Parents' Visit to Kauai: Day 1

I (believe) I’ve (for now) recovered my lost inspiration for blogging. Thanks to a week-long visit from my parents, an email from a semi-famous indie music artist, and an experience using EFT tapping to overcome my fear of a cane spider, I have plenty to think/write about for a while.

I’ll start by recapping my parents’ vacation one day at a time—today I’ll cover the first full day of their trip, which was Tuesday February 1.

1. Monday evening I picked them up from the airport, lei’d them (tee-hee), and chauffeured them back to their resort, the Westin, which is in Princeville about ten minutes north of where I live. They checked in and got settled, then we popped over to Foodland so they could pick up some food for the week. Afterward, they were exhausted (understandably), so I dropped them off at the resort and we called it a night. Here's a picture my dad took of my mom and I at the airport.

2. The next morning, Tuesday, I met them at the resort at 10:00. It was a gorgeous, sunny day, and we decided to take it easy since my parents were still adjusting to the time difference, so I drove them down the east coast to see 'Opaeka'a Falls and Wailua Falls (both of which I recently visited and posted pictures of.) I didn’t take pictures at ‘Opaeka’a, but here are a few shots of Wailua Falls, just because it’s so pretty… and because there was a fun little message spelled out in river rocks on the bank at the base of the falls.

3. After spending a bit of time at the waterfalls, we drove back to historic Kapaa and cruised the town for a bit, stopped in some of the touristy shops, and then ate lunch at Olympic Café (I ate their once before, in October.) It’s located on the second floor of a row of stores, and has open-air seating overlooking Kapaa. We sat along the street and enjoyed a nice lunch of various seafood (the California tuna-something wrap I ordered wasn’t my favorite because of the wasabi sauce, which I’ve determined I dislike) while catching up.

4. On the way back to the north shore, we stopped at the Kilauea lighthouse, which I, surprisingly, have never visited. The lighthouse itself was under construction and had an unattractive black tarp tied around its top half, but the view from the peninsula was amazing. From our vantage point, we could see several whales spouting in the ocean.

5. After the lighthouse, I drove them through the gated community in which I live and up to lookout point, which provides a nice view of the lighthouse… but we got reprimanded by security because I “don’t own land” in the community… I just live in the community, and evidently that doesn’t count for much. So we drove back through Kilauea, stopped at the pharmacy, and returned to the Westin, where we took a relaxing dip in the hot tub (it was early evening, so the weather had cooled.)

6. After cleaning up, we headed into Hanalei for dinner at Bar Acuda, which is easily my new favorite restaurant on the island. The menu is tapas style (translations: appetizers) and meant to be shared, so we ordered several dishes and all shared them. We got house cured chorizo sausage, whole roasted tomato bruschetta, pizzetta, slow braised short ribs, and bacalao. I meant to take a picture of all the fancily-presented food spread across the table, but as soon as I started eating, my mind went blank. Seriously some of the best food I’ve ever had. The short ribs and the sausage were… well, I have no adjectives to describe their amazingness.

And that concluded day one of my parents’ visit. Check back tomorrow for a summary of day two. :)