Sunday was our first official day on the island. The day you arrive just doesn’t count since you are mostly having a jet lag-induced out-of-body experience.
As alluded to, Sunday was a day of rain on the north side. We were actually okay with that as we didn’t have much planned. Given that it was our first day, we thought we’d take it easy anyway.
We were up at the crack of dawn and were out the door by 9:30am. We went into Hanalei to have a Java Kai offering and wander through the shops. Suzanne got on the shopping scoreboard first, scoring a "cute sun dress". Her words, not mine.
I had decided that this trip I wanted "different" pictures. You can go on Flickr and find anyone’s Kauai pictures and they look mostly like yours. Well, that’s no fun. So I decided that while in town, I’d capture the signs. I really love some of the sign art work that I’ve seen, so I wanted to capture them. A previous post has a link which filters for the signs that I’ve capture. So in our wandering, I was occupied a great bit of the time with taking these pictures.
It didn’t take us long to get to the Spinning Dolphins Designs shop where I bought a long-sleeve t-shirt last year. Last year we had a nice, long chat with the proprietor and discovered that they are real animal lovers. So much so that they collect pictures of animals and post them underneath the glass counters within their store. Since it was Mother’s Day, the proprietor was not around, but we had a nice, long chat with her husband. And we presented him with a picture of Autumn, our cat. I purchased a similar t-shirt to end our visit and it came in useful last evening as it dipped down into the 70s.
We had lunch at Mixed Plate and both were pretty happy with the food. The lady there is quite chatty, so it was fun to visit with her as well. We recall meeting her last year and hearing her tell how she had just walked right up to Bill Clinton while he dined at the Postcard Cafe. Needless to say, she’s not shy.
We closed out our day in Hanalei with another dress and t-shirt purchase each. We thought the rain was breaking, so we thought we might be able to make it to the beach for some late sun. Unfortunately, we made it to the beach, but we saw little late sun. Instead, we saw enough rain to chase us away. In our brief time there, we did watch several kite surfers. I would guess that if I were on the island for any length of time, this would be one of my hobbies as it looked fun.
We closed the day we a long walk through the gardens around the house. Many of the flower pictures were taken during this walk. I hope everyone enjoys those pictures as they were not taken without significant sacrifice on my part. The mosquitos swarmed relentlessly in some parts of the garden and struck early and often. I think I’ve given less blood at a blood drive.
So all in all, a good first day despite the rain.
Cool idea with the signs. The problem with living here is that after a while, you don’t notice the little details like that.
Kite-boarding looks like fun to me too. I’ve played with the smaller kites you practice with first on land, and they really pull. It has a steep learning curve, which I suppose is why you don’t see kite-boarding lessons being offered to visitors. But there are plenty of surf instructors there near the pier at Hanalei. After 2.5 years here, I still don’t know how to surf but will probably start with one of them someday.