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Hanauma Bay & Exploring Waikiki

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Today we had to wake up early to get picked up for our excursion to Hanauma Bay…like 5:30 early. Luckily we had a good breakfast that we picked up last night at the grocery store.

Chicken Katsu & KonaRed Coffee

We were picked up at 7 am by Snorkelfest. There was one other couple with us and it was their first time snorkeling so the driver went through the basics of snorkeling in the van. The drive was about 20 minutes and the driver would point out famous places along the way like Keanu Reeves’ house and Diamond Head. Snorkelfest is basically just transportation to Hanauma Bay, the  rest of your time there is self guided. I would recommend it though because unless you have a car you will have to rely on a bus or hope that an uber driver will pick you up from there after snorkeling. It was $60 for the 2 of us so I think well worth it. The views on the drive were pretty cool.

Once we got to Hanauma Bay we had to walk to check in and pay about $13 for entrance into the park. After we were checked in they showed us a short video about the bay and rules, then we were free to check it out. We purchased a locker to put our valuables in and then we got in the water.

The water was warm and shallow. At first it was really calm but since it was so shallow in spots it was hard to snorkel without brushing up against rocks and coral, so we decided to go further out. Our guide had explained earlier that going out far would be cool you just had to be careful of the currents. The current was really strong and I just felt like I was fighting. We haven’t snorkeled in a few years so I also didn’t feel as confident and I worried if I was feeling this tired and out of control in the beginning how would we make it back? So I panicked a little and wore myself out. It felt like a rip current because I had to swim to the side to move at all. No one else was really attempting to get out further so we decided to go back.

We got back to shore and took a small snack break and then we decided to go on the left side of the bay which if you look at a map of the bay this was called “Backdoor Lagoon”. We saw seals resting on rocks here and the water was more calm. We were able to go through the channel here and reach the deeper water. The snorkeling was much better here, lots of coral and fish. Hanauma Bay was beautiful but compared to other places we have snorkeled we didn’t see a lot.

Seals!

Once we were done snorkeling we walked around the beach a bit. It was beautiful and sand was sparkling! It was crazy. We took a lot of pictures here and on our walk back up to the parking lot.

On our drive back our driver gave us a lot of advice about where to eat. He mentioned Chinatown, Zippy’s, Rainbow Drive In, Tiki Bar, and Growler USA. Now we were hungry and ready to get cleaned up to eat!

When we got back to the hotel one of Don’s sandals broke, so on our walk to find food we stopped at Foot Locker and The Croc Store…he found shoes at both. We walked about 20 minutes to Rainbow Drive In but it was really busy so we kept walking to Zippy’s. Zippy’s is a fast food chain in Hawaii and you can get a lot of local dishes. They are also a bakery. I had chicken katsu which was so much better than what I had gotten from the grocery store and Don had Loco Moco. Loco Moco is a beef patty on top of rice with an egg and gravy. It was pretty freaken delicious.

On our walk back we stopped at Growler USA and the Cubs game was on so we watched it and had a few beers. This place was pretty cool and they had a ton of local beers. The Cubs were losing so we left before the end.

We wanted to check out Tiki Bar since our driver also mentioned that place for drinks so we stopped there and it was on our way. I had a margarita because it was happy hour and good priced. Don had a beer then we both had salads. Don got the Caesar salad which was the weirdest Caesar salad either of us had ever seen. I had a mozzarella salad. It was an ok place but it mostly just felt like a place to go for a good view. Here we learned the Cubs came back in the bottom of the 9th to win off of a Bote grand slam! We should have stayed to watch!

On our walk back to the hotel we sat by the beach and watched the surfers. We saw a lady on the beach carrying a bag with a cat in it. The cat looked pretty chill. Next the cat was out on the sand on a leash walking around. Then Don was like “the cat is in the water!” The woman was letting her cat swim in the water it was crazy! The cat looked like he liked it. The swimming didn’t last long and she dried the cat off and started walking away from the beach towards us. She sat down next to us to get her cat packed up again! We talked to her briefly.

Pretty cool day in Waikiki. Tomorrow we leave for Maui.

 

Bloggings, Reviews - Travel, Travel

Hawaii Day 1!! Chicago to Waikiki

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We left this morning around 7:30 am for our 10 am flight to Honolulu!! Our flight was direct on United so that was pretty cool. Only thing not really cool were our options for eating in the United terminal so we ended up having Mcdonald’s for breakfast. I can’t really complain at all about the flight itself though; it was on time and we had 2 seats by ourselves! Don also really enjoyed the cell phone/tablet holders on the back of the seats. I spent most of the flight watching The Sinner that I downloaded from Netflix. Pretty good show, I recommend it!

We arrived in Honolulu around 2 pm local time and took a cab to our hotel in Waikiki, Hilton Garden Inn Waikiki Beach. Fortunately, we had enough Hilton reward points to stay here 2 nights for free. The hotel was nice and really modern looking. It also had a nice store attached to it where you could get coffee and some groceries.

Once we got settled in we decided to find some food and walk around a bit. There was an area with a bunch of food trucks right next to our hotel but it looked like many of them were shutting down for the day. We decided to walk towards the beach to eat. We walked around the beach a bit then we ate at Duke’s Waikiki. It seemed touristy but so did everywhere around here. Dukes had a nice view and live music. We ordered the fried calamari to start along with some Longboards. Don had a cheeseburger and I had the Korean steak tacos. The calamari was pretty good and the tacos were ok. The steak in the tacos was really good. Mostly if you’re going to eat at Duke’s you’re paying for the location and view. I wouldn’t really recommend the food.

After eating we walked along Waikiki Beach and watched surfers. It rained for a little bit, but it was still beautiful!

Before we went back to the hotel we stopped at the grocery store across the street to pick up something for breakfast since we will have an early morning for a snorkeling excursion. The Food Pantry grocery store was pretty awesome. It had a little cafe in it and almost like a small food court. They also had many pre-made meals you could pick up. We got some chicken katsu and rice. We also got a few musabis, Musabi is spam and rice wrapped in seaweed. It’s like a small sandwich almost and it’s a pretty common Hawaiian snack. It sounds not so great but they are pretty good. We ended up falling asleep around 7:30 pm because of the 5 hour time difference.

 

Bloggings, Gaming

Pandemic Legacy 2: September

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September was rough. We ended up losing our first game, but a lot of stuff happened during the loss so it was ok. We were told in the beginning of September that we no longer had the objective of Recon 1 Unknown Region; it was being replaced with Recon East Asia. We also found out we had discovered a new haven but it had not yet been accessed. Our same characters, Goods, Newt, Aofie, and Claire set out once again to save the world.

It was in this game that Package 6 came back to haunt us. If you recall we were able to put infection/city cards into package 6 so they would not be drawn. We hadn’t put too many in fear that something would happen later but we did put a few and it had been nice not having to worry about these cities anymore. Well now when an epidemic occurred we had to draw a random infection card from package 6 and remove any cubes if any.

We knew from the beginning of this game it would be nearly impossible to achieve the goal of reconning Asia. We did search Khartoum and this card allowed us to give a player card to another player. We connected 2 new cities: Dar Es Salaam and New Mumbai. The new haven was also accessed and named Aang. Even though we lost the game we did keep a permanent supply center in Kolkata to make it easier to recon Asia in the next game. With our other points we increased the population in Tripoli and Istanbul. We also used a Foundations upgrade on a Washington city card to make it count as 2 cards of its color to build a supply center.

In the second game in September we had 2 rationed event cards. We used the One Quiet Night and Drastic Measures. Goods used the unrationed event card called Renewel which allowed her to gain a character upgrade worth 2 points or less. She chose Soldier so she can now discard a city card matching the color of the city she is leaving to prevent exposures from Hollow Men. We were able to recon Asia. Reconning Asia connected Jakarta to the grid. It also added 4 more Hollow Men cards to the infection deck. Claire searched Dar Es Salaam twice and was able to draw a free supply line from there. The other search from Dar Es Salaam showed there was a lost haven near there but we had already found it and accessed it. September did give us another unrationed event called Biodome Prototype, which allows us to place up to 3 shelters onto any cities on the grid. We have discovered shelters now to help prevent exposures for characters. To place a shelter you have to discard a card matching the color of the current city. It is nice to have some ways to prevent exposure now.  We also used the frequency scanner a lot to try to avoid epidemics. It actually worked a couple of times!This game is getting crazy.

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Pandemic Legacy 2-June-The Hollow Men Arrive

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So in May when we reconned the Middle East we got some terrible news that the Hollow Men were there. We got 4 Hollow Men Gather cards and a bunch of little Hollow Men figurines. This was not looking good, so what did it mean? Well now at the beginning of the game the 4 Hollow Men Gather Cards are to be placed in the infection discard pile, meaning they won’t go into play until after the first epidemic. These cards do not count as an infection card draw, what happens is when you draw one the next city card you draw from the infection pile gets a Hollow Man added to it. Hollow Men in a city are terrible because if your character leaves a location with them there they gain an exposure. Hollow Men also decrease the population of a city by 1 at the end of the game. They can also decrease the population of a city in the middle of the game if a city already has 3 Hollow Men and the card is drawn again, instead of adding a 4th the population is decreased by 1.

We started June with the same characters (Aofie-Administrator, Claire-Laborer, Goods-Farmer, & Newt-Radio Operator). Our journal entry for June talked about Utopia again. It said our leaders went there and it’s a place that’s secure enough to resist the plague and Hollow Men. There’s suggestion that there might be a cure there, but we also don’t know where it is. The journal entry made it sound like it might be in the far east. It also tells us if we get there it is believed we would be helped but others also believe we would be killed on sight.

Going into this game we had a problem, how do we get out of cities that have Hollow Men without being exposed? According to the rule book if you try to leave a city with Hollow Men you are “cornered” and you cannot leave by the drive/ferry, sail, charter boat, or shuttle flight action without being exposed. So we decided that other means of leaving the city like being airlifted out of there or being transported by Aofie the Administrator would be ok.

This game was extremely difficult. We were not getting the cards we needed to make supply centers and Hollow Men were popping up everywhere. Plague cubes were also a problem. It was becoming clear that we would probably not win this game but we should try to recon Africa because Newt had the cards to get it. Before reconning Africa we were able to build a road to Frankfurt. We also thought about taking cards out of the game by using the free action of inoculation. We decided that if a city has a permanent supply center we could basically make it into a haven if we took this city card out of the infection discard. We are still hesitant to use this action because we are unsure if it will come back to haunt us later, but we did end up taking out 2 Washington and 2 Lagos.

Newt was able to recon Africa and the board was looking pretty ugly but we did get good news out of doing this. We found the ability to broadcast information to each other by building broadcast towers. We could build a broadcast tower in our city by using 2 supply cubes. Now while at the broadcast tower we could give another player a city card that matched the color of the city the tower was in. This player could be anywhere in the world, so it’s huge for moving cards around. With the use of the broadcast tower we were able to come up with a plan to be able to win the game, but this meant we would have to go a round a half to win. There was hope in sight but we were also 2 plague cubes away from losing.

During the recon we also connected Kinshasa to the grid and we got the Topaz Experimental Vaccine Unrationed Event Card.  This card will allow us to discard 1 epidemic card without any effect. Shortly after coming up with our extraordinary plan to win this game that we had no hope earlier of winning we had to place our final plague cube and the game ended in a loss.

Even though we lost the first game in June some good things came out of it like reconning Africa, but also a few bad things happened. Goods gained an exposure while leaving a city with Hollow Men in it, luckily it was just an exposure and no scar. We also had population problems. We had to postpone Newt’s character upgrade of the Helmsman again to use all of our 5 game end upgrades on controlling populations. We used the upgrades to keep Chicago, NY, Moscow, Baghdad and Buenos Aires at a population of 2.

While reading the legacy deck at the end of the game we did obtain 2 new characters: Rock a 30 year old Sanitation Officer from Albatross and Sparrow a 47 year old Captain from Albatross. The captain can discard a city card from any port location to move to any other port location on the grid if a sea route can be traced. This is a free action. The sanitation officer can discard 2 player cards to take a city or produce supplies card from the discard pile as a free action. This was the first time we had received new characters so that was cool; we were told they were volunteers from the Havens.

June Loss

Going into our second game in June we had no more areas on the map to recon so all we had to focus on was building the 3 supply stations, connecting 2 news cities to the grid with roads, and performing 2 search actions. We decided to use the same characters as previously. Since we lost the last game we gained 2 rationed events. We used the One Quiet Night and Drastic Measures. From the beginning Goods had Drastic Measures so this was good because it allowed us to remove 2 plague cubes from the grid.

Luckily this game went pretty smoothly. There were tense moments when 3 of us (Claire, Aofie, & Newt) ended up in New York and we struggled with should we remove the New York infection cards or let it ride. Of course we got an epidemic at this point and this meant we could all be exposed if Hollow Men showed up or if we lost all the cubes. Luckily neither happened. Fortunately, Claire obtained the Paris companion card which made it super easy for her to build 2 supply centers due to her being the Laborer and Architect. Goods was able to build the 3rd supply center. Newt built a road to Atlanta and Claire searched Buenos Aires. In Buenos Aires we found the OPAL lab. OPAL lab is one of the four labs that are looking for a cure. Here another person joined us, a new character from Buenos Aires who was an immunologist. Paulo the immunologist can take the supply cubes from the reserve instead of the stockpile.

In finding the OPAL lab we learned that we would get a special ability when finding labs. OPAL allows us to take an additional supply cube if we make supplies in a haven or supply center. We were also able to put Lake Baikal on the map. This is Northeast of Delhi but there is no way to connect to it yet. We are told this is where the primary lab was located and if there was a cure it would come from here. Of course no one has heard from Lake Baikal for decades. Finding the lab was really cool and we were excited. It was even more exciting when Aofie was able to end the game on her turn by searching Baghdad and building a road to Riyadh. When searching Baghdad she gained 2 extra actions so she built another road to Moscow to make an easier way to access everything. The game ended here and Goods used her Drastic Measures card to remove the only plague cube from the map that would effect the population. For our game end upgrades, Newt finally received his Helmsman ability and we increased the population in Frankfurt and Kinshasa.

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Pandemic Legacy 2-May

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It had been awhile since our last Legacy game so we were excited to start May. We used the same team (Aofie-Administrator, Claire-Laborer, Newt-Radio Operator, & Goods-Farmer) From the journal entry before the game we found out that the Hollow Men were moving from the Americas into Europe and Africa. It also said we learned where our leaders went and why we’re still here, which none of us really got.  From the archives we learned about a place called Utopia. Other than that we really didn’t know much going into May other than we had to finish 3 objectives out of our 4. The objectives haven’t changed they were: connect 2 new cities to the grid, complete 2 searches, recon an unknown region, and the mandatory objective of building 3 new supply centers.

To start the game we had no rationed events to help us out because we won the last game. We still had the unrationed event of Strategic Reserves which would move 8 supply cubes from the reserve to the stockpile. With the help of the of the companion we found in Paris it was fairly easy for Claire to build supply centers. One supply center we made was in Lagos because we planned to use a game end upgrade to keep it there to make reconning Africa easier. We were able to search two cities: Moscow and Lima. Aofie searched Moscow and found a card that would allow her to give another player a player card. She gave Goods a card to allow her to make a supply center.  Goods searched Lima and found a companion that would allow a plague cube to be removed from her location. It could be played at any time. We were able to end the game by reconning the Middle East region. This was not the happiest recon because we found out the Hollow Men were here. We also learned the Hollow Men transport rats to release them into cites to make them infested. There were already infested cities on this new part of the map! We also heard about satellite towers here that picked up transmissions but who were they from? There was a hint that hopefully in August we could be able to fine tune our equipment to pick up their transmissions. We also learned we had no way of reconning further east yet.

In this recon we connected Baghdad to the grid. We got 4 Hollow Men Gather cards that went into the infection discard pile. We also got the Renewel  unrationed event. This card will allow us to place a character ability worth 2 or less on a character card currently in play. The cool thing about it is we can place it over a scar.

Luckily, this ended our game in May with a win and we didn’t have to deal with the new Hollow Men aspect of the game.  For our game end upgrades we had 5 points and we wanted to use 3 of these to keep our supply center in Lagos. This created some drama because we realized we had no more permanent supply center stickers. So we decided to upgrade Newt the Radio Operator to a Helmsman which would allow him to do a free Drive/Ferry action each turn, essentially giving him an extra action. Then we were trying to decide what to do with the other 2 points when I realized that we hadn’t read from the legacy deck at the end of the game like we were supposed to. Guess what was in the Legacy deck? More permanent supply centers. So now we had a dilemma do we not go with the supply center in Lagos and keep Newt’s upgrade or do we keep his upgrade and go with 2 others? We had already stuck the sticker on the character card. We eventually decided we needed the permanent supply center in Lagos so we used that and with the other 2 points after much consideration we gave Goods the Smuggler character upgrade. The smuggler can discard a city card to take a supply cube from the reserve and put it in the matching  city card. We decided that we would keep the Helmsman sticker on Newt’s character card but it could not be used until after the next game when we could hopefully purchase it.

Overall we felt pretty good how the May game went, but we were in for some trouble coming in June.