It turned out that the talk was mostly trying to get us to sign up for the hotel's time share program. She did tell us about the island and explained different activities we could do. Most of them involved money we didn't want to spend.
We decided to just do some more exploring. The buildings had long open hallways filled with museum pieces, mostly Japanese artwork and sculptures. We scoped out our breakfast options and ended up at their big Kahuna buffet. It was rather expensive, but we figured we should do it at least once during our stay, and we were able to get discount cards. For the most part, it had pretty standard breakfast fare- eggs, french toast, potatoes, etc. The more interesting dishes were the Asian specialties such as chicken juk- some sort of cross between soup and porridge. They did have guava juice among the fruit juices, and the syrup selection included coconut and some sort of Hawaiian fruit called lilikoi- we would see that again and again throughout the trip. I ordered my usual hot chocolate, but it was totally bland and watery.
We decided to go for a swim in one of the hotel's beautiful pool areas. There was a network of connected streams of pools with little slides. The skies were rather gloomy, though, and the water was so cold! It took a while to get ourselves to go all the way in. Derek is more sensitive to cold water than I am, so we didn't stay long.
We threw some clothes on over our bathing suits and did more wandering. A lot of black lava rock filled the shore covered in scatterings of white coral rock that people had been using to form words. We had to do it too, and I wrote "A+D 11-13-11." I posed Stitch next to it for a picture.
While wandering around the expansive hotel, we discovered that the little nearby shopping centers- the King's Shops and the Queen's Market- were actually within walking distance despite everyone looking at us as if we were crazy when we didn't want to take the shuttle. But they weren't really *that* far.
We got there and caught the tail end of a farmers market. We visited a booth where a man was offering tastes of his jams- lots of very Hawaiian flavors like coconut and guava.
The shops in both areas were pretty touristy- like Hawaii versions of all the Florida shops back home. They sold all sorts of Hawaiian nick knacks- things carved from wood, kui nut leis, plastic flower leis and hair items, various spices, artwork, jewelry, etc. I noticed with amusement that much of everything was made in China. It became my mission to find Hawaiian souvenirs that were actually made in Hawaii!
It ended up being a rather slow and lazy day. It was the sort of day I had thought I wanted, but I discovered it actually made me stir crazy! I was in Hawaii, but I wasn't actually seeing Hawaii! At least we would be going to see the Mauna Kea Summit the next day...or so I thought!
For dinner that evening, we ate at the resort's Chinese restaurant- expensive as they all were, but good. I think I had orange chicken, my usual favorite. After dinner, we walked around some more and ended up lounging by one of the adult pools with our tablets before turning in since the free wii-fii only existed outside in the public areas.
