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| Lava demonstration at Bishop Museum |
On Wednesday Janine tasked me with picking Alicia (her twin) up from the airport, which meant driving into Honolulu on my own for the first time.
I decided to make a day of it by visiting the acclaimed
Bishop Museum and by getting lunch somewhere special on my own before venturing over to the airport. The Bishop museum is dedicated to sharing the history, arts, and culture of the Hawaiian people. As it was a weekday morning, I found myself alongside families and groups of summer camp youth examining cultural artifacts, trying my hand at basket weaving, and learning about the different types of sand on the islands. The highlight of my visit was probably the 30-minute educational lava demonstration, in which a museum employee passed around samples of different types of cooled lava then melted rock down in an extremely hot furnace to produce molten lava.
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| Living Lasagna |
After picking up a lei for Alicia at a nearby shop I went in search of a raw/vegan restaurant that I had read about while on the plane back from the Big Island with Janine the previous weekend. I found
Greens & Vines nestled on the corner of Kapiolani and Ward in downtown Honolulu and requested an order of their "living lasagna" - layers of seasoned zucchini instead of pasta, basil pesto, sun-dried tomato marinara, macadamia nut ricotta, spinach, and sliced tomatoes.The combination of macadamia nut ricotta and sun-dried tomato marinara was unexpectedly delicious, especially when paired with thinly sliced zucchini and spinach (Kate, Zac, are you thinking what I'm thinking?). The raw food movement is pretty popular here in O'ahu and less inconvenient to prepare than I'd originally anticipated ... something to thin about for my return home, perhaps.
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| (My) twins! |
After a brief crisis trying to get out of the parking garage I cruised over to the airport to collect Alicia, who greeted me with a big smile. She showed me her new engagement ring and talked me through her fiance's proposal while excitedly trying to take a picture of the double rainbow that greeted her on our drive out of the airport lot. Alicia's first evening with Janine and me consisted of a poke dinner followed by acai bowls on the beach at sunset and an impromptu dip in the ocean. It was really special to be able to share someone's first night with them when it seems like my own happened not too long ago. Has it really been a month already?! I am looking forward to having a traveling companion for daytime adventures this week and to sharing my driving responsibilities with an experienced standard car driver.
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| Dole Whip |
The next day I woke up early to make french toast using homemade (GF) Hawaiian sweet bread for the twins, then Janine went off to work and Alicia and I headed up to the North Shore for her first full day. Unfortunately, the weather chose not to cooperate with us, sending regular rain showers and occasional chilly winds our way all day, but we soldiered on and spent the better part of the morning and afternoon at the
Dole Plantation. Here we took on the challenge of the World's Largest Outdoor Maze (Guinness Book of World Records 2008) over three acres and 2 1/2 miles of paths crafted from Hawaiian plants. Our objective was to seek out eight hidden stations within the maze and trace a stencil at each station onto our stamped time cards.
We began with a bang, making excellent time until we rerouted to avoid a large group of kids and became lost and disoriented searching for the two northernmost stations in the large leafy head of the giant pineapple. We got back on track toward the end and finished the maze in a respectable 45 minutes, for which we rewarded ourselves with a sampling of the plantations famous pineapple soft serve ice cream, Dole Whips, and a stroll around the plantation grounds.
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| Alicia's first pearl |
On our way out Alicia and I were drawn into a stand that allowed you to crack open oysters in search of pearls and transform them into jewelry. On her first try Alicia cracked open an oyster with a large black pearl, which she had set into a necklace. As a bonus, the shop worker gave Alicia a second shell, which happened to have two smaller pearls in it (the oyster lady asked Alicia if twins run in her family). We continued on to Hale'iwa for lunch and a little window shopping, then off to Sunset Beach for the remainder of the day and to watch the sun set.
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