Kaua'i portion

Fri 2 Mar

Sat 3 Mar

Sun 4 Mar

By the time we awake it's mid-morning. The sun is out, the sky is a deep blue with white wispy clouds drifting by. We're hungry, and by all we've heard the best place to fill up for breakfast is the buffet at Duke's Canoe Club. Rose takes our day-pack, I take Isaac (the blue mountaineering backpack is on its way to San Francisco), and we start our stroll across Waikiki. We pass the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center and head east. It's only ten or fifteen minutes (with detours for elevators and exciting shop windows) before we arrive at Duke's.

It's crowded. We wait five minutes until a hostess seats us in the middle of the restaurant. There's a buffet line to our left (actually two lines, but nobody seems to realize there's a second one, so we get served pretty quickly :-) and a lanai (porch) to our right, near a pool. The wait for the edge tables is very long, and we don't really care. We've seen a pool before :^)

Isaac has been pointing out the limos and especially the multitude of busses and open-air trolleys, some of which look like San Francisco cable cars, others of the same shape are painted a bright blue, and even some double-decker models which have canvas tops. Isaac calls these the "Windy Wiki-Wiki Bus", and he wants to take a trip on one. We had a great time on the double-decker London RoadMaster busses, so this seems like a good way to travel around Waikiki. (All these busses drag the Japanese tourists from shopping center to shopping center. We're the only Causcasians aboard ours. The "office girl" who directs those stepping off the bus right into the shopping area resists us taking a trip for the enjoyment of it, relenting by commanding us "you must go into the shopping center when you come back".)

We drive around the area, enjoying the view and the wind. Rather than return we get off near a beach with a statue of Duke, the famous surfer.

We're right back by Duke's Canoe Club, so we decide to walk back home rather than wait the half-hour for the next "Windy Wiki-Wiki Bus" to come by. A few blocks later we come to a beautiful old hotel festooned with blue ribbons and bunting. The building looks like a tiered wedding cake! It's the Sheraton Moana Surfrider hundredth anniversary, and they're celebrating.

The remaining trip home is a quick ten minutes, with Isaac letting us know he's tired. Not too tired, though, to press the buttons on the elevator and to announce "THIS is the elevator door". A quick swipe of our card-key and we're in.

I like staying up high when I travel in hotels. I know the fire danger, but it seems a very reasonable risk to take, given the small number of fires when calculated against the vast number of tourist rooms.

This time we're on the twelfth floor. At first we thought Isaac might be scared of such a new view, and he did have some trepidation the first two or three times he ventured onto the balcony, but as you can see that went away pretty quickly. Here he and Rose dangle their feet through the bars while checking out the swaying palms at nearby Fort DeRussy.

Our hotel is much taller than the older buildings nearby, as you can see from yesterday's panorama of our room's view. We can see down onto the lanai (porches) of the earlier buildings. I report to you that the general population is one of retirees. I wonder about their story. Did they purchase these tiny places when they were much younger, perhaps after a stint in the services in the Pacific theater? Or are these recent buys? One couple spends all day on their porch, from morning 'til evening, barely moving.

We turn in for a nap. We all sleep. We're tired. Isaac naps for three hours (!) before he rouses us. We pack our bags for tomorrow (a quick effort) and leave our hotel and walk a block to Fort DeRussy, where we play on the grounds of the U. S. Army Museum.

Then we move on to the Todai buffet. (We opted to skip a nearby Hawai'ian buffet because we were afraid of what tourist hell we would see. Same with the pricey Italian restaurant nearby.) Unlike last night, where we were immediately seated and got a coveted window seat, today it's a zoo. Long lines of people. I ask the owner, who says "nobody is leaving", as she shrugs in angry frustration. We're told a half-hour, and then a half-hour again. It turns out to be fifty minutes, but it feels like a longer time because Isaac isn't in the mood for waiting. He wants to go back to the Ilikai and ride the "special elevator".

The food is good, and we fill up. Then we walk back by the Ilikai, afterwards walking into the surf of Waikiki beach. It's late at night; the air is cool and the water feels warm. Tomorrow we end our two-week trip and our two-day extension on O'ahu. I'm both ready to go and reluctant to leave.

previous

next