Continued from Oahu Day 4.

Breakfast on the balcony. Banana power. Look at that cool gradient on that skyline!

Seriously, how many different colors can you spot in that sky? Crazy cool.

It’s travel day today, and we had reserved two taxis to take us to the airport this morning at 8am. It’s nice that we are still jetlagged from Austin, so it wasn’t too hard getting up early.

7 passengers with luggage means we need to split up into two vehicles. Both of the drivers were Chinese women. The driver in my car talked about how business has been down due to the pricey dollar compared to the yen. I guess the Japanese make up a huge portion of tourists here in Hawaii. She said business was good before covid, when covid first opened up and now it’s slow. So slow in fact that usually the hotels fill up 100% during the winter break, but right now they are maybe 70% capacity. We did notice that the hotels don’t seem super crowded. That’s good for us, but sucks that people in tourism industry are suffering.

PL was eager to help on the boarding passes and luggage tags.

Pretty cool luggage tag. No sticker backing to peel off. Neither sides are really sticky on their own but put those two dots together and they adhere very strongly.

Off we go with the luggage.

Clear for me, RL and the kids.

Grandparents in the regular line.

TSA pre for me and the kids.

Well, that was an easy and fast security line with not much of a line.

First, some coffee.

Then some food for lunch. It’s early, but due to jet lag, we still get hungry really early. Cool little self pay station where it scans itself.

This being Hawaii, RL got all the kids lip balms in a pineapple shaped container.

It’s early, places are just now starting to open up at the airport. But time to get some more food because by the time we get into our next hotel, it’ll be a little past lunch time and everyone will be hangry by then.

Everybody loves fried chicken.

I love fried chicken.

Time to board.

It’s been a while since I’ve seen a seat tray this small. The sits are also super bare minimum. I like it. I guess you don’t need to do much when you only make short distance runs between the islands.

Here we go, onto Kauai.

Bye Oahu, til next time.

Found his Cuebot in his travel duffel bag. He had forgotten it in there back when we got it in NYC?

All asleep on this short flight. That’s CL in the foreground with her sweater over her head.

And we are here in Kauai after maybe 40minutes. Easy. It’s a small airport, I think only 10 gates.

That was easy to leave. I’m going to get the rental car.

While everyone else gets luggage at the carousel.

It’s funny that they love putting on lip balm like it’s some sort of toy.

They told me to pick any Pacifica that I want. It actually took me a while to pick just the right one….I know, I’m picky. One had too many scratches on it. One had too low of tire pressure. One needed an oil change.

This one will do. Another white Pacifica, just like the previous rental.

We brought along the inflatable carseats again. It’s funny that when we get the checked luggage, one of the first thing we do is stand on the sidewalk and blow up carseats with our mouths.

Also blue sky over here. Immediately, it feels much more rural here. It’s like being in the country.

Much fewer roads, and much fewer cars.

Feels like Taiwan, feels like Costa Rica.

Albizias tree, I had to look up what they were. Cool looking trees. Apparently an invasive tree that’s fast growing and gets random broken branches. Looks cool though.

Feels so much different than Oahu.

Very few miles on this car as well. Our first one in Honolulu had less than 1000 miles when I picked it up. Now that I think about it, it still had less than 1000 miles when I dropped it off I think.

Reminds me of King’s Road in Ireland.

Getting less rainforest. It’s amazing how quickly the climate and scenery changes here.

We are here, took about 30 minutes.

Yup, that’s 5 people squeezed into a 4 seat mustang.

Very nice.

While I was checking in, everyone else talked to these resident macaws at the hotel. They say things back to you apparently.

Claims to be feeling car sick.

Runs around and laughs like he’s not carsick. You tell me.

The kids loved the birds. I was still too busy checking in at this point.

Went to park the car at the lot. The parking lot is kind of a far walk from the lobby to be honest.

Nice touch, they handed out tubes to the kids during the check in process.

Large spread out compound. I guess you can do this when the weather is mostly nice.

Beautiful manicured grounds. I’m certainly impressed.

They didn’t have connecting rooms, so we got two rooms next to each other. This is what $1,400 per night per room gets you at probably one of the top three resorts on the island. It’s pricey, and very price for a pretty regular room. There are parts of the hotel that looks tired and could use a renovation….For some reason, I thought that I’d get more for the money. A little disappointed.

The grounds are beautiful, but I feel like the room didn’t continue the excellence.

Nothing planned for today except to sit around, chill, and swim.

They have a slide here as well and the kids really enjoyed it.

Time for a large snack, or second lunch. The kids didn’t eat that much of their first lunch.

This works. Drink a beer while I wait for my food. I’m having a good time.

Yum, poke for me. I love how poke is just ubiquitous here.

Gotta drink a local(well, state local) beer while I’m here.

Some food so they have more energy to burn at the pool. Look at how uncrowded it is over here.

Check out the beach here and going for a short exploration walk around the resort. The waves are pretty big here, definitely not good for kids swimming.

Some volcanic stone shoreline. There are also some tide pools here.

Looking back towards the resort. It’s pretty nice out here.

So many wild chickens here on the Hawaiian islands. Heihei in Moana makes more sense now.

In the middle of this perfectly manicured is one very dead tree that appears to have been dead for a while. It looks like an agave that bloomed? Odd.

Very picturesque resort in the pool area for sure.

Hung out by the pool most of the afternoon, time for dinner. Another complaint against the resort. In order to make a reservation at one of the restaurants on site, you book through OpenTable like you would any restaurant. No priority is given to guests on site and calling the concierge did not help. So now we are left with the options of showing up right when they open and hope to snag a walk in table, or if that fails, scramble for another restaurant to eat at. Lame. I just want someone to tell me either yes or no whether I can get a table for 7 so that I can go ahead and make plans for plan B ahead of time.

They had a great time swimming though. The temperature is still pretty warm here, about 80 degrees during the warmest part of the day.

While the kids showed, we saw that someone left us a secret Merry Christmas message on the mirror along with baby footprints. Probably from the guests right before us I guess. Neat.

The seafood restaurant on site at the resort. No reservations, but showing up right at open enabled us to get a table. It also helps that I guess the resorts are not all filled here due to world economic reasons. I have also noticed that it’s a lot less crowded at this resort than at the Hilton. I guess the high price does buy you significant less crowd, which is nice.

Girls were excited to wear their new dresses. Cute.

Food was great all around.

At the end of dinner, they bought out some little chocolate desserts, but it had nuts in them. So I asked for a some ice cream since PL is allergic to nuts. They bought out some ice cream and said it was on the house, at which point, I felt obliged to tip an extra $20 for the meal. Hawaii is expensive and eating with 7 people is expensive. Every meal we eat is probably $500+. Sigh.

But look at how pretty it is over here!

To be continued at Kauai Day 2.