After spending our last full day in Oahu, we woke up early the next morning to get ready to drive down to Honolulu Airport to fly over to the neighboring island of Kaua’i. We were sad to leave Oahu, but were excited to see what was in store for us over at Kaua’i.
We stopped by the Paalaa Kai Bakery in Waialua (North Shore) to get some breakfast before we drove down to Honolulu Airport.
The flight went very smoothly, and we arrived at Lihue Airport in Kaua’i in about an hour. 🙂
We stayed at the Aston Islander on the Beach in Kapaa while we were in Kaua’i. The hotel was close to the airport and right on the beach, which was really nice. 🙂
After checking in and getting all of our luggage settled in, we were hungry for lunch and made a beeline for Hamura’s Saimin Stand, which was recommended to us by a few of our friends. (Thank you Rumi, Bryan, and Dan’s coworker Jay!)
Saimin is a type of noodle soup that is unique to Hawaii, and is sort of a fusion of Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino traditional noodles. It’s made out of soft wheat egg noodles… I’d say that in Japanese noodles, it most closely resembles ramen, but the broth has a much more subtle and light flavor.
A lot of people recommend the lilikoi chiffon pie, but we were too full at the time and decided against getting it. But if you ever get a chance to go there, apparently the pie is pretty darn good so give it a try! 😉
After driving around Lihue, we were starting to melt (it was a really hot day), so we stopped at Shaka Shave Ice (a random shaved ice place we found along the road) and got some shaved ice.
Oh, a funny side story: Some of our friends had strongly urged us to rent a convertible while we were in Kaua’i, insisting that the experience would be so much better if we were able to drive around the island with the top of the car down. Despite my persistent prodding to do so, Dan said it was too expensive and so we reserved an economy car instead when we booked our rentals a few months before the trip. But when we we got to the vehicle rental, the economy compact cars had been overbooked, so they upgraded us to a convertible with no extra charge! I got my convertible after all. 🙂
For the rest of the afternoon, we returned to our hotel and spent a couple hours relaxing on the private beach at the hotel.
We eventually migrated over to the hotel pool, which was also pretty nice.
After freshening up, we headed out to have dinner. We were pretty exhausted by this time, so we decided to go somewhere close and chose to eat in the local town of Kapaa. Being the carbnivore and pasta lover that I am, I selected Kauai Pasta as the dining place of our choice.
Dinner was very satisfying and was the perfect way to end the long day of traveling and familiarizing ourselves with Kaua’i. We only had three days left in Kaua’i, so we were determined to make the best of it! 😀