When we visited the Big Island for the first time last year, we braved the rain to see the Hawaii Tropical Botanical Garden on the Hilo side of the island on our last day here.

We wanted to make a return visit on this year’s trip, and today was a great day – it was bright and sunny and not too too hot! There weren’t even a lot of mosquitos (spraying ourselves with DEET might have helped, too).

We spent more than two hours in the garden, and I took too many photos again; here are some of the best ones.

We were quite ready for lunch by the time we’d finished in the gardens. We couldn’t return to the place we ate at last year (What’s Shakin’) because they’re closed on Sundays; the people at the garden recommended Pi’ilani Kitchen, a small restaurant a couple of miles up the road that opened earlier this year. It was delicious. We each had their special of the day, a generous portion of seared ahi on an excellent salad…and it cost all of $19. Not quite worth the trip to Hawai’i, but definitely worth stopping for!

After lunch, we stopped at a “Scenic Point” sign along Highway 19; the view wasn’t much, but there was a sign telling the story of the town of Laupāhoehoe, which suffered greatly in the Tsunami of 1946 – we could see a little of Laupāhoehoe Point and decided to drive down there and see more.

There’s a park where the school and pier used to be (including a memorial to those who died in the tsunami, as well as reprints of newspaper articles from 1946 telling the stories of some of the survivors). People were enjoying themselves, both in the water and on the land, and there was plenty of surf and spray.

We drove back to the resort to enjoy the sunset and a foofy drink from our balcony, then we walked across the street to Kings Shops and had gelato for dinner.

Today was a travel day. We left the Westin Nanea on Maui about 8:45am and arrived at the Marriott Waikoloa Beach on Hawai’i about 1:30pm – our room was ready, which was a nice surprise.

We stopped by the Island Gourmet Market (which is an ABC store with pretensions) in Queen’s Marketplace (one of the two large outdoor malls within a five minute walk of the hotel) and picked up some pre-made salads for a light lunch – they weren’t half-bad. Then we drove ten minutes to the closest real grocery store to pick up the breakfast essentials that Island Gourmet didn’t have.

We had dinner at the Lava Lava Beach Club down the beach from the hotel – they have tables right in the sand, but we would have had to wait a while to get one, so we took a table on the concrete floor. We both had fish – Diane went for seared ahi, while I had macadamia nut crusted mahi-mahi. Much better than our lunchtime salads, that’s for sure! And foofy drinks and ice cream sandwiches didn’t hurt, either.

The sun set while we were having dinner; it was a clear evening, so the sky didn’t get very colorful, but it still made for a nice walk back to the hotel.