Hawaii- Day 3

Day 3 was a Wednesday. Lots of fun things to do.

Here's Anna in the center of the International Market Place early in the morning. There's a post office in there, and we had some post cards we wanted to send off to the kids. You don't realize it, the that Banyan tree is kind of the "roof" of the market area. Anyway, we thought it was pretty cool.

We were heading out to the Aloha Stadium, but stopped off at Champion Malasada for some malasadas. We also picked out a couple other items. We forgot to take a picture before we dug in, so here, all you can see are the remains of a guava cake (that wasn't very good- it was plain), and a couple of malasadas that we tried our best to save for later. After eating these malasadas, we determined that Leonard's were slightly better.

We shopped around the Stadium flee market all morning. We got a little snacky, so I had to pick up some fresh pineapple with Li Hing! My facial expression is not doing a very good job of communicating my joy, but it was really good.

After a bunch of time at the Stadium, today was our day to eat at the world renowned (at least to our family), Aiea Chop Suey! It still looks exactly the same. I had kind of wished I had a picture of grandma and grandpa, to see if anyone that still works there would recognize them. Maybe next time.

Spring rolls, lemon chicken, sweet and sour pork, broccoli beef chow mein, and rice... SO GOOD!!! Almost got the egg drop soup too. The only thing that put a damper on this visit was knowing we probably wouldn't have time to go back and eat more.

Did I mention how good it was? Anna asked, while we were eating, "Why don't we eat Chinese food more often?". The answer was: because we probably wouldn't find anything this good, out by us. (Doesn't mean I wouldn't like to try to find something close to as good.)

I was in need of a large diet soda after that incredible meal. Luckily there's a McD's right on top of Aiea Chop Suey. Anna took this picture to share with her class. The other really good reason to stop at McD's?...

Haupia pie! These were SO good. We probably ate half a dozen each while on our trip.

After we ate, we headed out to see Blowhole! Anne thought that there's more than just "one way" to enjoy the area at Blowhole.

We were at blowhole for a while. The breeze was nice, it wasn't crowded at all. In fact there were probably only 4 cars there at any one time while we were there. We had seen a large spout shortly after we got there, and decided to try and catch another one in film. It didn't take too long.

As that one finished, the spray formed a rainbow. Bonus.

Anna had to have been standing on a high spot, or I standing on a low spot... right?

From there we made our way to Hanauma Bay. Once we got there, it looks totally different from how I remember. It's totally commercialized now. You have to pay to go down to the beach, there's a big parking lot you have to pay to park in, there's a gift shop, and "museum". Saw a few mongoose in the area.

It was almost closing time (wait, what?), so there was no one taking tickets, so we just walked in. We couldn't go down to the beach, there was a park ranger making sure no one was entering. But we did walk around the entry area. Here you will find a large statue of Hawaii's state fish- the Humuhumunukunukua'pua'a. Here's my picture with it. I think that at this point I decided my regular smile was too boring.

Here's Anna with Hanauma Bay (formed by a volcanic crater) behind her.

As we were driving along the coast, headed back to Waikiki, the sunset was showing off, to we found a beach side park to pull into and watch it. We were not the only ones. This is the first picture Anna took after we stopped. If you look closely at the bottom of the picture, you'll see a mattress floating in the water in front of us. Didn't notice it till after.

We also chose to head back up to Pali Lookout to see if it's windier at night. It wasn't windier at all. It was a bit creepy though. But we did walk out to the lookout, and took a couple of pictures of the night view. So yeah, no crazy windy Pali pictures for us this trip.

Another fun filled day!

I'd say it was pretty obvious that we were there during tourist "off" season. Nothing we went to see or do was busy or crowded, which was nice.

When we went to Aiea Chop Suey, the local Terminex office was having their Christmas party. They took up about 2/3 of the restaurant. They were having a great time. They were having such a great time (and quite loud at times), that I was hoping they would offer to pick up our tab. But, no.

When we were going through security at LAX, one of the TSA guys that was checking our IDs asked us if we knew the state flower. I said plumeria. He said, no- the plumeria is a fragrant decorative flower often used in celebration or ceremony and for making leis. (Or something very similar to that) By the way, he's a young, tall-ish, heavy set, white guy, and he said it without any hesitation at all. Anna said Hibiscus. He said, very good- what's the state bird? We both said, Nene. He said, Oh, very good, ok- what's the state fish? I said something like marlin or ono, Anna was saying dolphin fish, etc. We had many guesses, he was just shaking his head. Mind you, this is all happening as he's checking out boarding passes and IDs, and in the course of about a minute or two. Then he busts out, with no hesitation or correction- it's the humanaudldineifnlaseind (or so it sounded to us at the time). Our jaws hit the ground, we said, you're all set, have a good trip, and we were on our way. He might have said, look it up, as we were heading up the stairs. It all happened so fast. Later we saw or found the name and how to spell it, and practiced saying it. Many places we went had that fish in artwork or aquarium.


So yeah, good time.