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.

We started the morning with a 90-minute massage in a cabana on the ocean lawn; it’s one of our regular activities here, and it was as good this year as it has been in the past.

After the massage, we drove to Hanalei for lunch at The Dolphin. We were lucky and found a parking spot right outside the restaurant, with a pleasant view of Nāmolokama Mountain and its waterfalls.

Our table had a view of the Hanalei River, and every so often we saw kayakers or stand-up paddleboarders go by. It looked like fun, so I checked to see if there were any nearby outfitters – there were several. We decided to sign up for Kayak Hanalei‘s Friday morning tour to the mouth of the river, which includes a bit of ocean snorkeling, a picnic on the beach, and is supposed to be good for someone with no kayaking experience (me!).

We walked down to the Ching Young Village shopping center, which is a fun place to visit; there’s a t-shirt shop which silkscreens shirts while-you-wait, several swim and surf shops, a music store, and even a real supermarket where we picked up some sunscreen. On the way there, Diane got intercepted by a cosmetics salesperson from the Miraval store and was treated to a free eye tightening treatment – his patter was very smooth, there was a small difference in the appearance of her eyes, and we walked out without spending $400 for a year’s supply (we didn’t even get a special offer to encourage us, just a polite goodbye).

Our next stop was the farmers’ market in Waipa, about two miles north of Hanalei. We had to wait about ten minutes to get past some road construction, but then it was smooth sailing. We picked up some local oranges, tomatoes, kale, and salad greens and spent a few minutes talking to an artist before heading back to the Foodland near the Westin to pick up wine and chicken for dinner.

We’ve done most of our shopping at home at Lunardi’s Markets ever since we moved to Los Gatos 40 years ago. The produce is great; the selection and prices are good; they even have a senior discount. And they have a butcher counter, so I can get exactly what I need. That’s not the case at Foodland here; the smallest package of chicken on offer had four breasts, far more than we need for the rest of our stay here, and there wasn’t a butcher to be found. So I bought half a rotisserie chicken instead. To their credit, they did have a reasonable selection of wine!

We had dinner on our balcony, went for a dip in the hot tub afterwards, and are continuing to relax. :-)