pumpkin

We left Seattle on Alaska Airlines on Thursday October 21st for Kauai. The 6 hour flight landed at 7:30 PM Kauai time. Other than an antagonistic TSA agent (the first I have ever encountered) our trip was great. Weather was hot & humid upon our arrival. We picked up our car and wrestled our luggage/golf clubs into a Pontiac G6 and we were off to find our accommodations overlooking the Marriott in Lihue, a short 2 mile drive away. Although our accommodations were small (kitchen especially) the location turned out to be superb!
Our first day was leisurely—went to Costco for some supplies, along with Longs Drug, but primarily spent the day at the pool at the Marriott. (For an additional charge, we had received Marriott privileges). The first night we went to Duke’s for dinner which was as good as we had remembered. I had Macadamian crusted Mahi Mahi and my hubby enjoyed the Ono. Our dinners included the salad bar which was a great deal as the salad bar, if purchased separately was $14.95. We had cocktails in our condo prior to dinner so dinner was quite affordable. We went to Duke’s a couple of times. Here is there web address http:www.dukeskauai.com
Saturday my hubby said I could do anything I wished…up until time for the Washington/Arizona game which due to the 3 hour difference, gave me basically the whole day. For me, that meant shopping! We first went to a farmers’ market at the college where we learned of another market at the Kukui'ula Village Mall on Wednesdays. (More about that later). A visit to the Grand Hyatt to check out their shops as well as vendors surrounding the lobby was next. We walked out to the pool area and took a quick swing in the hammocks out by their manufactured beach area, and basically enjoyed the ambiance and the music. Next came Poipu village where we grabbed a sandwich at Whalers General Store, and hubby a beer while I perused the various shops. Next came the Sheraton where I found some nice jewelry and a great blouse.

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The next day we went out to play golf, but since it had been awhile since I played, I wanted to go out to the municipal course (the really inexpensive one) at Kukuiolono to warm up. We had played there in the past, and enjoyed this little 9- hole course. Again we did, but with a new twist. The course was so brown and hard, the challenge was to figure out which direction the ball bounced. Each member of our foursome helped the others find the ball. It was a hoot! However, the weather was great, but very windy, and the scenery beautiful (with the exception of the hard ground/brown grass). On the way back, we stopped at the Brick Oven Pizza, and their thin wheat crust brushed with garlic butter was yummy!

Monday we got an early start and headed out to Hanalei. The drive was beautiful! While shopping in Hanalei, someone suggested we continue driving to the end of the road to Ke e Beach, which is an extremely popular spot, and parking is at a premium. Spectacular vistas along the way…the coastline is fantastic. Back to Princeville and then on to have a drink at the Bali Hai Restaurant, which is a place where we have always enjoyed lunch or a drink as we look toward the beach where South Pacific was filmed. Surprise! The restaurant and The Happy Talk Lounge were both closed! Fortunately, someone had suggested that we go out to the St Regis Hotel which we did. Beautiful! Recently gutted and redone in contemporary style. The bar in the lobby level was not yet open so we took the elevator down about 4 floors and walked further down to the pool and bar area. There we enjoyed a $15 Margarita and the ambiance which exuded “this is where the wealthy stay.” (I checked later and rooms begin at $350/night.)

Most of our 3 week stay we ate in our condo, but we did venture out to several places. We made picnic lunches for when we set out for a day of snorkeling and/or sightseeing, but we did enjoy lunch at The Barefoot Bar at Dukes, Brennecke’s at Poipu Beach, but our favorite one was at the Hanapepe Café & Bakery.

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We first learned of it when attending the Wednesday market (mentioned earlier). There is a cooking class featured there each week, and when we first attended, Helen, who owns the Hanapepe Café with her daughter, was featuring a soup of Coconut & Lemongrass. It was heavenly! She was delightful and offered many hints & shortcuts. She also had some fans in the audience who told us that unless you get there early on a Friday night, you would stand in line waiting to get in. She serves lunch daily, but only dinner on Fridays (and maybe Saturdays…I don’t remember for sure). Anyway, we wanted to go there for dinner, but Hanapepe is a long drive from Lihue at night in the darkness so we opted to go for lunch. The menu changes all the time, but all the ingredients are fresh and organic. Lunch was excellent and we decided to buy a loaf of bread and some turnovers. Needless to say, the turnovers we had for the next day’s breakfast tasted like “more.”

We had dinner one night at the Plantation Gardens Restaurant which is located in the Kiahuna Plantation Resort in Poipu. We have eaten there many times before, but this time we found it quite disappointing. First of all, it was not crowded—not many people there. We ordered Lau Lau which is salt butterfish, pork & chicken steamed in Taro leaves. It was a bit too limp for our tastes.

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Our next outing for dinner was The Beach House, which was closed for renovation when we had visited Kauai 3.5 years earlier. This is one of several places popular for watching the setting sun! Our reservation was made to coincide with sunset, but we did arrive early to insure that we could witness said daily event. Into the bar for 2 martinis which were great ($9.50 each). The place was packed, not only with customers, but with fruit flies. I put a coaster over my drink to keep the critters out, and was relatively successful by taking that preventive measure. Hubby didn’t seem to mind. (Yuk!) Once the sun went down, we were called to our table, and the fruit flies were no longer an issue. Dinner was excellent. Mahi Mahi for me again, as I love it dearly!

Side note here: while at the Wednesday market where we enjoyed the cooking class, we noticed that Merriman’s which has a downstairs and an upstairs restaurant, advertised a happy hour every night from 5 -6 PM offering Grey Goose Martini or a Bombay Sapphire Martini for $5 or a flight of wine for $8 (? I think that was the price). We went for the martinis and Fletcher, the bartender, a young, personable young man, fixed us up with 2 generous martinis (looked like a double).

We liked the drinks, Fletcher, and the ambiance of the place so well, we went back the following Wednesday night. The happy hour is every night, but the market runs from 4-6 PM and offers a cooking class, and we wanted to attend that. The 2nd trip we had appetizers which are ½ price if you are sitting at the bar. We filled up and had no need for dinner when we returned to the condo. While at Merriman’s on our 2nd visit, Fletcher told us about their Thursday night lobster dinners for $29.00. Well, we were hooked, so we drove back there the next night to partake of that delicacy! Yummy!

pumpkin

Will finish this a bit later.

jcb

I'm loving your report and looking forward to more!

I love the Kukuiolono Golf Course - it has such beautiful views. I guess the drought is taking its toll on the course. We were there in May, and I thought it looked great!

How was the weather? Where the waves up at Ke'e?

If you don't mind, could you let us know the cost of the cooking class?

SiteC_er

Is Pali Hali State Beach Park open?

pumpkin

Oh, jcb, to answer your questions, the weather was humid much of the time, and it did rain some, but only 1 day started off cloudy & rainy up until 2 PM. Mostly we would get a quick shower and then it was gone. However, 79 degrees was the lowest temperature. It primarily ranged from 81-86.

There were waves at Ke'e some days, but it was still good for snorkeling within the reef.

The cooking classes are free and are put on by different restaurants. They are short and start promptly at 5.

SiteC-er I am not familiar with Pali Hali, and I looked at my map which lists the beaches (aprox 80) and I don't see anything that looks like it.

Oops, I see now that I have repeated myself. My apologies. I cannot walk and chew gum at the same time, so to speak. I'll stop multi-tasking and try to get this report back in order.

Our last day that we were on Kauai, we had gone out to the Grand Hyatt again after stopping by the Poipu Bay Golf Course (which, BTW has been closed since April for the planting of new grass, but the Pro shop was open and had some great sales) and noticed that their advertisements for various specials for the restaurants at the Hyatt. One happened to be a Prime Rib Dinner at the Tidepools Restaurant on Wednesday nights for $24.95. We made reservations on the spot and we were there promptly at 6:30. We were not disappointed…quite the contrary. They were offering wine at $5 a glass and their martinis were also well priced (I cannot remember for sure but we were pleased). The prime rib was a huge thick cut, absolutely tender and succulent…probably the best I have ever had! We asked where it came from, and were told it was corn fed beef flown in weekly! Granted, we had had fish or seafood all week long, even at our condo, so we were ready for beef, but this surpassed our expectations. Great price, beautiful restaurant and superb, attentive service!

Now for activities that we enjoyed: We wanted to go out on a catamaran to the Napali Coast which we had enjoyed on our last trip. We met at Captain Andy’s by 7:30 AM on a Sunday morning and our $139 (each) was money well spent! We had a nice continental breakfast, a filling lunch, an hour of snorkeling, and a day of beautiful, sunny weather, calm waters and the magnificent scenery of the coast. The crew was friendly, funny and provided great service. We returned about 2 or 2:30. It was getting a little rougher on the way back, but it was a wild, fun ride,( but not of the sea-sick variety). The people we met were great company. I cannot recommend this highly enough…definitely one of the “highs” of our trip. BTW, snorkeling gear was provided, and although we had been told by Boss Frog’s that the equipment we rented would be much better than what the boat would provide, I did not see that to be the case. They had good stuff.

Songdoc

Thanks for the report! Sounds like a wonderful trip.

Songdoc

Thanks for the report! Sounds like a wonderful trip.

pumpkin

We snorkeled frequently, primarily at Poipu Beach. We rented snorkel gear from Boss Frogs Dive & Surf. We went in with an ad, but learned that the lower price was for equipment that was not the “good” stuff. Their weekly rates for mask, snorkel & fins ran about $25 or $29/week (better than $9/day). It was good equipment. My husband has a mustache so had a little difficulty, with water getting in; however, we learned that waterproof sunscreen rubbed in good on his mustache would work. Vaseline would work, but the petroleum is harmful to the mask. He used water resistant sunscreen and it worked well. Ahhh, his snorkeling was saved!

Golf: We golfed at Wailua ($29 after 2 PM) and we were pleased, although, I had to drop my husband off on the 18th to go turn in the cart and the bag I had rented, as the shop closes promptly at 6 PM. This golf course offers many holes with views of the Ocean.

We also golfed at Kauai Lagoons (the Marriott course) and really liked it. We both agreed that hole # 3 was the toughest. The green is surrounded by sand traps as well as on the way to the green. There must be at least 10! On one occasion, it began to rain on the 7th hole. We were drenched, so we left our balls in place, got in the cart and headed for cover. After about 10 minutes, it quit, and we returned to the game. By the 9th, we were dry!  About the 15th it had become windy and on the 17th as I drove gale force winds began (not actually, but really, really hard winds) wherein, I picked up my ball and drove my husband the rest of the way as it was sprinkling, too. He had a good game going and was not about to give up!

Swimming: almost daily, at the pool at the Marriott, and also their beach which was just steps away from the pool and also Poipu and Ke e. There are many great beaches…but we have our favorites, as most others do as well. The chickens & roosters abound on Kauai. In fact, I don’t remember seeing this many on previous trips. While partaking of a picnic lunch on the beach one can expect birds and chickens to invite themselves.

Walking: almost daily first thing, either before, but usually after breakfast. Between that and all the fish we ate, no weight was gained. Yea!  

pumpkin

Incidentals: Costco helped our grocery budget immensely. At first DH thought the packaging was too much, until I reminded him that we had 3 weeks to use up things. Long Drugs has a lot of grocery items as well as sundries, and we bought our bottled water there and many miscellaneous items. Walmart was disappointing for us as there was not a lot in the way of groceries. Costco is where we purchased Macadamian Nuts as they were the best price. 24 ounces for $13.79 the first time, then they went up to $13.99 (still a bargain). I made sure we had room in our luggage to bring back 4 of those! Costco also had good prices for wine & liquor, although if you shopped around, you could find good buys at Safeway in Kapa’a, Longs or ABC depending on your preferred brand. (We are from Washington State where we have state- owned liquor stores, so we love seeing “competition.”)

Automobile Rental: I waited until the last minute to rent a car, and almost had cardiac arrest when it kept showing me “Sold out”. Finally, through Thrifty we rented a Pontiac G6, for the first week, and a convertible from Enterprise for the next 2 weeks. However we liked the Pontiac so well, we got online and cancelled the convertible (also because it rained just enough that we thought we might have the top up as much as down) and rented another 1 for the following 2 weeks. I do wish, however, that I had bid on Priceline. Next trip I am going to do that. Our 2nd car had trouble (the air bag kept going off) so we got another Pontiac G6. 3 different colored Pontiacs, but we really enjoyed the car! I might add that since the car rental places were only 2 miles from where we stayed, it was not an inconvenience. I think our neighbors, who gave the appesrance of being full time, wondered what was going on-- seeing the same people with different colored cars!

BTW gas was about $3.57/gallon. The lowest we ever saw was $3.43.

pumpkin

Oh, I just remembered, the best wave action we saw was down at the Sheraton, close to the Kiahuna Plsntation. I am referring to waves for swimming, not surfing. Lots of paddle surfers everywhere we went. The Marriott had a rental hut where I think you could rent one for about $25/hour or $85/week. Sounded like a great deal to me, and the beach there is plenty calm for someone to learn/and or practice.

All in all, it was a relaxing trip (I read 6 books and started the 7th). We only had one mishap which involved our getting locked out of our condo which led to my going up a ladder, perched precariously on a stairwell as I tried to hoist myself up and over the railing and onto the deck where I could have gained entry through our unlocked slider to our bedroom. DH was urging me to go “head first” but I decided not to sacrifice my body for his convenience. I saw “broken limbs, or hip or at the very least a concussion” in my future if I continued in my attempts. We eventually received another key from our rental agency when we finally contacted their “emergency” number. Lesson learned—we found a hiding spot for one of the 2 keys that we felt was safe from others.

If you are in Kauai now or are planning a trip, we wish you much enjoyment. As I have finished writing this, it is snowing, and I cannot see across the lake, but if I close my eyes, I can still see the beautiful view of the beach from our deck on Kauai.

pumpkin

One correction: We rented through Budget, not Thrifty.