Halloween, Hawaii and holiday celebrations - the Hawaii section part 2 THIS SECTION COMPLETED 2/3 - Page 29 - PassPorter - A Community of Walt Disney World, Disneyland, Disney Cruise Line, and General Travel Forums
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I love Brenneckes!! My husband and I ate there the last time we went and my their drinks are good, but also strong..lol. Your drink looked amazing..as did the food.
It was a wonderful place and I'd definitely go back there in a heartbeat.
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I hope you enjoyed Poipu! Question: did you happen to see any Monk Seals while you were there?...they come up in the beaches during the day...I'm very excited to hear more about your trip!
we didn't. We didn't really have time to explore the area, although I'm sure we could put that right on a return trip. As I mentioned, it was hard to find the beach, as there were so many hotels along the beachfront. I have to say this wasn't a planned stop, so next time I'd definitely do a bit more research beforehand to make better use of our time there....
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Poipu looks like such a beautiful and scenic location. That was a real find with lunch at Brennecke's! Both of your meals looked so good. Especially, the desserts and your MahiMahi.
I liked the sign in the restaurant listing the various Hawaiian seafood!
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October 6, 2017-Enjoying an amazing dinner at Victoria & Albert's with PP's Dot and Drew
My TR from my most recent trip is now underway. Includes: Universal Studios Florida, Disney World and Sea World Orlando Trifecta TR -Updated December 10th! TR is now COMPLETED!
Friday 8 November – part six: oh please don’t start raining now!
The GPS told us that it would take a bit longer than we thought to reach our destination, which was the Wailua Falls, so as we came across a Wal-Mart on the right hand side of the road, I told Mark to go in there instead. At least then we wouldn’t be racing to get to the helicopter ride.
I was able to stock up on my Secret deodorant and from what I could see, I didn’t think the prices were that much worse than I remember from Orlando. We also got a book on Kauai, and Mark was finally able to fine some cargo pants. Ironic that he looked in Orlando in various shops and found nothing and then he goes to Wal-Mart in Hawaii and found exactly what he wanted.
Armed with our purchases, we headed back to the car and made the long trek over to the helicopter place. In truth, it took about five minutes and we were the first ones to turn up for our 4:30pm flight.
Soon we were joined by a young guy from Toronto, who we chatted away to and a party of three. We were given our seat assignments and a highly entertaining pre-flight talk by one of their staff (I cannot remember his name for the life of me ) but he got the message across very well and made us laugh, which I thought was a good combination.
Once we were done with the pre-flight information, we headed out to the airfield. The woman who had checked us in had suggested we drive over there to save time afterwards, as then we could just go straight back to the airport. We followed the minibus out there and just as we arrived, our helicopter was coming into land…
Our entertaining staff member who’d given us our pre-flight talk
The previous tour got off and, as they did, we felt the first few spots of rains. To be honest, I didn’t think too much of it at that point, but suddenly it got a lot heavier and we all ran to shelter in the waiting area. As we stood there, we started to think our flight might not take off after all, but we were still handed our life vests by the previous group, who were raving about everything they had seen.
We waited to see what the verdict was from our pilot, but I think we all had an inkling that it wasn’t going to work out well. Not only was it raining quite heavily by now, but the wind had also got up and the cloud seemed to have descended even further. It wasn’t looking good and we weren’t surprised when the pilot called time on it.
As we were told, there’s no point taking you up if you can’t see anything or if it’s not going to be any fun and I couldn’t agree more. I’d much rather they were honest and made that call, rather than us going up and being very disappointed. It’s a shame that it wasn’t meant to be, but heck, we had had one helicopter flight already this vacation and at least it gave us some money back, as we went back to their base and the sale was voided and the money put back on our credit card.
The lovely woman on the reception asked if I wanted a copy of the DVC for free to show us what we would’ve seen and I said immediately. It turned out that someone had paid for one a few days ago and hadn’t collected it, so that was very generous of her to suggest that.
Now we had time to kill, so we headed out to Wailua Falls. It really didn’t take as long as the GPS had earlier claimed that it would be and we were there in maybe 10 minutes. As we drove along, the clouds were very ominous and I think we were both relieved that we weren’t taking a flight tonight after all.
The falls were very beautiful, but I was surprised by how dirty the water was. Mark told me that was because it had just rained and that had seen all the dirt washed down into them, which made sense.
We headed back to Lihue, and I suggested that we check out the town to kill a bit of time, but quite frankly, there really wasn’t that much to see there, so that took us maybe 10 minutes.
That done, we headed back to the airport and dropped our car back at Avis, and took the shuttle bus back to the airport.
Here we were able to get our boarding passes (I still have no idea why it wouldn’t dish those out this morning ) and we headed to the long TSA line as again, we got no pre-check. It really was insane. In total, we probably waited maybe 15-20 minutes, but the number of agents we saw who were just standing there, doing nothing was frightening. Eventually, one guy opened up another lane to check people’s ID and that speeded things up a bit more.
Safely through that, we looked around…
We browsed the gift shop here and found a Christmas ornament we liked, although of course the one we liked on display, we couldn’t find in any of the boxes. The woman at the counter told us to take the one off the tree on display, but we didn’t want to, as some of the writing had come off it, so as we had plenty of time to kill, we searched until we found what we were looking for. And what was playing on the radio at the time we were going this? “I Still Haven’t Found I’m Looking For” by U2. There was a certain sense of irony in that!
While we were in there, we heard a flash flood warning, which was a bit scary, but we got the impression that this happened quite a bit, as there had been one for parts of Oahu last night (not our bit mind…) and we figured we were now on government property, so if there was a real issue, they’d let us know and advice us what to do.
We made our way to the gate, getting there just as the previous flight left from our gate, so we were able to snag seats as soon as they left.
As we sat there, we heard the very final call for the flight ahead of us and this guy seriously just sauntered up to the gate and I kid you not, the gate closed about 30 seconds later. I asked the guy at the gate whether that was usual and he told me thankfully that it wasn’t.
When it came to boarding our flight, which only came in 20 minutes before ours was due to depart, the same gate agent very sensibly started to screen the boarding passes of the first dozen or so passengers, which really did speed up the process no end.
Although we were a few minutes late leaving Lihue, we were back in Honolulu spot on time, although due to a lack of ground agents, we had a bit of a wait before we could de-plane. Once we did, we ended up by the elevators closest to the car, which was a good result.
I suggested to Mark that we put the top down on the car, as it wasn’t that cold outside, and there wasn’t any sun to burn us. It was very cool to drive along like this, and it was perfect weather, with the car saying that the temperature was 77 degrees at 8:30pm. There aren’t many places in the world where you can say that in November…
We did have a bit of rain as we drove along, but thankfully that didn’t come to anything.
We headed back to the room, and snacked on the chips we’d bought for the flight here, the half of a papaya that we’d bought at the supermarket a few days ago, and a cinnamon bun from our shopping trip a few days ago.
We were able to catch the last few minutes of Hawaii Five-O, which I felt we had to do while we were out here! Then we settled down to watch Blue Bloods before heading to bed.
The weather today was very hot and sunny during the day with temperatures in the high 80s, and later cloud, then rain. The best thing today was Kauai, it was just a beautiful place to visit. The worst thing today was not being able to take the helicopter tour. Today we tried having lunch at Brennecke’s And the result was it was a great meal in a wonderful location. The most magical moment today was seeing the view at the Waimea Canyon overlook.
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we didn't. We didn't really have time to explore the area, although I'm sure we could put that right on a return trip. As I mentioned, it was hard to find the beach, as there were so many hotels along the beachfront. I have to say this wasn't a planned stop, so next time I'd definitely do a bit more research beforehand to make better use of our time there....
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) but he got the message across very well and made us laugh, which I thought was a good combination. 
It wasn’t looking good and we weren’t surprised when the pilot called time on it. 
) and we headed to the long TSA line as again, we got no pre-check. It really was insane. In total, we probably waited maybe 15-20 minutes, but the number of agents we saw who were just standing there, doing nothing was frightening. Eventually, one guy opened up another lane to check people’s ID and that speeded things up a bit more. 
I asked the guy at the gate whether that was usual and he told me thankfully that it wasn’t. 
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