December 31st was our first morning on the island without wind and rain, so we pulled our beach chairs down to the sand to enjoy the morning sunrise while sipping coffee.
These chairs are very comfortable
I didn't bring my DSLR, but I did shoot a quick pano with the point and shoot.
We decided to try a new place for breakfast. I'd read about Art Cafe Hemingway prior to our first trip, however it was closed for remodeling the entire time we were here on the first trip. Our second trip largely had either breakfast in the room, or breakfast at Olympic Cafe. After I re-read the description of Art Cafe Hemingway, D decided we should give it a shot. I appreciated that they were very detailed on their menu as to what "level" of vegetarian each menu item was (vegetarian but do not eat eggs, vegetarian eats eggs but not dairy, etc... They even specify that their vegan stuff can be made with syrup instead of honey if you ask ahead of time. When someone goes to this much detail on descriptions, that tells me they know every ingredient of every item) I chose the muesli for breakfast, which was cold oats/nut mix in milk with Greek yogurt and fruit on top. D ordered an omelette and G had a crepe. They only have espresso drinks, no drip coffee, so I had an Americano with my breakfast. It was wonderful.
The great irony is that I discovered a place that has "the best eggs of any restaurant anywhere" according to D.
Breakfast is so limited for me that it doesn't matter much where we go as long as they have oatmeal. I actually picked this place for the atmosphere, there is art everywhere and they use a lot of Hemingway's recipes for drinks, which I thought was clever. It turns out the food is also excellent.
Art Cafe Hemingway is run by a couple Friday - Sunday, then run by their son Monday - Thursday (and then called Cafe Hemingway - two restaurants, one house) ... same breakfast menu but different dinner menus.
Our intended destination today was the Kilauea Lighthouse for photos and a picnic, and then probably on to hang out in Hanalei a bit. I packed myself a sandwich and some fruit and chips, and we backtracked to the bakery for some lunchtime croissants for D and G before heading north.
Unfortunately the light house park was closed for New Years Eve (which they did *not* mention on the website) so we had to put that off until they reopen on Tuesday. I felt bad, because we had debated about bringing the beach chairs in the car, but I really thought we wouldn't have time to use them much so we didn't pull them out. Since the light house was a bust we ended up with several hours of not much to do, and we could have used the chairs. We made do without them, though, and wandered up the coast to a little beach called Kalihiwai Beach. This is in a somewhat protected bay, though the waves were quite high. We parked among the trees on the side of the road and made our way across the sand with our picnic and sat down to eat. None of us felt much like getting back into the car right away, so I went back to grab my camera gear and decided to play with my pinhole cameras while D and G wandered around a bit.
Wide angle pinhole
Don't mind the lady on the beach with the nearly 100 year old camera. Nothing to see here, that's not strange at all.
G and I on the beach
"this will be really funny, take the picture on the count of 3!" (I think this is supposed to be a Darth Vader effect)
After I burned through a bit of film, we packed it up and continued north to Hanalei Bay. Parking was very limited, but we found a spot near the pier and meandered down. The water seemed relatively calm and beach facilities were pretty good (bathrooms at each end of the bay and one in the center) so we put that in the back of our heads as a possible beach day destination.
We hadn't really made plans for dinner yet, so we took some time to sit on the beach and look into a few restaurant possibilities. Many places were doing special NYE pre-determined meals (3 - 8 course meals) which are difficult if not impossible for me to participate in due to my allergies, so we settled on Gaylord's back in Lihue, since they had an opening for dinner and were serving their regular menu. We headed south back to the condo, washed the sand off, and then continued down the highway to Gaylord's for dinner.
Their mai tais are quite lovely.
Ahi sashimi appetizer, simple and perfect.
Look... no fish! I opted for the pork loin in the mushroom demiglaze, served with bok choy and wild rice. The lighting was really dim so it was difficult to get a decent pic, but that pile in the middle of the plate is sauteed wild mushrooms, which were DELICIOUS.
I was happy to watch the sun set on this year.
After dinner, we stopped off at the local Safeway to pick up a few things we were running low on, then headed back to the condo. We stayed up to watch Jurassic World and tried to spot the places we had visited the day before, toasted the end of 2016, and hit the hay.
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