Hawaii Vacation '08 Day Three

Day three didn't exactly go according to plan, which is odd only in the sense that I really didn't plan much. Basically one day at a time, with a real rough outline of what I wanted to do/see during the week.

I got a decent guide book and thumbed through it during the flight over. I highlighted pretty much everything I thought sounded interesting and then turned the book over to Carolyn. Once we had a "maybe" list we categorized stuff pretty much by location.

On Friday I had roughly planned on visiting this wildlife area which was a protected bay they only allowed a small number of people to visit each day. It was a bay which offered excellent snorkeling, but you had to get there early in the AM. The day before I bought a couple sets of snorkel-fins, mask, and snorkel. They were pretty good for the $40 each I spent. We were going to try them out on Wednesday, but discovered that the water was too cold. I went in anyway and saw a couple of "boring" fish, but Carolyn wouldn't go in more than ankle-depth. I'd be lying if I didn't say I was a bit pissed for having "wasted" the money. Not that it really matters. The equipment was a good purchase but the water would be too cold for either of us the next morning.

So instead of going to the bay we decided to check out Chinatown. Friday was supposed to be the first day of a Chinese New year celebration. What perfect timing. Unfortunately it was pretty boring. Didn't help that I forced out a crappy start on the day by eating at McDonalds. Yep, you read right....McDonalds. I wanted to try their regionalized breakfast. I had some combo meal with SPAM and Portuguese Sausage. It was ok, but we got filled up on crappy food and missed out on probably the best that Chinatown had to offer...food.

We wandered around a bit, mostly window shopping. The only thing that the New Year festival had going on was some extra chintzy crap for sale on a few tables in the courtyard of some shopping center. There were lots of cool places to eat, but of course we weren't hungry. Some of the open-air markets were pretty cool though, and I found a place to get some cheap used Hawaiian shirts. Since they were pre-washed these shirts didn't shrink!

After Chinatown we went back to the hotel and hung out until it was time for the Luau! That deserves a post of it's own.