Aloha From Kaua'i

So we've been here a little over 24 hours, and just so I don't forget things, I thought I'd start my blogging now. We spent most of today sleeping, taking care of necessities (like buying groceries and snorkel gear) and driving around the towns of Lihu'e & Kapa'a & getting acquainted with the lay of the land (and our cool blue rental car).

We also squeezed in a stop to a couple of "drive up" waterfalls: Wailua and 'Opaeka'a Falls. They were beautiful waterfalls, but the views would've been even more amazing if we could've gotten closer to them. Supposedly there is a trail that locals take to the bottom of Wailua Falls, but since the government has a huge fence with lots of signs saying "Danger, Do Not Pass," we chickened out and just shot photos from the roadside view.


Our hotel is on Kalapaki Beach and the view from our room is of a small bay. Here it is:
We like it here. It's very comfortable and centrally located. It's kind of a long walk from our room to the parking lot, but the way that we're eating, we can use the exercise...

Speaking of eating, probably the highlight of the day for me was breakfast. We went to the Tip Top Cafe, which is a lesser-known to tourist spot. Mostly locals (it seemed) were eating there, which is always exciting to me. Many people were speaking Tagalog there, so my husband was feeling right at home. There is such ethnic diversity here, and we find ourselves trying to figure out what ethnicities people are, but giving up because we can't tell. The culture seems to be an interesting fusion of different Pacific Island, Asian, and European traditions. Here's an example: for breakfast, we ate oxtail soup and banana pancakes with homemade guava-pineapple jam. Really. It was all delicious.


For dinner, we experienced a little more consistency at a Japanese restaurant and ate sushi rolls and nabeyaki (seafood noodle soup) Mmmmmm!

So you can see what I'm most excited about on this trip: the food. Of course it didn't help that we watched Julie and Julia on the plane on the way over here. That got me all pumped on both food and blogging. Sorry. I'll try to write about other things tomorrow.