Fish Out of Water

Musings and observations about life from an East Coast native now living on the Left Coast in the California State Capitol since 2004. This fish has made her home in Madison, WI (7 years); Portland, OR (2 years); Las Vegas, NV (7 months); Middlebury, VT (3 summers); Marne-la-Vallee, a small town east of Paris, France (6 months); Middletown, CT (3 years); and Marshfield, MA, the fish's coastal hometown 40 miles south of Boston (17 years).

Name:
Location: Sacramento, California, United States

3.30.2017

Oahu Trip (Day 2)

Day 2: Thursday, March 16
Shangri-La & Surfing
I started my day with some YouTube-facilitated Zumba in our hotel room and then decided to head off on foot to the Honolulu Museum of Art to meet up with my 9am tour to Shangri-La, Doris Duke's estate on Oahu. I stopped for an on-the-go breakfast along the way at a Starbucks on Kuhio Ave and ended up having to rush a bit to get to the Museum on time. I guess that Google estimate of time to walk to my destination was rather accurate after all -- oops! A shuttle bus took our tour group to Shangri-La, where a very knowledgeable and personable docent led us around the estate for about 90 minutes. The architecture of the home is beautiful and very thoughtfully designed to maximize the location of the house right on the coast along with blurring the boundaries between the exterior and interior spaces.

I definitely would want to do this tour again with Mr. E so that he could enjoy the experience as well (only one ticket left by the time we were making the reservations, so he opted out). After the tour, we returned to the Honolulu Museum of Art, where I was able to explore a bit and particularly appreciated the layout of the building around multiple themed courtyards.

Mr. E spent his morning taking some photos of Waikiki Beach after enjoying the breakfast buffet at the hotel:


He ended up at a nearby Starbucks to do some work, and we met up at Duke's Restaurant for lunch, where we both opted for the lunch buffet. Then we strolled back to the hotel to get ready for our semi-private surf lesson with Gone Surfing Hawai'i. We walked to the beach area near the Waikiki Outrigger Reef hotel, which was the meet-up spot for the lesson. Sean provided our on-land lesson for the four-step process to stand up and catch a wave, and then we headed out into the water with our personal instructor, Caz, along with the photographer, Alejandro.

This was only our second surfing lesson and experience, and since the first time was during our previous visit to Waikiki two years ago, we definitely needed the refresher and the additional practice! Both Mr. E and I managed to stand and ride a few waves over the next hour or so, and we got some great photographic proof of our success. So much fun! And clearly an activity that needs more frequent practice to gain more confidence and mastery...!



After we dried off and rinsed our feet, we returned to our hotel to check out the Moana Terrace bar so that we could use our free drink vouchers (beer for Mr. E, mai tai punch for me). We opted for  economic to-go dinner items from the nearby Subway and the larger ABC store within the hotel property. We also stocked up on crunchy snacks and adult beverages at the latter and wrapped up the day with some "House Hunters" in our hotel room.

Oh -- and a new member of my stuffed animal "familiars" group joined us earlier in the day when Mr. E found a wonderful little honu to add to the bunch. I named the adorable cushy green sea turtle Lulu in honour of her origin city, to go along with  Syd (wombat from Sydney), Tico (elephant acquired right before we went to Costa Rice), and Mel (koala from Melbourne).

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