Kauai is for the birds

I went out on our balcony this morning before breakfast and was greeted by evidence that we were truly on Kauai – a chicken walking by the building.

We started our day with massages here at the resort, followed by a visit to the Princeville Farmers and Arts Market. Most of the vendors were artisans, but there were a few farmers, so we picked up some local citrus and rambutans.

We drove to Kilauea for lunch at Kilauea Fish Market (ahi wraps, yum!) and continued onward to the Kilauea Lighthouse to see what we could see.

The lighthouse is part of the Kilauea Point National Wildlife Refuge, and there was a lot of wildlife to enjoy seeing. Butterflies, for example.

And lots of nene (Hawaiian Geese).

And Laysan Albatross.

We even saw a whale! Here’s the best photo I got – the fluke is clearly visible.

I will spare you the twenty or so photos I took which only show the whale’s spout, and the forty which only showed empty ocean.

We stopped at Kong Lung Market Center and wandered around for a while. Unfortunately, the shave ice store there had already closed for the day, so we had to go to the Ching Young Village in Hanalei to get shave ice at JoJo’s.

We looked at a few of the shops in the center before going back to the resort for a quiet evening.

Kauai, I think

It’s been a day of airplanes, airports, and driving.

We left our house about 6:45am Pacific for a 9:15 flight to Maui (very pleasant), a four-hour layover (less pleasant), a short flight to Kauai where we picked up our rental, and an hour’s drive to our home for the next week, the Westin Princeville Villas. Door-to-door time: 14-plus hours, which left us just enough time for a quick and tasty dinner in the resort restaurant before it closed, followed by a dash to the nearby Foodland to get breakfast supplies before it closed.

Vacations are wonderful; I’m looking forward to this one!