Visiting the Garden Isle: Day 5 Part 1 – The Acquisition of Souvenirs

Want to read more?  Past blog posts:  Day 1, Day 2, Part 1, Day 2 Part 2, Day 3 Part 1, Day 3 Part 2, Day 4

After our scrumptious sushi dinner at the Dolphin, we slept in a bit the next day, choosing to once again have breakfast at the Nanea restaurant at our hotel in exchange for not having the room cleaned up by the onsite staff.  Before we headed to breakfast, we took a quick jaunt down to the beach access near the entrance to our resort.  Although the Westin was fantastic in a lot of ways, one drawback is that it sits on a bluff overlooking the shoreline; thus, it doesn’t lead down to its own beach.  However, it has a path to public beach access literally right outside its entrance sign, so we decided to take a morning stroll.

Outside the sign for the hotel

The path down to the beach was short (.25 miles or so) but pretty steep, and since it was rainy the day before (and we were wearing flip flops), we skidded around a bit, me losing my footing entirely at one point and getting somewhat mucky.  Anyway, we eventually made it and the scenery made us wish we’d explored it earlier in our stay.

See?  Quite pretty.

We scampered back up the hill and headed to breakfast.  While we were waiting to be seated, I heard someone call my name, and I turned around to see a gentleman I knew from work, Paul, dining with his wife, Abigail, on the patio!  They arrived on the island a few days earlier and were staying at our exact same hotel!  We exclaimed over the coincidence and left them to finish their meal in peace.  Since the restaurant was open air (as are most things in Hawaii, we’ve found), there were quite a few little birds swooping in and out, stealing pastries from tables.  Here’s one now:

He’s got his eye on you

We puttered around the room for a bit, running yet another load of laundry and starting to pack things up, as we’d be leaving early the next morning for the airport.  Since the day was again predicted to be cloudy, we ditched our original plans of hitting up the nearby botanical garden and instead headed to the Kaua’i Coffee Company plantation and visitor center, in Kalaheo (on the southern side of the island but not quite as far as where our catamaran sailed from).  On the drive there, we stopped for a few souvenirs at Hilo Hattie’s, a chain common to the Hawaiian Islands (this one was in Lihue, near the airport).  While at Hattie’s, we picked up a few items for friends and family, and Chris searched in vain for a t-shirt to commemorate our time in Kaua’i; while there were several to choose from, he really wanted one with the name of the island and a chicken upon it.  When our cashier at Hattie’s learned of this, she recommended a shopping center in Poipu that had lots of great shops that would probably meet our needs.  We set the GPS and headed off, only to find the shopping center was right next door to where we ate at Keoki’s two nights earlier!  We shopped for a while, found what we were seeking, and had a good lunch at Merriman’s Gourmet Pizza & Burgers, the casual eatery underneath the fancier Merriman’s seafood restaurant in the complex.

At last!

After lunch, it was back in the car for a bit, and we finally arrived at the coffee plantation.

We took the self-guided tour around the area and learned all about the art of making coffee on this part of the island.

Making (creepy) new friends

Wait, how far to the moon?

Do work, son!

Itty bitty caffeine plants

After the tour, it was tasting time (well, for Chris anyway.  I don’t like coffee)!  Chris had fun picking out a few bags for himself as well as gifts for folks back home, and I enjoyed smelling all of the different brews.

Nice of him to match his shirt to the cup,

don’t you think?

For our final night on the island, we’d be attending a luau, and after the coffee plantation, we found ourselves with a few hours to kill before our designated arrival time.  In reading the tourist pamphlets a few days prior (yup, that really early morning huddled up in the bathroom), I discovered an article about a meadery on the island, which used honey made from local bees.  Although a visit to the meadery would take us past the location of the luau, we had time, and it wasn’t that far of a detour, so we went for it.

Chris tasted a lot of different things this day

We’re obviously regulars when it comes to visiting breweries, but we’ve only been to one other meadery before, Redstone in Boulder, Colorado.  While we enjoyed learning about mead at Redstone, most of it was too sweet for our palate, and the one bottle we bought still sits unopened on our counter at home (it’s been there for a few years now, so it’s well aged – provided, of course, that mead actually should age).  Thus, we were a bit wary of the tastings we’d experience at Nani Moon in Kaua’i, but we wanted to try it out just the same; I’m glad we overcame our initial reluctance, as it was fantastic!  While the concoctions were somewhat sweet, they were almost more like a Sauvignon Blanc wine; not too sweet for us.  We also had a goat cheese sampler served with local honey and jam, and we thoroughly enjoyed our time hanging out with the family who ran the place (even 8 year old Hunter, who was doing his homework at the counter while eating hot dogs).  We brought home two bottles, as well as a sticker and some other presents for my team at work.

Be sure to check out the tiki man painting in the back

After the meadery, we hopped back in the car and headed to our last stop for the evening, the Kilohana Plantation to see the luau!  On the next blog post, said luau occurs and we get to feed pigs!

Later!

Amy