Nihi Kai Villas Poipu

Hi all, today we are in Kauai. As usual we did not go on a tour but we took a shuttle to the whale village shops and then took another to the shopping center. Once we got there and got our diet coke we were in a much better frame of mind. We got 4 Hawiian Starbuck's cards for the grandkids for part of their Christmas presents. Tomorrow morning we are going to go again and have a Starbuck's with our drink in it!

As you can ...

... little tired looking - however the view from the balcony is unbeatable. We had a ocean view and it was absolutely breathtaking, so I guess this makes up for the not so steller rooms.

We spent our first day on the island at Waimea Canyon, which is the "Grand Canyon of Hawaii". We mainly just looked at the big hole in the ground, but I'm sure there is excellent ATVing and hiking in this area. We spent the ...

... seconds later I was glad that Crocs float; · Going to the northern part of the island for a hike, and seeing Kee Beach, and its large and multiple warning signs as to why the beach was closed (i.e. strong current, slippery rocks, high surf, etc). Seeing the wild waves was good, but what was more interesting to me was that even with all these well-marked warnings, there was still an emergency rescue team parked there on standby. In my mind, if someone is dumb ...

... back. The bus then took us for a quick look at Opaekaa Falls and back to the ship. On the way we passed "Coco Palms Resort", scene of much of the filming of Elvis Presley's Blue Hawaii. Again, the resort was damaged by the '92 Hurricane and lies deserted now except for a daily tour bus from "Hollywood Movie Tours". In the evening, we joined most of the 2000 passengers from the ship on one of the many coaches to Luau Kalamaku. This is a traditional ...

... br>makes time go faster, while flying makes it go waaaaay slower.

We arrived in Honolulu round 2:30pm local time. I stopped to
get something at a little airport Chinese buffet place. He asked me
like 3 times what kind of starch I wanted before I realized he was
asking what type of rice I wanted. It's weird how you its so easy to
mis-hear a word ...

... to the hospital, where I'm pretty sure I was the only patient and the nurse taught me that "shi shi" meant to pee... so that's nice. She followed me into the bathroom, too. That's Hawaii for you... oh, so helpful :) I assured her I could shi shi on my own.

About 2 hours later I was walking out of the hospital on a cloud of ...

... presentation of her trip to India, felt pretty familiar. Yet another night they were starting tango lessons. It was fun to watch people learning how to tango for the first time, while I was uploading images. It's really nice that they offer wi-fi for anyone who needs it. They have outlet strips all over the place so people can plug in their laptops. They also have three computers that people can use to access the Internet and I am not sure if anyone has to pay to ...

... with us a first, but I think that's just his normal personality. He's kind of abrupt in a non-stop sort of way. I know that sounds like a contradiction, but it isn't really. He speaks in phrases, never seeming to finish a sentence before moving on to another topic without taking a breath. So, it's sort of constant run on phrases, instead of run on sentences. This makes it hard to have a discussion with him, because he doesn't fully explain what he's talking about ...

... to go during our winter months. So relatively short daylight hours is the bad news about Hawaii but the good news is that while the sunsets may be early they are often spectacular. It is tough to travel with Barbara and not get a countdown as to how many minutes are remaining before the sun sets. This day was no exception but we still had to scramble to get into position. Being in position this time was ...

Sure enough... Going to bed at 7:00 PM means waking up too early! Granted... it is 8:00AM at home, which would be sleeping in. This just means we will be more than prepared for the sunrise. We went and drank our coffee on the beach. We didn't want to buy 10 pounds of sugar at costco and didn't make it to the store yesterday, so we had to drink our coffee black. I pray that I don't end up with hair on my chest as my beloved Grandfather would tell me would ...