Honeymoon part 3

Day 7 (Saturday): Little adventures

We decided that since we had nothing big planned for Saturday, that it would be the best day to get in all of the little excursions that we had been wanting to do.  We woke up early and decided to go to McDonalds for breakfast {which came highly recommended to us by our travel agent!}.  We don't normally eat at McDonalds but our travel agent said that they had some really interesting takes on food {and it was cheap!} so we decided to give it a shot.  We were disappointed that the only kind of juice they had was orange, but decided to try the egg, rice, and meat platter.  I'm pretty sure one of the meats was sausage, and the other was SPAM.

He looks quite impressed, doesn't he?

After fueling up, we took a short drive to the local Saturday market where we bought loads of fresh fruit, jams, and nuts.  D had to stop me from buying one of everything in the produce stands, because everything there looked so fresh and delicious.  We bought an assortment of mangos, papayas, starfruit, guava, etc.  So yummy.

The only pic I snapped of the Saturday Market

After the Saturday market, we drove to the Kauai coffee company!  We tried lots of different flavors of coffee and walked around the grounds to see coffee trees and places where they dry out all the beans.

After coffee, we drove to the west side of the island to check out the Waimea canyon, which was affectionately referred to as the Grand Canyon of Kauai.  On the way we stopped at this little taco stand for lunch, and I had some of the best fish tacos of my life.  Anyways, the drive to viewpoints of the canyon brought us inland and it was really neat to get to see some of the denser forest-y areas of the island.  The road was really curvy, and admittedly it was difficult to not go too fast in our little convertible!

No better way to experience this drive than with the top down!

On our way back to our condo, we stopped at the Koloa Rum Company to do some rum tasting!  D's favorite was the spiced rum, and I enjoyed the coconut rum.  So of course, we got some to take back to the hotel, too!

Yum! Rum!

After a long day of driving around, we were content to have dinner at the condo and just relax!  Overall a really busy but super fun day!

Day 8 (Sunday): Hiking and Tubing

Since D and I had tried to hike the Kalalau trail a few days before but it was closed due to a helicopter crash, we had to try and squeeze it in before our scheduled rafting trip on our 8th day {and final full day} on the island.  Unfortunately we didn't get to do the entire trail like we wanted, so instead we just did an easy 2-miler into a neat spot with a river and lots of rocks to sit on for a late morning snack.  The full trail to the amazing waterfall would have taken us 8 miles which would have been not a big deal, except we had the time constraint of needed to be back for our rafting trip.  Oh well, guess we'll have to come back another time to do the full thing! ;)

Ahhh, rainbow. :)

After the hike, we drove back to near where our hotel was and boarded a super touristy bus to go on a rafting trip through an old sugar cane plantation.  They advised us not to bring cameras or phones in case they got wet or we dropped them in the water {which turns out was a good suggestion, as there was a little kid in our group who thought it was really fun to splash everyone, haha!}, but take my word for it that it was really pretty and relaxing.  It was almost comical how touristy it was {it was the same company who organizes zip lining!}, but it was really fun to get to spend the afternoon on the water and chat with our awesome tour guide Kyle.  He was a "transplant" from southern California but seemed a total natural fit in Kauai.  He was your typical surfer bum and made the trip really enjoyable.

He gave us lots of ideas for good places to eat and we ended up going to one of his recommendations for dinner that night- the Hukilau Lanai.  D and I both got a different fish dish, mainly because the fish is so good in Hawaii that it would be silly not to.  The atmosphere was intoxicating; a beautiful sunset, candlelight, the smell of lilikoi in the air.  D and I found the evening to be bittersweet, as it would be hard to leave the island the following day, but that the evening couldn't have been more amazing.  It also helped that we ended the meal with a coconut lime tart with lilikoi sauce... :)

We then went back to the hotel and caught the newest episode of Breaking Bad.  All in all a perfect day.

Day 9 (Monday): Heading Home

We awoke a little sad that we would be having to leave, but also getting a little homesick as well.  It took a lot of getting used to being warm all the time and used to how strong the sun was, and to be honest we were craving a little bit of rain.  We started slowly packing and then had some coffee on the lanai and were greeted by cute little birds.

We weren't supposed to feed them, but we did.

We then got visited by other cute creatures- we found this cute little guy in the bathroom!

We checked out of our hotel several hours before we needed to drop off the car and get to the airport {we had a lovely redeye back home}.  We went to the downtown area and found a place to park, and just walked around for awhile.  We visited a cool art place and bought a little piece to take home with us, as well as stopped for an "Elvis Blue Hawaii" snowcone {which had coconut and vanilla flavoring}.  We stopped at another food place recommended to us by Kyle called Chicken in a Barrel.  It was about as you would expect, given the name.

We found a park!

Of course, more chickens.

Goodbye, warm ocean!

 We went and visited another Saturday market-type place and we will never forget this one shop owner who we interacted with.  We can't remember her name now, but she appeared to be incredibly intoxicated and when we told her we were newlyweds, she insisted on seeing pictures from the wedding and hugged me and cried.  We weren't exactly sure what to do.  She then talked about how marriage and love were the best things in the world {no arguments here!}, but then started talking about her awful divorce from her ex-husband.  It was really sad.  We didn't end up buying anything from her.

After that emotional interaction, D needed to get away from people so we went to a cute little coffee shop and sat around drinking coffee and reflecting on our trip.

Look at that ring.  And coffee.

Weirdo owl statue outside the coffee shop

We daydreamed plans to visit Hawaii again for a 5 or 10 year wedding anniversary, the things we would do the same, and the things we would do differently.  All in all, it was the perfect way to celebrate our marriage.

The flight back was full of craziness, including: me getting upgraded to first class but not Doug {I didn't take it, just so you all know}, meeting and chatting with people from Doug's small-ish home town who lived only a few blocks from where Doug's house is, me not getting a blanket or pillow for the red eye {well, eventually I did}, the airport not printing out our boarding passes from our flight from LA->PDX, and the flight to PDX getting canceled and rescheduled for about 5 hours later.  By the time we got to Portland we were totally wiped out, and joked that we needed another honeymoon just to get back to where we were!  It felt really good to finally get back to Eugene and back to home sweet home.

Now that it has been about six months since we were there, there will still be little things that trigger memories from our trip.  Today, it was after D got some coconut water, and it immediately reminded us of the coconut syrup that all the breakfast places served with pancakes {which is what prompted me to finally finish writing about our trip!}.  I'm considering making some yummy food this weekend that reminds me of Hawaii, just to relive it a little bit more!

And that concludes the honeymoon adventures!

<3 J