I know, I know, I haven't written anything about my trip to Ireland last fall. Honestly it was so tramatic I'm kinda pretending it never happened. One of these days I'll get round to it. Currently I'm relaxing on this beautiful balcony with a partial view of the ocean. Since I have a little downtime, I thought I'd share my adventures up until now.
Actually I'm going to share with you the Itinerary I put together before this trip, so we can compare how well I stuck to it (not well)
Sunday- Visit Stinger Ray's Tiki Lounge
Lunch at Porky's
Visit Ninini Point Lighthouse
Monday- ATV Tour
Tuesday-Fern Grotto Cruise in Wailua State Park
Dinner at Lava Lava Club
Wednesday- Kauai Coffee Tour
Waimea Canyon Park
Thursday- Allerton McBryde Garden Tour
Friday- Kauai Museum
Plantation Train and Luau
Saturday- Return Flight
Sunday we caught an early flight, 7:30am on Hawaiian airlines. It was very refreshing considering we'd had such a horrible experience last month on Southwest in Texas. (If you want to hear how we got engaged, leave a comment at the bottom) Thankfully Hawaiian airlines still values customer service. Its about a 5 hour flight, they offer purchasable snacks plus one complimentary drink, and one complimentary in flight meal, in our case an egg and sausage sandwich. Also, our plane was equipped with Starlink wifi, not available on all planes yet, that was a bonus because my Fiancé and I played boardgames on his phone e the entire way.
Our first flight deposited us in Maui where we had an hour layover. Groom (I'm going to call my Fiancé Groom just like Betty Davis in 'All about Eve')
Groom wanted to buy me present at the airport in Maui. We're looking at things and I pick something out. Just then our flight is announced. He asks them to wrap up my choice because we need to get going. They really take their time trying to up sale us, the whole time we're like 'We need to go, don't want to miss our flight!' The sales lady 'It's fine, you have plenty of time. We do this all the time, they'll hold the plane for you.'
We're literally looking at our gate while they're calling our names.
Finally I recieved my gift, we rush over. The lady at the gate is very upset with us, let's us know she's been calling us for 10 minutes. But we weren't alone, another straggler was right behind us. This was a little commuter flight, it took a little over a half hour for us to land on the beautiful island of Kauai. Or if you're a Jurassic Park fan, Isla Sorna.
We did visit Stinger Ray's Tiki Lounge which is in the airport. Mostly because I was curious about the #1 Tiki Lounge on Yelp. We didn't order anything though because we didn't want yo spoil our lunch. The Kauai Airport is an open airport (similar to Long Beach) which I really enjoyed. I like that Hawaiian buildings like to take advantage of the weather.
Grabbing our luggage and catching the shuttle to the car rental a very nice lady added us if we would like her bug spray as she was flying out. It was so nice of her, Groom and I are both bug fodder so we accepted! Once we hopped in our rental it was time for lunch. Porky's is on the list, but Groom and I watched this video about a place called Chicken in a Barrel and decided to give that a go instead.
Apparently this Island is known for its wild chickens! They're everywhere!! I thought Yuba City had it bad lol. Groom ordered the sampler plate so we could try everything! Plus a corn bread and maccaroni salad on the side. The worker/owner maybe??? Gave us the maccaroni for free and said 'Welcome to the island' plus an extra rib too boot! Talk about customer service! Highly recommend just on those merits alone!
Sorry I've been bad about photographing my meals, but I will say this. Chicken beat thing on the menu! Afterwards definitely the maccaroni salad, the beef and pulled pork aren't really anything special, but the BBQ sauce that goes on them excellent! Ribs I definitely enjoyed, the cornbread was so crumbly it was difficult to eat, I mixed it with my chili which was delicious and just spicy enough.
The restaurant is in a shopping center and like all these buildings completely open. Their happened to be a live band this afternoon playing Frank Sinatra on the green making the atmosphere so delightful. I don't know if this was a special thing, or an every Sunday thing.
Since we had time to kill before check in, we decided to head up to Princeville and Hanalei since we didn't schedule anything in that direction yet.
Hanalei was a cute little town, many of the businesses looked like houses, and part of me wondered if they had been houses at one time. We also went to explore historic Waiʻoli Huiʻia Church, which was built by missionaries in 1834. We explored the grounds looking for sprouted coconuts. One of my favorite things about Groom is his love for foraging. He'd seen some videos on sprouted coconuts and decided he would find one no matter what! We didn't see any here but it was just the first day.
Next we headed to Princeville to try and find the Queen's Bath, which officially is closed. But we saw other adventurers climbing down this very wet and slippery path and decided to give it a go. It was slow, and arduous, but we managed to climb down the muddy trail.
You can't buy a view like that! We really weren't prepared for a hike of this magnitude. So we didn't wash up in the basin, also it started to rain and Groom was worried the trail would wash away making our assent even more difficult. So we hightailed it outta there! After changing out of our muddy clothes we checked in to our condo and quickly washed up, but there was mud everywhere! I threw in a load of laundry and then we went to find a local store to pick up some essentials. And scope out the location of his conference.
The one thing on top of our shopping list was laundry detergent, the one thing we forgot... laundry detergent. We did pick up a frozen pizza but I was too tired for it and hit the sack. So ends our first day at Jurassic Park lol.
What did I wear?
Ok the best part! For the flight I wore a black fuzzy sweater and black fleece leggings both from Target. An Adidas zippered sweater and tennis shoes, plus my Northface zippered waterproof jacket.
After landing I striped off the outerwear, and traded my fuzzy sweater for a pink crochet top I purchased last year in Korea Town. After our muddy adventure I traded the leggings for some linen pants I scored at a clothing exchange and decided to forgo the shoes all together.
That concludes day 1
P.S. I'm trying to downsize my inventory in anticipation of my upcoming nuptials and move. Please visit my shop and take something home, all prices are negotiable so don't hesitate to shoot me a message.
With Love!
Rachel Madsen
Comments