Poipu Beach v Shipwreck Beach

Poipu Beach

The beach in front of the Hyatt is not appropriate for water play for kids. It is a fun beach, however, to sit and watch the surfers and jumpers. Jumpers you say??? Not the same kind off the Golden Gate Bridge. No, these jumpers take off with or without their boards off a cliff to the left of the beach. It’s a pretty daring thing to do, to say the least. They jump, making sure to clear the rocks beneath waiting to grind them to pieces. Well, it’s probably safer than I am making it sound but it looks dangerous. One afternoon, we watched five jumpers dive into the ocean below. Except for one, all tried some fancy moves, and one jumped in after his board. Cool!

Due to the rough waves at Hyatt’s beach, appropriately named, Shipwreck Beach, we decided to spend the morning at the calmer and more kid-friendly Poipu Beach. We also wanted to go say hi to my older daughter’s classmate and family who were also vacationing on the island. Poipu Beach is a narrower beach than Shipwreck but it is a great beach for families. You can also take beginner surf lessons at this beach. The only downside is parking. The parking lot is small and you have to find street parking which isn’t plentiful since the Sheraton occupies the bulk of the street. It’s worth a visit though. The kids and adults have so much fun playing in the waves.

The afternoon was spent back at the hotel pool and dinner was at our Hawaiian standby, Roy’s. I ordered what I always order – butterfish, but I did vary the appetizers. I also noted that the menu at Kauai’s Roy’s was a little different from the Big Island’s location, which makes sense. A little variety makes it interesting.

Thursday, August 12, 2010

Daddy! Mommy Forgot Underwear!!

The slide…it’s one of the main reasons the girls love the Hyatt. We had not been to Hawaii in a couple of years and this year, my younger daughter started begging to go to Hawaii. We thought it was a bid odd, her perseverance and her insistence it had to be this particular hotel. It’s a nice hotel so there is good reason to want to return to it but didn’t seem to warrant persistent begging in our minds; until my husband figured out that it was the slide. Our younger daughter has not been able to go down the slide. She’s been too short and it was a sore point with her. You can’t go down with an adult. You have to be able to do it on your own. Before I booked the hotel, I called the hotel and learned the height requirement was 42”. I measured her with a measuring tape and she was just about 43”. She was going down the slide this time!

So slide it was and our whole morning was spent going down the slide. Usually the line for the slide is long, but because an entire wing, about 400 rooms were shut down, the hotel seemed a bit emptier than usual. This allowed the girls to go down the slide so many times we all lost count.

Unlike the Orchid on the Big Island where the casual café served incredibly bad food, the Docks restaurant at the Hyatt actually had good poolside food. The chicken tenders were crispy, moist and tender! We also got coupons everyday for free small frozen yogurt. The girls were hooked.

With kids you never know what will come out of their mouths. Parents, you all know what I am talking about. We had one of those moments while waiting for our lunch poolside. Instead of sitting in wet swimsuits during lunch, we usually bring a change of clothing for the girls. Nothing more than coveralls; and of course I bring their underwear as well. However, I forgot their underwear this time. My husband had finished helping the girls out of their swimsuits when I approached the girls and my younger girl asked me if I had their underwear. I told her I had forgotten. Then my younger daughter proceeds to yell loudly at her dad who was coming towards us from across the other side of the pool “Daddy, Mommy forgot underwear!” The couple at the table next to us burst out laughing, naturally. My younger daughter didn’t know what was so funny and was confused and embarrassed. I tell you, things that come out of babes’ mouths.

We’ve always like Kauai because of its lush and wild landscape but also because it wasn’t as developed as Maui or Oahu. Slowly that seems to be changing. Since the last time we were in the Poipu area, there are now many new condos being built and a new shopping center. Fortunately, I thought the shopping center was in good taste, evoking a sense of old plantation homes.

With no plans for dinner we decided to wander around Kukui'ula Village and see if there were any good possibilities for dinner. There were a number of choices but we settled on Merriman's Downstairs Café, mostly because it was new for us and the prices seemed reasonable. First off the ambience could use a little more punch. The shopping center was mostly deserted. It applied to the Café as well. We wondered if the closure of a wing at the Hyatt was having a measurable impact on the number of tourists in the Poipu area. I ordered an eggplant flatbread which I thought was good, not fabulous, but good. One of the girls had pasta with marinara sauce. I tasted the sauce and I thought it tasted very fresh. She didn’t much care for it. My other daughter had a burger. It was plain (off the kids menu) with french fries. My husband was too full from breakfast and lunch and figured he would eat the girls’ leftovers of which there was plenty. Would I recommend it? I would…you can tell they use fresh local ingredients. Unlike the ‘local’ eateries, it wasn’t too heavy. But I wish atmosphere was more lively.

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

From The Moon Back To Earth, Big Island to Kauai

View From Our Room at the Grand Hyatt Kauai

We spent our last morning at the Orchid swimming in the lagoon.  We wished we had made plans to stay longer on the Big Island.  We had a great time at the Orchid.  It had good facilities, good breakfast buffet, a fine pool, fun and safe ‘hot tub’ for kids, lagoon where kids practiced surfing and accessible snorkeling, restaurant and café on the beach and turtles!  And to boot, we had gotten a good deal.  Oh well, now I know for next time.

The Hawaiian Air flight from Kona to Lihue on Kauai shouldn’t have taken long but I don’t believe there are any nonstop flights between the two airports.  Therefore, what should have been a 30min flight and travel time turns into a 2-3 hour flight and travel time, via Honolulu.  That is the downside of hopping between islands.  You waste essentially half a day and have to deal with all the hassle of packing and renting/returning cars when you island hop.   This too, now I know for next time.  (It’s OK and worth it if you live in the Midwest or the East Coast and have to endure 10hr+ flight to get to Hawaii, but for many Californians, island hopping may not be the best option, especially if you know you will come back to Hawaii another time.)

We arrived in the late afternoon to Kauai and was struck by the vast difference in scenery.  Whereas the Big Island was barren, brown, rocky and vast, Kauai is green, lush and more populated (nothing like Oahu or Maui).

This wasn’t our first time at the Grand Hyatt Kauai.  Our whole family loves the hotel for its ambience, its extensive pool system and slide, keiki hula shows and the beach in front for access to surfing.  We have a very strong preference for rooms in the Shipwreck Wing of the hotel.  Unfortunately for us, the whole wing was closed for renovation.  Major bummer!  The room we ended up with was at the very opposite end of the hotel from our preferred location.  We were not happy.  This wasn’t what we had signed up for…I had called ahead to make sure we would be getting rooms in the Shipwreck Wing and so was very disappointed when we were told the timing of the construction had changed.

After a quick dip in the pool we all got ready for the keiki hula show at the Seaview Terrace.  Our girls love watching kids hula.  They can’t get enough of it.  Lucky for us, we arrived on a Tuesday which was keiki hula day and we were going to get to see it again on Saturday.  Perfect.  As we ordered some light food for dinner at the Terrace, our server asked us for our room number.  When he told him our room number, he quipped “You had a marathon getting here!”  And he was right.  My husband responded “Our room is at the absolute end of the hotel”.  (To get a sense, the hotel sits on 50 acres with 602 guest rooms – it’s huge and spread out.)  To which my older girl replied “No Daddy.  There are two rooms next to us closer to the exit door.”  Yes, that would make a difference!

Our stay just wasn’t going to be what we expected if we stayed put in the far corner of the property.  So my husband spoke to the front desk and they were nice enough to switch us to a much better and closer room the next day.  It still wasn’t a room in the Shipwreck Wing (couldn’t do much about that since the whole wing was under construction) but it was so much better than where we were initially assigned.  It pays to speak up.


Tuesday, August 10, 2010

Excitement at Hapuna Beach, No Not The Waves

Another Amazing Sunset

My sister and her family are having a string of bad luck.  Their youngest injured himself three times in a row, the last one requiring a trip to the hospital.  Today it was car trouble.  After a morning at the lagoon/beach and bracelet making at the hotel, we decided to head over to Hapuna Beach, a beautiful wide sandy beach nearby.  My brother-in-law and his older son headed out way before us.  When we arrived at the beach they were just leaving…this was about 4pm or so.

This is probably the first time I saw the girls actually play in the ocean with waves.  Prior to this, both of them would run up the beach as soon as they sensed the waves.  This time, they both swam into the ocean, waves and all, and dove under the waves.  I was so proud of them…thankfully they don’t take after me.  I wasn’t as brave as my girls at their age.  We didn’t stay too long, about 30min, and we made our way back to the parking lot.  When we look up we see my brother-in-law, phone in hand coming towards us – which of course was unexpected.  They should have been back at the hotel getting ready for our last dinner together.

As it turned out, his car wasn’t starting.  It seems he got the car keys wet by accident.  He said he was relieved to see us, and I am glad we ran into each other.  He would have had to wait for a new car to be delivered.  So…this is the downside of technology.  Smart keys, can’t get them wet!

The hotel and car deal I bought from Costco was good, but I didn’t pay attention to the size of car.  It seems I paid for a mid-size.  My husband informed me as he came back to the airport to pick us up that mid-size was a tad small for the family.  I didn’t think it was too bad, but in this particular situation, I wished I had sprung for a full size.  We had to leave my mom behind with my brother-in-law to make room for our nephew.  After dropping us off at the hotel, my husband had to go back to the beach to pick up my mom and my brother-in-law.

Our last night together was turning out to be a somewhat stressful one.  By the time we got back to the hotel, I had 15 minutes to shower the kids and myself to make our 6pm dinner reservation at Brown’s, Orchid’s beachside restaurant.  We didn’t quite make it. Luckily for our motley crew, the restaurant staff was really nice and patient.  They were so gracious.  My girls and I were the only ones at our table with a view for 45 minutes! And they didn’t pester us at all.  In fact, our server, J’aime was absolutely wonderful.  The rest of the crew finally showed up, including my brother-in-law.  He didn’t think he could have dinner with us since he would have to go back to the beach with the rental car agents.  We talked him into ordering the entrée banking on him getting back after the apps were served.  As it turned out, he didn’t miss dinner after all.  The Hawaiians showed again how nice and accommodating they were.  The rental car agents delivered the new car to the hotel and offered to pick up the other car at the beach.

Our last dinner together was wonderful; amazingly beautiful evening by the beach, good food and superb service.  Absolutely perfect.




Monday, August 9, 2010

Trip To The Sanctuary And Really Good Vietnamese Crepe in Kona

Though we had made plans to go snorkeling off a boat, we canceled given our nephew’s condition. We opted to go to ‘the place of refuge’ Pu'uhonua o Honaunau National Historic Park , a sacred ground for the Hawaiians where we could see turtles (though we saw turtles anytime we wanted right at the Fairmont). The drive was longer than we thought – it took about an hour. It was worth it…it was very pretty and there was a calmness to the place (mired only by a couple of local boys spearing fish with no intent of eating them). We were promised turtles and we saw turtles. The turtles were playing just by the shore.

We all walked out on the lava rocks (the boys had their water shoes on this time) and enjoyed the small tide pools hidden among the rocks. My brother-in-law decided to go snorkeling right there and my husband and the kids, minus the injured one, all got into the water. The water was apparently beautiful and clear and they saw lots of fish.

Come lunch time, we found out there was no picnicking on sacred ground except in designated area which seemed too hot so we opted to drive 30min+ back to town for lunch. I’m glad we did. My sister knew of a Vietnamese place from their last visit which served Vietnamese crepe only on Sundays. And of course this being Sunday, we had to go.

BaLe-Kona is non-descript, in a strip shopping center one door down from Payless Shoes. The food on the other hand was great! I wish we had this place in the Bay Area. Although we have many Vietnamese restaurants, many aren’t good at all. The crepe was crisp but not greasy and it came with a large plate of lettuce, fresh cilantro and mint. My youngest girl pretty much polished off four large fresh spring rolls declaring they were the best (they were gigantic and good but hardly the best – but then she was hungry). My husband’s pork dish was sweet, moist and tender. The rest of the gang had noodle soup, chicken and more crepe…all good. I couldn’t resist and ordered a tapioca dessert in sweet potato flavor, the purple kind. It was awful…so can’t recommend their desserts but highly recommend the rest of the menu.

After lunch we went shopping at Kohl’s and Target for water shorts for the girls. We thought they needed more protection while playing on the surfboards. It isn’t easy to find the equivalent of board shorts for girls. Girls’ shorts all were really short barely provided any more protection than their swimsuit. With a lot of coaxing, and I mean a lot, we talked them into getting boys’ shorts – they were cute, red with flowers, but the girls weren’t happy but I think their thighs were glad for the extra protection.

We had no plans for dinner that night and we thought we would just wing it at the hotel when my sister called me urgently around 7pm to come to the Japanese restaurant, Norio’s, at the Fairmont. She was holding 9 chairs at the sushi bar and if we didn’t come right away we couldn’t have them. Luckily we were almost done getting ready and I ran over with the girls. My sister was there with one of her boys, not showered, holding down the fort. She tells me that the kids can’t sit together, that the adults had to sit between them. It sounded like she had a horrific time trying to get the seats for us – took her 20minutes of sweet talking (I couldn’t have done it, I don’t think)…the hostess did not want to seat our group with the kids for dinner. She actually relented after much persuasion and her first offer was to stick our kids in a corner at the bar by themselves away from all adults – including the parents!! My sister at this point switched to Japanese (since the hostess was an older Japanese lady) and didn’t give up trying to come up with a workable solution. Thank goodness for my sister!

Of course the question is, was the dinner worth my poor sister enduring the nasty hostess? The food was good – expensive, as is the case with restaurant food in Hawaii. (The miso soup that I ordered for the girls was $8 for a bowl!! with nothing but soup in it…I didn’t know how much it cost and didn’t think it would cost much…I was wrong.) Some of the rolls were 50% off from 7:30-8:30 so we lucked out with the rolls. It was a good choice for dinner since we had no plans, some rolls were half off and it was right at the hotel. You can’t complain too much when you are in Hawaii….you are in paradise after all.

Sunday, August 8, 2010

Third Time, Defintely Not a Charm, Actually It's a Trip to the Hospital

The morning started off well enough, with a big breakfast buffet, where my husband and I gorged on ripe papayas and sweet pineapples.  The girls on the other hand thought fruit loops and doughnuts were more to their liking.

After breakfast we made our way to the lagoon where the girls and their cousins all played with the surfboards.  I was thinking how cute…all four of them sitting on one surfboard.  Then I saw the board go towards the lava rocks…and the boys scramble up the rocks and the board with the girls drift away.  All the adults were on the beach and when we saw the boys on the rocks, we all knew it was not a good situation.  We told the girls to go back to the boys and when they all came back to shore we knew there was trouble.  There was blood, lots of blood.  My younger nephew had cut his toes very badly.  My sister is a physician and when she couldn’t stop the bleeding, I knew this was serious.  It was terrible.  This injury warranted a trip to the hospital.  Since the toes weren’t easily accessible for suturing, the physician at the hospital used derma bond…super glued the wounds.  Really unlucky!  My nephew had fallen twice the day before and had arrived at the hotel with huge bandages on his shin…a fall at the waterfall and at a shave ice stand, and now this.  This of course meant that my nephew was out of the water for the next couple of days and we cancelled our snorkeling trip. 

While my sister and her husband took their son to the hospital, we spent the rest of the morning at the pool and at the lagoon with our girls and our older nephew – had a great time but we worried about the rest of the group at the hospital.  They finally got back around 2:30pm – they had left around 10am.  We hung around the hotel and we were off to dinner at Roy’s to celebrate my sister’s birthday. 

Roy’s as usual is located in a shopping center – this one King’s Shops, located at the next turn off from the Orchid.  The food was good and the view of the fake lake fine (reminded me of Foster City, CA).  I ordered what I always order – misoyaki butterfish, with a spicy tuna appetizer.  For dessert – the usual – chocolate soufflé cake – yum.

As we spent more days at the hotel, we learned of more families whose kids had cut their feet on the lava rocks.  My husband ran into a man who was waiting for a wheelchair at the lagoon who had moments ago cut his feet on the rocks.   We were puzzled the hotel did not have visible signs warning about the sharp rocks.  It seemed that injury on the rocks wasn’t uncommon.  Maybe the Hawaiians know all about the sharp lava rocks but us naïve tourists certainly were not as aware.



Saturday, August 7, 2010

Big Island-The Orchid, Better The Second Time Around

Sunset in front of the Orchid

It’s brutal taking an early morning flight with kids.  I feel so bad waking them up.  Our flight on Alaska Airlines to the Big Island left out of San Jose at 7:30am, which meant we were out the door around 6am.  The kids seemed OK being woken up but then on the flight we realized quickly they were missing their sleep.  Both were so cranky and the flight to Hawaii isn’t short…about 4 ½ to 5 hrs. 

What made the flight somewhat bearable was the crew and service of Alaska Airlines.  I had never flown them before.  I was impressed with how nice, friendly and helpful they were – from the moment you line up at the ticket counter, you are greeted with smiles…imagine!!

We arrive into Kona about 30 minutes early, around 9:40am Hawaii time.  The airport is small.  There aren’t any jetways…you walk onto the tarmac off the plane…you feel you are now truly away.  The landscape also helps to make you feel you have traveled far.  When you start driving, as far as the eye can see, you see old lava fields, brown and rocky.  Very barren looking compared to the other lush islands of Hawaii. 

I found a good package deal for the Fairmont Orchid through Costco (although I think you could have booked directly through the hotel for a comparable rate).  The Orchid was built as a Ritz, but changed management years later to the Starwood group, and in its latest reincarnation was now the Fairmont.  We had stayed at the Orchid before many years ago, prior to kids.  Neither my husband nor I remembered it being particularly memorable but this time with kids, we really liked it.

I remember not being impressed with the manmade beach on the property but this time around thought it was one of the highlights!  The girls loved the beach where we bought an activity card for $60 that allowed the kids to rent lots of fun water equipment.  The girls took out a large foam surfboard and practiced surfing.  I snorkeled around the mouth of the lagoon and immediately spotted a honu, a green sea turtle, which swam right underneath me!  That made my trip.  We pretty much spent the whole afternoon at the beach. 

Since the Bay Area was 3 hours ahead of Hawaii, by 5pm all of us were starving and opted for dinner at the Hale Kai restaurant right by the beach.  The food was pretty awful but the setting was wonderful.  As we were having dinner, my sister and her family who were already on the island joined us.  They had just returned from the Volcano National Park.  We watched as the sun set and the sea turtles rested on the rocky beach in front of the restaurant and knew we were indeed in paradise.

Friday, August 6, 2010