Saturday - A Hui Hou [See you later], Kauai!

Our last day in Kauai was pretty relaxed and low-key. We began the day with breakfast at Tip Top Café in Lihue. It was a simple place frequented by locals, and it's been there for over 90 years. After breakfast we made another stop by the Spouting Horn and visited the National Tropical Botanical Gardens. We opted out of the $70 tour, but enjoyed the free walk and scenery. We saw some interesting plants, including a tree with multi-colored bark. We concluded the afternoon with a short nap and some quality time at the beach working on our semi-golden tans.

The highlight of the day was dinner at Roy's. We were hesitant to try it since there are multiple locations, including one in Plano, but we were pleasantly surprised and enjoyed the best meal of the trip so far. I had monchong, a flaky white fish that was grilled with prosciutto, while Robert had the duet of ahi with warm blue crab potato salad and macadamia-crusted ono. We rounded off the meal with the famous chocolate soufflé. Since the soufflé takes 20 minutes to cook, we had to order it with our entrees. We waited for several minutes after finishing the entrees for our soufflé to appear, and the waiter came by a few times with updates on the progress. After about 10 minutes, he came by to say that ours "collapsed" and that another was on the way - which we think really means that ours was given to another table as we saw soufflé after soufflé come out the kitchen door. We were happy to have some time to rest in between courses, and they ended up comping the dessert, which made the soufflé even more enjoyable.

One of the interesting characteristics of Kauai is that there are chickens everywhere. You hear roosters crowing every morning, and always see a flock at every major parking lot. Apparently a group was released during a hurricane and they have proliferated in the wild. It seems to be an island joke, as you can buy t-shirts, signs, caps, etc. with chickens on them. While at spouting horn, we saw a mother hen and her baby chicks. Not exactly the wildlife we were expecting to see, but they were pretty cute and having fun searching for scraps left behind by tourists.


Today we're traveling from Kauai to Hilo on the Big Island to begin the second phase of our honeymoon. We're trading the "Garden Isle" for earthquakes and volcanoes. Truly an amazing place!