Month: May 2009

It was a mad dash for us to pack up our life in Hawaii for the Summer and head back to NY.  We had four days after K’s family left.  K was incredible.  Encroyable!  He was a packing/moving machine.

It was very sad to leave.  In our last few days we ran alot of errands.  Did our last Meals on Wheels route and donated anything we couldn’t store or  bring back to NY.  We had alot of food.  I gave Hawaii Food Bank a call and they said they could take anything that was unopened.  Even perishables!  We packed a box and brought it to their drop off location.

We didn’t get to buy much pasalubong this time around but we got some stuff.  Like a color copy of Kalapawai Market:

…trinkets from a store we’d never noticed before at Ala Moana mall:

I saw these for future pasalubong:

And as we left I had a chance to snap a pic and say goodbye to my favorite koi:

At least I’m pretty sure that’s him.

All in all it was frenzied but complete.  We had one of my favorite meals for our last lunch:

We found out what happened to that gecko that hitched a ride with us to the gas station a few weeks ago:

And we took a final quick swim at our beloved Kailua Beach.  I’d packed all my bathing suits and put them in storage so I had to go swimming in my nightgown.  It was awesome.  24 hours later we were in NY.  My heart is filled with love for Hawaii.  It was a great season and I can’t wait to come back.

NEXT STOP: NYC

We all went kayaking on the canal by our house on the day of the I Love Kailua! town party.  All this time in Kailua,  we never went kayaking.  I personally never thought to kayak on the canal.  I thought the water looked a little yucky but once again I was wrong.  We had great fun.  I loved seeing the different homes along the canal. A few months ago K and I saw a sale listing for a house by a canal.  The copy read ‘the charm of canal living’.  I couldn’t stop laughing.  I thought it was the funniest thing.  In my mind it may as well have read the ‘charms of garbage dump living’.  I don’t know why canals have such a bum rap in my mind.  Maybe because I worked off of Canal Street in NY or maybe because K told me that the Ala Wai Canal has a the reputation of being a swamp.  Point is, the homes that we saw while kayaking were in fact charming and it felt very relaxing to float down the canal.

By the time we arrived at I Love Kailua! it was in full force.  The elusive Tat’s Shave Ice truck was even there.  There was only about an hour left, lots of people and long lines.  We got scrips but the only food I got to try were these little baby donuts coated in sugar and cinnamon.  They were like funnel cake only little baby donuts.  We also caught a couple of impressive performances at the Hula Stage.  K pointed out that despite the gentle movements if you looked closely you could see the dancer’s hands shaking with the effort.  Like ballet dancers!

One afternoon we headed up to the North Shore to show K’s family where he works sometimes.  I was excited to try Giovanni’s Shrimp Truck.  I thought it would be hard to find but after calling them and getting some directions we found it quite quickly across from McDonalds and right before Cafe Haleiwa.

By the time we got there, they only had shrimp scampi available.  The portion was generous: two scoops of rice and a dozen shrimp.  We were all pretty hungry.  But not as hungry as Kevin.  He ordered a second shrmp scampi and finished it as fast as the first plate.  The next day I asked him about it and he said, ‘because it was delicious!’  Just thinking about it now is making me kind of hungry.

Sarah, Steven, and I got on the topic of Zippy’s one night.  I said that we hadn’t tried it because I thought it looked ‘not good’.  Sarah described it as a kind of Hawaiian institution.  She explained that even her parents would go to Zippy’s when they were in town.  With that in mind we took K’s family there the next morning for breakfast.

It was pretty delicious.  I had eggs with cheddar cheese and corned beef hash. They were right.  If I’d known about it sooner we’d be there all the mornings that the line in front of Boots and Kimos was too daunting.

In closing, I know I’ve talked about this before but the mango pudding at Royal Garden in Ala Moana is so yummy.  Not too sweet, totally creamy, totally refreshing. I could imagine carrying around a bunch of these in a cooler bag as a mid-day snack.

I’ve written before about the great farm we get our coffee and macadamia nuts from.  Tropical Farm is in Kaneohe and it takes us 30 minutes to drive there but the coffee is so good that we don’t mind.  They grow and package all the mac nuts and coffee right there on the farm.  Not only do we love the coffee, visiting the farm is always nice because it’s kind of festive and welcoming.

There are always tour buses coming through.  And once K and I noticed that they did hourly tours of the farm.  While K’s family was here, we took one of these tours.

It was weird!  I mean I found it really weird.  K thought it was fun.  But it made me kind of depressed.  Mostly because the performers/tour guides seemed to really be tired of the whole schtick.  Imagine giving the same tour 5000 times, growing tired of it, then having to give it another 5000 times.  Our tour felt like the one after that.

They drove us around the farm on a little green bus.  The farm itself was so beautiful: birds of paradise, guava trees, coconut trees, mangoes…all manner of greenery and fruits.  But the little green bus was spewing so much exhaust that I could only smell the fumes.  And the driver would drive by long palm fronds that would smack you in the face because there were no windows on the bus.  I couldn’t tell if he was doing it to be funny, passive aggressive, or if he just wanted us to feel the like anything could happen.

Next they brought us to a stage/pit.  He made fire from rubbing two sticks together and then another guy came out and started doing tricks with the fire.  I couldn’t help but wonder what this had to do with coffee or mac nuts.  He then showed us how to open a coconut with a sword…actually, a spear then a sword.  At one point the fire starter said, ‘I hate my job’.  I couldn’t tell if he was joking.  And if he was, I don’t know why that’s funny.  For the finale we took a twirl around a man made pond on a big boat/canoe.

The guy giving us the tour, despite his traditional polynesian costume, had a whole Benny Hill style act.  Lots of innuendo.  Which again, I found oddly out of context.  I think I would have rather seen the room they pack all the delicious mac nuts in and what measures they take to ensure freshness.

The people on the tour were almost as bad as the tour guides.  At one point the tour guide stopped the bus and asked if we knew what a guava was.  Duh, who doesn’t know what a guava is??

From the seat behind me a haole says, ‘no’

So the our tour guide hops off the bus to pick us some guava and says, ‘do you want to try guava?’

From the seat behind me haole says, ‘no’

Sheesh. Then why are you here?  It was all in all, kind of sad.  I kept the guava for awhile.  I didn’t eat it.  But I like it as a jam.  None of this experience changes how I feel about Tropical Farm.  I will go there again and again.  But I think that they should rethink their tourist offerings.