Vacation, Part 1

[jducoeur]

So yeah -- we're in Hawaii. (Kate declared years ago that that would be this year's vacation.) My usual smattering of observations.

First: I now have an Instagram account, in order to follow the in-laws, and I'm posting links to a few representative pix from the trip there.

Waikiki -- well, I'm glad to have seen it, but wow has it turned into a tourist stereotype. The main drag is now entirely expensive shops. The only thing that saves this from being entirely trite is that the target market is heavily Japanese, so some of the shops are a bit interesting, such as the underground Japanese food court with the hoji-cha soft serve. Weird and yummy is still yummy.

We took the morning tourist trolley out to Diamondhead, and hiked up to the summit. As mountains go it's pretty modest -- slightly steep in spots, but still a fairly easy and fun mile walk. Recommended if you're at all into walking.

The Polynesian Cultural Center was probably the highlight of our stay on Oahu -- thanks to ladysprite for suggesting it, some months back. I got lots of horrified looks before the trip of, "You're going to a luau run by the Mormons? There won't be any cocktails!"; we survived the lack of silly over-sweet booze. (Yes, the PCC is a Mormon project, and they do try to get you to take the tour of the Brigham Young campus, but they do take no for an answer.)

The luau per se felt a bit "safe" and Americanized, but the rest of the PCC was quite neat: little zones for the various islands, each expressing its own character. Kate volunteered me for the Tongan drum show, which was goofy fun, and the evening show was really great -- a well-thought-out story that gave each island a bit of time through a well-produced, impressionistic show. Overall, a fine day out.

Restaurants: we had two good dinners at the recently-opened Baku -- fancy sushi and the like, and some of the deadliest shishito peppers I've ever encountered -- and an absolutely excellent one at Roy's, which is apparently one of the old mainstays, but is managing to keep their menu reasonably fresh and the food excellent.