We spent today in some of our favorite places on Kaua’i, beginning with another walk through the Formal Gardens at Na ‘Āina Kai Botanical Gardens and Sculpture Gallery. We’d never been there in the Spring before, and it was even more colorful than on our usual Winter visits.

We stayed until the Gardens closed at noon, then drove to The Bistro in Kilauea for lunch. Then it was onward to Kapa’a for a short walk along the Ke Ala Hele Makalae Coastal Path (in English, “The Path that Goes by the Coast”), followed by shave ice at Honu Shave Ice.

We stopped at the Kapa’a Lookout on our way back to the Westin.

We had dinner on our balcony and were joined by a couple of the locals – the red-crested cardinal actually flew onto our table and cast covetous eyes on some of our food.

And then it was time for one last stroll and photo for the night.

We’ve driven past the National Tropical Botanic Garden on the South Shore almost every time we’ve been on Kauai but had never stopped there, although we had visited their Limahuli Garden on the North Shore the first time we came to the island. We decided to fix the omission this time and booked a spot on today’s 1pm “Best of Both Worlds” tour a few months ago.

It’s a one-hour drive to the Garden from the Westin in Princeville if there’s no traffic, so we wanted to get the most out of the day. The obvious choice: add a rum tasting at the Koloa Rum Company Tasting Room. Their tasting room closed too early for us to be able to go after touring the garden, so we had to book a spot on their first tasting of the day…at 10am. The sacrifices we make….

Our host, Siana, had been a teacher before moving to Kauai, and she taught us a lot about rum, starting with how to float dark rum on a Mai Tai.

All told, we tasted four of Koloa’s rums: dark, spice, coconut, and “Cane Fire” (cinnamon); I liked the dark the best, but the spice was pretty good, too.

After the rum tasting, we drove to the Koloa location of the Kauai Island Brewing Company for lunch (and a beer); today was National Hamburger Day and we ordered appropriately.

And then we drove to the National Tropical Botanic Garden for our 2½ hour tour of the McBryde and Allerton Gardens.

It had been a long and hot afternoon and Apple Maps predicted a 90-minute drive back to the Westin, so we stopped at Riptides for an excellent shave ice with mac nut ice cream (there were even some mac nuts pieces in the shave ice) – it hit the spot and kept us content for the two hours it took to get back home.