Hawaii: Day 2 ~ Food, Driving, 1st Beach

The next morning, I felt somewhat more positive and decided we should wait a few days to see if my sleeping situation would improve.  Greg contacted the manager, who promptly got us a new floor fan.  I discovered that my glass door didn't always whistle, and no ladies woke me with their squealing any other nights.  Plus, our AC did a decent job in the main rooms once it had time to catch up.

We got our first good look from the patio, or the "lanai" as Hawaiians call it.

The orange cones were due to construction taking place on the pool.  Guests were still allowed to swim, but we didn't end up making it down.  Too busy seeing the sites!  We had an awesome patio set though and ate out there a couple times.

I like to start our first morning with a hearty breakfast.  We ate at Bongo Ben's, an open air restaurant in the heart of Kona.  The food was great, but our favorite part of the meal by far was the coconut smoothie.  Seriously the best smoothie any of us have ever had and our number one favorite food item over the full two weeks.  It was THAT good.

Greg and I are always challenged in navigating new cities.  We are good map-readers but not good at feeling our way around.  Hawaii was unusually difficult.  The street names are hard to remember and hard to pronounce for those not familiar with the language.  Multiple streets can have the same name in the same vicinity, and street signs are often hard to find or too faded to make out.  We spent a lot of time looking for destinations.  After breakfast, we drove around for basic necessities such as bottled water.  On the up side, everywhere we drove was beautiful.

It was getting late in the day before we made it to our first beach: Anaehoomalu.  One of the nice perks in Hawaii is that there are no private beaches.  You can swim in front of any resort, use their chairs and umbrellas, and enjoy the amenities nearby.  This beach had resort chairs/umbrellas and interesting features.  Such as a feral cat haven.

There was a sign that read, "Please do not feed the cats."  Never saw anything like it.  Lots of feral chickens in Hawaii too.

Funny moment: Greg and Kylen discovered they were wearing mismatched sandals.  They were each wearing one of their own and one of the other's.  Love these shots of Kylen as he was telling me about it.

I had fun taking pics while the boys swam.

I'll bet Hawaii is a birder's paradise.  They were a common part of the landscape.

Before we knew it, the sun was down.  Sun sets around 7 p.m., rather annoying actually.  We would have liked a couple more hours of light.

The nicer beaches have showers, which was AWESOME!  Our condo also had an outside faucet that we used a couple times.

That was the end of day 2!