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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.

 

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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, Food Blog, Reviews - Travel, Travel

Last Day–Cats & Rome

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Today we woke up around 7 and got ready to leave the villa. We said our goodbyes and Greg drove us, Jim and, Doreen to the train station in Castelfiorentino. We were all taking the train from Castelfiorentino to Florence. From Florence, Don and I were going back to Rome for the day so we could fly back home the next day. The train from Florence to Rome was pretty cool, it was a high speed train, 247 km/h.

We arrived in Rome at noon and we were on a mission to find the luggage deposit so we could walk around Rome all day without our bags. I had found instructions online on how to get to the luggage deposit in Roma Termini but none of them were very descriptive. Basically the easiest way to do it is by exiting Roma Termini onto Via Giovanni Giolitti and walk South along the train station and just after the Airport Shuttle you can re-enter the train station and you will find where you can deposit your luggage. It was super easy and and I think it was around 10 Euros for us to leave our bags there for about 5 hours.

We wanted to leave our bags because we had to be back at the train station later to take the train to our hotel by the airport. Once we were not weighted down by our luggage we were free to roam Rome for the afternoon.

We wanted to have carbonara again because we couldn’t stop thinking about since the dinner in Montecatini Alto. I found a place called La Carbonara and we decided to have lunch there. It was pretty crowded and seemed like a tourist trap.  The carbonara was nothing compared to what we had earlier in the week at Casa Gala. It was ok though.

After lunch we walked to the cat ruins at Largo di Torre Argentina. When we were in Rome earlier in the week I had noticed there were no cats roaming around and I thought this was weird because every where we have traveled has had cats. I usually make it a point to photograph cats in places to travel to, so I was a bit disappointed by the lack of cats in Rome.  A friend commented to me on facebook that we should visit this place and I hadn’t even heard of it so I wanted to check it out on our last day. Largo di Torre Argentina is an archaeological site where there is also a cat sanctuary. Stray cats are cared for here at the shelter and they are allowed to roam the ruins. This place is also were Julius Caesar was killed. It was a weird place. When we first arrived we were looking down at the site and we saw a few cats sleeping among the ruins. It was so hot. We were trying to find a way to get down into the ruins and we found stairs that went down to the shelter. We went into the shelter to check out the cats. The shelter was divided into two areas: one area had cats that were recovering either from sickness or injury and the other side had cats that were just roaming freely. The cats were well cared for and it seemed like you could adopt cats. I am still unsure about that. All of the products they were selling were used to benefit the shelter. I bought a magnet here. We spent some time with the cats and it was pretty cool. I was a bit disappointed because while you could look down into the archaeological site and point out cats you could not go into the site. The site itself seemed a bit forgotten, there were signs around that you could read about the place but other than that there was very little information on site. It seems like they could do more to this place but maybe they are working on it. It was very cool to see cats in the ruins.

After the ruins we didn’t really know what else we wanted to see but we were not ready to go to our hotel. We decided to check out this park we saw on the map earlier, so we risked taking the city bus again. We successfully rode the bus to Villa Borghese Park on the North side of Rome. It was a nice park, we walked around for a bit, and then we noticed there was some kind of horse show going on. We stopped for a bit to watch some horses run around and do some tricks. It was pretty cool, we have never really seen anything like it. Then we walked around some more and came across a small pond where people were in rowboats. Later I found out this area was called Temple of Asclepius. It was a really pretty area. Then we decided to walk back. We stopped at a cafe in hopes of using a bathroom but their bathroom was closed. We each had an overpriced cappuccino and enjoyed being outside at the park. We tried to take the bus back to Roma Termini to get our train but the bus was never coming so we ended up walking. It was about a 30 minute walk.

On our walk back to train station, I may have left my hat in Rome….I just didn’t want it anymore.

We got our luggage from the luggage deposit and we were both so happy that it worked out for us. Then we took the train from Roma Termini to the airport. Once we got to the airport we couldn’t figure out how to get to our hotel. We were staying at a Hilton but there were two Hiltons near the airport. We ended up walking to the Hilton that was connected to the airport because it was right there and we hoped that there would be a shuttle we could take to ours, but there was not. The walk was so long and I was getting tired and grouchy. We had to walk back to into the airport where we ended up calling our hotel and they told us where to find our shuttle. We were staying at the Hilton Garden Inn Rome Airport hotel, which was still very near the airport but you could not walk. It is also cheaper than the Hilton Rome Airport, so if you are ever trying to get to it the shuttle is at terminal 3 door 3 in the airport. The shuttle was weird because it went all around the airport and airport workers would use it.

Once we got to the hotel we were surprised to see the check in line was out the door. The check in went pretty fast though. There were a ton of police checking in and all around which I thought was weird but apparently it was the G7 Summit here.

The room here was nice, along with the lobby. I would definitely suggest staying here for the convenience and the price. We decided to get some dinner at the hotel restaurant, it wasn’t very good. Don had carbonara and I had pizza. During dinner we were watching a couple from afar who were in an obvious fight. They were American and we had fun commentating on what the fight could be about. It lasted a long time.

I can’t believe tomorrow we are leaving Italy. This trip has been awesome. I really don’t want to leave.

 

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Lucca and Pisa

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Today was our last full day at the villa. We got on the bus around 9 again to check out Lucca. On the way there our driver, Fernando, told us a bit about Lucca and what we should see. Lucca was a very cute city. There is a wall built around the old part of Lucca. The wall was cool because you could go on it and walk the perimeter. You could also bike the wall and we were planning to do that but we got caught up walking around and seeing different things.

We saw this awesome kid driving his car.

We ate outside at a cute little place called Bistrot e Winebar Des Arts. We had an appetizer of meat and cheese and of course it was great. I had a pesto pasta that was also amazing and Don had some kind of quinoa dish.

After lunch we walked around more and came across a very pretty church.

We also found the amphitheater which is all shops and restaurants now. We quickly got some gelato here and made our way back to the bus.

Our next stop was Pisa to see the Leaning Tower. It was pretty cool. It was fun to watch everyone trying to get the perfect picture of themselves trying to hold the tower up. It was crowded and hot but we all got our photos and headed back to the villa.

Once we got back to the villa we immediately wanted to make the most of the pool on our last day. We all were relaxing and having drinks at the pool. The water finally felt like it had really warmed up and most people were in it. All of the sudden Greg and I were in a diving/jumping contest. We had fun providing entertainment for everyone. Hanging out in Lucca today and seeing the leaning tower in Pisa was very cool, but the dive contest was probably the highlight of my day. It was so fun!

While we were swimming the chefs had arrived with their wood fire oven to make our final meal of pizza. The pizza dinner consisted of about eight different types of pizza that we all got to try. They were amazing! The ones that stood out the most to me was the margherita, veggie and burrata cheese pizza. The burrata cheese pizza was amazing!! I wish I could have some again right now. We also had an anchovie pizza, which wasn’t bad. The tuna pizza was probably the most interesting one and I don’t think I would eat that one again. After dinner we had some more drinks then we had to start packing so we could leave in the morning. This trip has been awesome!

Bloggings, Food Blog, Reviews - Travel, Travel, Uncategorized

Crazy Bus Ride To A Winery and Pool Fun

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Today we left on the bus around 9 again to head to a winery for a tour and tasting. We had a new bus driver today named Riccardo and we got a little lost on the way to the winery, although I don’t think it was entirely his fault. The route was really confusing and the GPS didn’t seem to be working correctly. We had to stop a couple of times and ask random people for directions and no one really seemed to know anything. Finally Don saved the day by using his awesome navigation skills and some google translate to tell the driver in Italian what we were doing wrong.

The drive was crazy though. We were on a tiny road on a mountain pretty much the entire time in a giant bus. There was barely any room for the bus and often you could not see far ahead of you to see if another car was coming. At times we would be inches away from the wall of the mountain and one time we even had a car coming at us head on. I have to admit I don’t even remember how we got out of that, I think the car backed up. I was not feeling so great with a bit of car sickness and it was really scary so I didn’t look outside a lot.

 

We finally made it to the winery after about 2 hours and they were shocked to see all of us because apparently we did not finalize our reservation. The winery was called Montefioralle. We had some time since they were not expecting us so we took a few pictures. Everything around the winery was beautiful,but what did you expect it’s Italy.

Once things settled down we got a brief tour and then we were seated for some snacks and tastings. We were able to taste five wines and they were all great. We also had meats, breads, and bruschetta. I normally do not like bruschetta because I don’t really like raw tomatoes but as usual everything in Italy taste better and I even ate the tomatoes! We really enjoyed our time here and a lot of people purchased a lot of wine to be shipped back home.

On the bus ride home many people slept, I was one of them. Once we got back we went to Castelfiorentino to buy train tickets for Saturday. We also went to a grocery store. Once we got back we all had fun at the pool and cannonballs were done.

After the pool we went to dinner where we were greeted with little dolls.

Dinner tonight was very good. It started out with an appetizer of asparagus and mozzarella on bread. Then there was a truffle pasta, which I didn’t even know if I liked truffles, but this was soooo good. It was probably one of my favorite pastas of the trip. I wish I could have some right now! The rest of the meal was veal with potatoes and salad. We also had a little birthday celebration for Greg during dessert. After dinner we went to bed pretty early.