Lodgings - Big League Style

Today was another slow day – of deliberate choice – and mostly revolving around a significant change in venue. Getting up around seven, Archer and I headed north up the street in Kihei to the Kihei Caffe, where we’d failed to eat yesterday. This time we 

beat the massive line that we knew would form (by minutes it seemed). It was a fun atmosphere, with people moving inside to order and grabbing available seats outside. Things moved quickly overall. We both grabbed a coffee, a P.O.G. (passion fruit-orange-guava juice), and each ordered the Loco Moco, which was WAY more food than we needed. This dish was a bowl of fried rice with a local pulled pork, egg, and brown gravy on top. Unsurprisingly, it was delicious! (and as noted – way too much food). So, we grabbed some boxes and took about half of each meal home to eat for one of our coming mornings.

We walked back to our condo, where we took about two hours to slowly work through all of the “business” that needed to be done. First we cleaned – packing up the place, putting our stuff in our bags, and running some loads of dishes and laundry. Meanwhile, we relaxed outside while completing a journal entry of yesterday and taking some time to read in the sun. While not adventurous, it was necessary and still relaxing, which is sometimes nice.

Around 11 we said “Thanks” to the condo and hopped in the car for the 3-mile drive south to Wailea. As I described yesterday, the scenery in the two towns is significantly different, but also what we’d signed up for. We pulled up to The Grand Wailea, and they promptly took over our luggage and car. We headed inside to check in – but only after Archer and I received our leis, Archer's of fresh flowers and mine of a kind of nut (a Kukui Nut apparently). We checked in, and discovered that we’d been promoted to a “deluxe” (though we weren’t sure how much that changed). Check in went smoothly, but our room was (as expected) not ready, so we decided to explore and grab a pool-side drink.

Our walk around was beautiful. We walked through massive gardens and passed elaborate waterfalls. Our first stop was by a small tiki hut next to a koi pond with three magnificent fish. One was calico, one bright yellow, and the third was orange and white. Our walk took us around an on-grounds chapel and through the pools. We saw the “adults only” pool, the two restaurants, the lazy river, the water slides, etc. We looped passed Humuhumunukunukuapua’a, the seafood and steakhouse we would eat at later, and “roughly completed” our lap of the grounds. We headed back to the central bar called Bistro Molokini. This turned into a combined “happy hour” and small lunch. We started out with a Mai Tai and a Hawaiian 

Gentleman (a lemon and bourbon cocktail) and as delicious as the Mai Tai was, the Gentleman was better. Still waiting on the room, we ordered a second round of Hawaiian Gentlemans and a plate of Ahi Poke Nachos. They were – amazing!

Content with our meal, we had a few supplies to restock on, so we headed next door to the “Shops at Wailea” and found a general store. We picked up some new sunscreen and other fundamentals. We walked around some of the other elaborate art stores. We greatly enjoyed a glass-blowing shop, and as beautiful as everything was, the prices were crazy high and out of our range. We were tempted by a blown bottle-in-waves thing, but that too was higher than we were comfortable with. Before much longer, we received notice that our room was ready.

We headed back to the hotel and found our room – just a short sight from the beach, and unobstructed on the third floor. Officially, we were beach-view in the Chapel Wing. Our room overlooked the chapel and its courtyard, as well as the beach and the ocean. The room itself was plenty spacious and we were excited to be spending a few days here.

We quickly unpacked, changed, and headed out to the pools. On the way, we made sure to step into the ocean – because we are making sure to be touch it every day! 

We spent the next few hours in the lazy river system. We started at the top with a long water slide called the Lava Tube, and decided to actually do it twice. Then, many of the pools are connected by short slides. So, we started at the top and worked our way down. Feeling the need to be completionist with the pools and slides, we had to work through the route a few times before we got everything. Even so, there were a few places more crowded than others, so we’d have to finish off our explorations in the days to come. Our day ended with a weird experience. We found the swim-up-bar pool just as it was about to shut down (which was fine – we weren’t looking for a drink). But, as they shut down the slides, they also drain the pool quite a bit, and it was super strange to feel the water level drop as quickly as it does.

After our swim, we got ready for dinner and headed to Humuhumunukunukuapua’a for a nice dinner. We both dressed up a little extra and felt quite special about it all. Our server, Patrick, was awesome and really helped to make the evening a blast. For cocktails, he immediately recommended one with a Bullet Bourbon base and we simply accepted 2 of those. For dinner, we decided to approach it tapas style, and ordered 4 appetizers to share. We had a Tuna Sashimi (safe but delicious), a Pork Belly with char sui sauce (also fairly safe and also delicious), Seared Scallops with peas in a cream sauce (exactly the quantity and quality I like scallops), and a Breadfruit and Nasturtium “Risotto” (the risk but also possibly our favorite thing). This final dish was a pseudo-pasta made from Breadfruit (I didn’t know that was a thing), with a Nasturtium puree sauce and Parmesan. It was, amazing. We ordered a second round of drinks, again both by recommendation. One was described as a rum-based Old Fashioned and the other was the frothiest, creamiest Mai Tai ever. Again, both astoundingly good. While we were ready to go, Patrick brought us 2 desserts on the house. One was a Passion-fruit sorbet with guava-meringue puffs. The other was apparently a beetroot-red-velvet cake, but was presented with a kind of chocolate mousse that trumped any other flavor and was phenomenal. Dinner as a whole was amazing and we left feeling like we’d eaten the exact perfect amount.

Full in the belly and happy in the head, we headed back to the room and crashed to sleep.