time - small world!
Laundry fiasco
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