we're back! this will probably be a long recap, so beware!
things we learned on this trip:-Hawaiian names are
really hard to pronounce. we had plenty of laughs in the car listening to people attempting to pronounce them.
-we are cheap asians. our hotel had
free valet parking - all other hotels don't even have free self-park. we were too cheap to tip $1 to the guy, so we tried to self-park ourselves. let's just say we embarrassed ourselves and valet parked every time after that.
-God must have been teaching us how to be flexible, because there were tons of things that did not go as planned, and we constantly had to switch around our schedule.
highlights:-hang gliding. my guide book had suggested to try powered hang gliding (think a hang glider holding up a dune buggie with a propeller & engine) instead of regular hang gliding, so we did. this was the biggest highlight for me, and a great way to end the trip. it was awesome, just like flying like a bird. we got a video and a few pics between all of us, so when those are available, i'll post them. also got to fly over several LOST filming locations.
-which is a perfect lead-in to visiting various Lost sets & locations. call us geeky, but it was really cool! we actually found one of their actual sets - the set on the beach where all the individual tents are, and the outdoors food pantry with all the dharma cans, etc. they weren't filming that day, but they always have one person standing guard there, and so we were not allowed to take pictures. i got one from far away, which i'll post below. it was seriously this little set in the middle of this totally deserted empty beach. we also saw the bank that kate robbed (in a flashback), the waterfall where she found her suitcase on the island, and eko's brother's church. the hang gliding hangar was actually where they filmed the scene where eko & his brother were on the nigerian airstrip where his brother got shot. the pilots told us that they actually would time their filming around the take off & landings of the planes & hang gliders that shared that runway. it was also right across the street from the beach where they filmed the original crash scene, and they actually stored all the plane props & bits on an empty lot right by the hangar, so we got to see that too. pretty cool.
-finding a random beach on north shore and floating in the ocean, playing in huge waves for hours. the water is sooooo warm. all of us ate it pretty badly at least once, if not five or more times. the waves were huge and if we didn't swim into it in time, it would slam us onto the sand and the undercurrent would suck us back in. but it was still so much fun.
-all the FOOD. it was the one thing that did not fail us, and we got to eat at every restaurant we planned. YUM!
lowlights:only one for me. being sick the entire trip. i didn't get a full night's sleep a single night there, even after taking nyquil. and now i have come home with mucus so thick in my chest that i can barely talk.
anyway... on to pictures! as a warning, i'm going to post a lot of pics... chris has also taken all of our pics and uploaded them onto
his smugmug, so you can see everyone's there. they are kind of out of order, though. i have also uploaded my pics on
my smugmug as well.
by the way, if you're wondering why mike isn't in most of these pics, it's because we got into a big fight with him and left him on the side of the road to fend for himself for the week. okay, fine. he spent more than half the trip getting certified for scuba, so he wasn't with us for a lot of our outings. and many thanks to bob who drove the entire trip (after returning the rental, we discovered we drove 510 miles!) and jeff for navigating everywhere & cooking us scrumptious breakfast every morning.
scenery pics:views from our suite/balcony
living room of our suite
from pali lookout
random other scenic pictures
beach pics:swimming in the ocean
this one couple took both their dogs out to the ocean. the dogs seemed to love it, even the little one
chris, bob, and jeff attempting to beat the wave
jeff & chris trying to get out of the ocean before the undercurrent of this huge wave sucked them back in.
bob trying to beat a HUGE wave behind him that probably would have knocked him over. see him run for his life.
this is to show how huge the waves were. this is a tall, buff man, standing. see how high the waves are above his head!
food pics: friday late lunch - duke's
saturday lunch: ono hawaiian foods, this small hole-in-the-wall restaurant
saturday dinner, based on suggestion from arex. makino chaya, an all-you-can-eat buffet, with certain items that you order off the menu (which was also all-you-can-eat)
sunday lunch: romy's shrimp shack - didn't even have the name on the shack, we found it by looking at surrounding addresses. but it's one of the few shrimp places that actually grow & harvest their own shrimp. delicious.
we pulled over at some random fruit stand on north shore & bought some papaya.
sunday dinner: ezogiku ramen, a chain. it was okay. ramen was a little greasy, but it was in this wonderful location, a little asian strip-mall of restaurants. and we discovered a great grocery store from this - don quijote, which sold stuff much cheaper than the foodlands around.
monday morning: leonard's bakery for some yummy portugese doughnuts, malasadas.
we tried to go to rainbow-drive-in for lunch, but discovered it was closed for remodeling! they temporarily opened an express location elsewhere, but since we were right next to waiola, we decided to have a pre-lunch first. the shaved ice here is so fine that it tasted creamy when you put it into your mouth. this shaved ice was more asian-style (rather than sno-cone style) which i preferred.
we finally found rainbow drive-in express. another hole-in-the-wall local eatery - delicious plate lunches.
monday dinner: yanagi sushi. i randomly found this on yahoo, which got great user ratings. we had originally planned to go to a luau, but decided to axe the luau all-together, so this was a last minute decision. but a GREAT decision. food here was supberb. highly recommend it.
guess what the pinkish stuff is in the small bowl in the front center. poke here (back dish in the pic) was amazing.
tuesday lunch: kua'aina - fish sandwiches. very very fresh.
another mid-afternoon stop, this time at the other famous shaved-ice place, matsumoto's on north shore. this is more like the traiditional sno-cone. we got some pretty fancy flavors, including guava, lychee, mango, etc.
tuesday dinner: alan wong's. pricey, but a good meal to end the trip. most of us got the five-course tasting menu, and sandy got da bag, lamb, and the chocolate sampler.
our appetizer, nori-wrapped tempura ahi, and a chilled tomato soup with a foie gras & cheese sandwich
da bag
ginger-crusted onaga
butter-poached kona lobster on a shrimp & tofu cake
sandy's dish:
macadamia nut-coconut crusted lamb chops
twice-cooked shortrib, grilled kalbi style
dessert duo: chocolate crunch & coconut tapioca with passionfruit sorbet
the chocolate sampler dessert
random others: at pali lookout - the trail was closed, but someone told us that we could go anyway.
this was the beach where we thought the surfing competition was on. we slept instead, and then later watched a bunch of people boogie board (this is where the video in the previous post came from)
iolani palace from the outside, since it was closed
at pearl harbor
so... we were all supposed to salute. mike, um, almost heiled hitler.
so we tried take two. this time mike decided to be a fob.
this is where the road ended on the west coast. after the white bumps is this really narrow dirt path.
getting a group shot by a friendly lady who had done the same thing as us.
in my flight suit - ready to go hang gliding right when the sun rose (they had two gliders, so in each one was the pilot & one of us. jeff & i got the first shift, at 6:45 am. gorgeous way to see a sunrise!)
jeff getting ready
sandy & chris took the second shift
bob & mike with the last shift. mike originally wasn't going to go up, but we came back so exuberant about our flight that he decided to go up at the last minute.
LOST pics: i can't find the pics inside the bank that kate robbed, so i'll post that one later. this was on the way to the lost set. we were seriously on this little tiny residential street that had this little hidden path between two houses down to the beach.
the beach was totally deserted, but we saw this orange fence from far away and decided to check it out. good thing we did! this was after we checked out the set, which was the closest shot i could get of the set since the guard guy watched us the entire time. it's a pretty tiny set, but still so cool to see.
this is the same picture above, zoomed in. you can see on the edge is sawyer's little shack/hut thing.
the guard took this pic for us. he was on the other side of the orange fence, in the set.
this is actually a pretty touristy site, but is also where kate found the suitecase with her plane in it. you could actually swim here - sandy, jeff, and chris went in. i got this shot after all the tourists left the water since we got there near closing time.
yes, my "s" is backwards.
this was cool - seeing some of the props. this was next to our hang gliding hangar.
this was the shrimp shack where sawyer killed who he thought was the real sawyer before he found out he was set up & used.
phew! that was a lot of pics. and there are over a thousand more at
chris' smugmug! yeah, we took a lot of pics. again, all of my pics are on
my smugmug.
happy thanksgiving to everyone!
