Kauai V

We've had a really long week. I was at a teaching conference in San Diego and we stayed at my parents. Now, it is back to business. FYI, Amanda is currently sleeping and looking really adorable.

On to more pressing matters: Kauai Part Five.

This is the evening of July 3rd. Eating in Poipu, which is where we stayed, was a bit hard for dinner because many of the resturants are basically faux upscale places that make me sad. But we found several gems. One was this place

It was in this non-descript building in a resort/residential area. But it was amazing. Probably the best meal of the trip was here. So good we went twice. A friend of Amanda's suggested it. Good call.

Dinner started with wine

We ordered this bottle and one of the waiters gave us this very disaproving look. Not entirely sure why. We aren't exactly wine snobs, and this bottle wasn't expensive. We both really liked it. We mostly laughed. I really enjoy wine, as does Amanda, but a lot of the rituals with wine people do seem odd. Maybe we are just losers. It tasted good, what else matters?

I should mention more about the resturant. It seems like an Italian Restuarant, but it is more of a weird fusion resturant. Totally Italian base, but lots of French, Greek, and Asian flavors. Really unique.

Case in point, bread with amazing hummus.

Amanda ordered this slice of heaven.

It was a filet with gorgonzola butter, panko onion rings, green beans, and gnocchi. She raved about it. Calling it such things as "the best steak ever." Blasphemy? I tired a bite, and it was pretty amazing. I think she said she wanted to marry it as well. Weird.

I had this

Not very attractive on camera, a bit camera shy I guess, but amazing. It was carbonara risotto with crispy pork. I am a sucker for pork skin. If there is pork with the skin on it on the menu I will order it no matter what. The waiter merely mentioned it and I jumped on it. Nothing is better on the planet. Well, maybe a few things. But this was pretty fantastic.

It was a great meal and we wanted dessert, but the selections didn't sound so hot here. I guess that is the only knock on this place, and really most places. Dessert sucks.

So we got ice cream and a place called Lapperts. Now we may or may not have been a bit wine drunk at this point, but I don't remember what we got from Lapperts. We went several times and they have a lot of exotic ice creams with typical Hawaii ingredients, things like coconut, mac nuts, and kona coffee. Whatever we had was good and came with little American flags. Which I affixed to our rental car for the rest of the trip because why not?

Wine Drunkies

July 3rd was also the anniversary of our rehearsal dinner one year ago!

PS. Happy birthday to Mari!

Kauai: Part 3- Waterfalls and organic produce

Where did we leave off? Andy and I spent some time in the mornings and evenings sitting on the lanai enjoying the views, sunshine and quiet.



I bought this dress specifically for Kauai from Anthropologie. I love it but it's probably not the most flattering on me. It was super comfortable though.



We went to dinner at Merriman's in Poipu. Merriman's has an upscale restaurant upstairs and a more casual eatery below. We opted to eat below. I had a cobb salad. It was the best cobb salad of my life. The organic Kauai-grown tomatoes...words cannot explain! I loved that Merriman's used local and organically grown produce.



I got a side of potato-mac salad. I absolutely detest mayo and usually all potato or macaroni salads but there's just something about mac salad in Hawaii. I had to have a bite or two!



Andy had a lamb burger teeming with spinach. I should have asked him for a bite but I was too in love with my salad. He raved about the burger though.



We ended our evening with some music. Then the rain started pouring in and we ran to our condo for cover.



The next day, we went to see this waterfall. The Wailua waterfall was quick and easy to drive to. Definitely made me appreciate Kauai's rainy weather. Look how beautiful this is!





You can hike down to the pool at the bottom of the waterfall but we dared not.



We ended up driving to Princeville to check out the St. Regis and see how the other half lives.



Please ignore my make-up free scary appearance..



Princeville was a little overcast and rainy but very beautiful.



But I still had to go take a picture of this couple kayaking down the river. How fun would that be?



We finally got to our destination for the day. But first! We explored the dry cave.





This is from inside the cave. Spooky!



Then it was off to Ke'e beach.





Complete with chickens! Of course. We spent some time here snorkelling and swimming. I loved Ke'e beach and would highly recommend it to anyone travelling to Kauai.

We'll be back with more later!

-Does it excite you when restaurants use local, organic and sustainable food?

Kauai Part 2: The Revenge

So, as seen in the previous post, we went to Kauai for our 1 year wedding anniversary. It was amazing. Here is some more proof.

Somewhat near the condo we were staying at was a little marketplace. At the market place, they had two amazing treats. Hot dogs and gelato. But they were not mixed. That would be gross.

First the Hot Dog Stand

I don't know what Puka means, but it must mean heaven in tube form.

If you were eating one, this is what it would look like

So basically, they are incredibly phallic even for hot dogs. You can order them original, spicy or hot. And then had any number of tropical relishes and mustards. We tried a few different combos and they all taste the same, but its all good.

Good and enormous.

Next to heaven in a bun was a gelato stand. We went to Italy for our honeymoon and ate gelato at least twice a day for about 2 weeks, so we needed some island inspired gelato. So here is Amanda outside of Papalani Gelato.

She is snacking on POG gelato, which is Passion, Orange, Guava. Amazingly tasty and refreshing, as you can tell by looking at Amanda. PS, compliment her on that shirt because it is ridiculously cute.

I am eating the Kauai pie, which was a combination of coconut, mac nuts, and chocolate. Good. Amanda's was better. Don't compliment me on my shirt. Or the random wet spots.

So now we are properly nourished, we hit up a farmer's market!

Lots of good, fresh fruit. However, most of the fruit is...well I'm not sure how to say it. I suppose it is somewhat foreign to us. We have mangos at home, but not this vareity. They had papaya, which we never have. Apple Bananas, which are small, sweet bananas. We bought a few things, but sadly we didn't really love any of it. Might as well try, right? Well we also tried coconut water. For $2, a rather surly woman will take out a machette, whack a coconut twice to expose it's goodies, give you a straw and tell you to have a nice day. Coconut water, ice cold and fresh. Delicious!

Any time machettes are involved, I am fully invested.

And now for some wildlife. Kauai is fully of feral chickens. They are literally everywhere and they are really stupid. They just hang in the street, they do the little "cock a doodle doo" all the time, constantly, and from what I gather they procreate a lot because their are chicks everywhere...or as Amanda says "CHICKEN BABIES!!!!"

Chicken babies, to me, sounds like a small chicken sandwich that McDonalds sells, but I don't want to put it in my mouth.

Far more cooler than Chicken Babies, are Monk Seals. They are endangered and beach themselves often. When they do someone(not entirely sure who, or where they come from) ropes off about 100 feet around the seal so tourists don't harass the seals. Occasionally the seals will maul you, which I wanted to see, but didn't. In any event, way cool. There are only around 1000 of them left...I think.

And to end, some beautiful beach scenes.

Remember, you can't have rainbows without a little rain.

Kauai Day 1: Livin' in Paradise

Hello! We're home from Kauai!



We started the trip off with beer and cocktails in the airport while waiting to leave. Our flight was a little late so it was a splendid idea. Time needed to be wasted.



Andy stuck with a beer while I drank a strawberry margarita. It helped make the flight go by a bit faster. We landed in Kauai almost an hour later than we planned on. We immediately went to bed in our condo and woke up to...



This view from our lanai (balcony)! I was so excited! Waking up to the sounds of the ocean is one thing but seeing how beautiful the ocean is another.

We were up at 6am electing not to adjust from California to Hawaii time. (it's a 3 hour difference. We preferred to get up super early and go to bed late.)



Here's Andy on our morning walk.



And myself.



And the wild chickens that roam throughout the area. They are considered pests but I truly loved them!!!!



Next up was breakfast. I needed coffee something fierce.



Andy ordered eggs, portuguese sausage, toast and hash browns. Portuguese sausage is amazingly flavorful, greasy and spicy. 2 slices of it was plenty.



I ordered an egg wrap that came with passion fruit/papaya jelly on top. It was incredible paired with the savory eggs, portuguese sausage and veggies inside. I loved this breakfast. See, I'm one of those people who just can't do sweet, carby breakfasts. Pancakes won't do it for me. I'll just be hungry in an hour.





Leave it to us to go to a burger place for breakfast.

I have over 400 pictures to share! Believe me we're both excited to blog. Andy will be blogging as well. I plan on catching up on your blog posts also. I missed the blog world! :)