aloha and mahalo for reading. 😃
It's 9 AM local time, and we were up later last night than we've made it so far this trip. We are on the north shore of Kauai at our new location and this morning it is quite cool and windy, and raining intermittently. It's a good day to catch up on a few things - laundry, journals, organizing photos, planning for the day. We are at an Airbnb apartment in Princeville; it is a nice space albeit a bit strangely organized. This is an upstairs unit; the stairs go straight up from the front door. At the top of the stairs there's a hallway that turns left, off of which is a large bathroom on the right, a locked closet, one room to the left leading to the kitchen and porch, and at the end of the hall is the main bedroom. The bathroom is almost the size of one of my kids' bedrooms at home, but very curiously configured. There is a turn right as you get in the door, with a closet to the left and a long sink and bathroom counter to the right, beyond which is the toilet and a medicine cabinet filled with various things (including bug repellent). On the left is a tub/shower, and the far side of the tub is a large shelf leading to a little space extending beyond the tub and behind the closet. There's a window in the outer wall of the alcove that is not visible unless you stand in the tub and face the showerhead/closet. It's very strange and a little creepy, especially since there's no light above the tub (one thing I really like is a light in the shower or over the tub).
The "living room" has a TV stand with TV and a couch (folds out into a bed); a sliding glass door opens onto a porch, with a round glass table and three chairs. This is the dining area. The rain catches the edge of the glass table but the rest of it is dry. Just inside the patio door is a folding door about 3.5 feet wide which when opened reveals a "kitchen." My sister used to refer to her kitchen in the Detroit suburbs as the "microkitchen." If that is the case, then this would be the "nanokitchen." There is a sink and a counter, under which is a tiny fridge (big enough for a gallon of milk and a few other things, but not much) and a cupboard with a wastebasket. In the living room is a wire shelving unit with a cooktop, a toaster, a coffeemaker and a decorative bowl. The cooktop seems to be an induction, which I've never used, but am learning. I may have to investigate that more. There is also a small bookshelf with a few books and DVDs.
The main "bedroom" has a largeish (comparatively) closet with linens, hangers, boogie boards and snorkel equipment. There is a surfboard in the bedroom as well. Welcome to Hawaii. 🏄
There is a definite island influence to the decor, but also some Russian items, including a chess board made in the USSR, complete with babushka (matroyshka?) pawns. The kids are having a very lively game of chess, which I believe has just completed. There are "barn door"-type sliding doors with which one can close off the living room and the bedroom, so there is a lot of privacy.
Hm, apparently the chess game did not end altogether friendly. Good thing there is enough space in this place for us to have some time apart - we have been together a lot in the last 5 days, especially the kids.
So, back to Saturday. Another morning of excellent lectures, 10 minutes of which I skipped to trot over to watch the feeding of the koi in the lobby garden at 9 o'clock. The hotel staff give out little cups of food to observers to feed the fish, but the main feeding is by the hotel staff with a bucket and a scoop. When that scoop of food hits the water, the surface roils with fish. We even saw one fish out of the water on a shallow shelf, begging for food. After the initial excitement was over, I hiked back to the rest of the lectures, which went until 1 PM. The hotel staff had come for our luggage in the morning, and the kids left the room before noon (when checkout was) and hung out in the lobby, or watching the cockatoo that lives in the central garden of the hotel.
After my lectures, I located the kids and we walked out to get the car and come back to where our luggage was being held. Then we went to Costco (of course, there's a Costco) and got a couple of things, then headed north to Princeville, stopping on the way for groceries (and Girl Scout cookies). The rental car company provided a grocery store card on the key ring (as I think I said in the first post), so we were able to get "member prices." I still think that's a neat idea; I can't tell you how many grocery stores I've had to say, "I'm from out of town" when they ask for my card. Often the store clerk will use a universal card, but still, it's nice to know I have one to use. We got eggs, bread, carrots, milk, sliced turkey and cheese, and some pasta. It's hard when you're only going to be at a place for a few days to know how much food to get, because you don't want to overbuy. I think we did about right.
We found the apartment/condo without incident - it's right down the street from a condo at which I've stayed in the past, so it was a familiar area. We got our things in and settled, then walked down to the beach. This is not as easy as it sounds. It's probably a 15-minute hike down steep grass, then through the brush and woods, and down another steep slope that has some wooden planks as steps. Then up through the trrees and along side of a low cliff (well, a drop-off, anyway) that runs by the sea. Up and over some large rocks, including scaling down some of the larger ones, and voila, there you are, in a little cove, north of which the waves were probably 4 - 6 feet, but coming into the bay were much less. The beach there is very coarse sand among which you can find tiny shells that wash over from Ni'ihau, "the forbidden island" (ooh, that sounds so spooky to say).
We hung out at the beach for about 20 minutes, then decided to go back "home," where we fixed pasta for dinner; I played a very bad game of chess with the younger kid, and then we watched Finding Dory on Amazon Prime. What a cute movie. I didn't really like Finding Nemo (except for some parts of it) and I found Dory especially annoying in that movie, so I didn't think I'd like this one, but it surprised me, and made Dory a much more sympathetic character.
Now I have laundry hanging in the weird bathroom to dry, and I'm going to gather the kids and we're going to go out somewhere. I don't know if we'll hike, but we'll go somewhere.
Cheers,
wb
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