Of Shoes and Ships

Well, no. No ships. No sealing wax, either. 

Before I get started -- the skin care thing seems to be going fine. I'm at least being dutiful in my ministrations. I can't really see much difference, but it has only been a week.

In other girly news, this weekend I went shopping for shoes.  While on vacation I noticed that the kid and I were both running around in shoes that had holes in the bottoms, so it was time for new ones. I went in on the recommendation of a friend and got some Asics, but then I sauntered around while NYAB took the kid to find something in his size and I found these bizarre looking things.

Well, you know me. A shoe that will help you lose weight? Really? Even if I just put them on and sit on the couch eating chips all day? Sure, why not? Dude. These shoes come with a booklet AND a DVD.  I'm not even kidding. Not only do they look hilarious and feel like I'm walking in a bounce house, I need audiovisual instruction on them.  (Except I've been so busy laughing that they came with a video that I have yet to watch it. I assume it's the same video they have on the site linked above.) I like the shoes, though. I wore them all day Sunday and did feel a little more pull in my legs than usual, so they must do something.

So that was this weekend's bit of fun, along with a trip to the Kennedy Center to see Young Frankenstein, which was wonderful. And the YP was beautifully well-behaved for once, and we all thoroughly enjoyed ourselves.

OK, back to where it was warm.

So Monday was Volcano Day. Tuesday was Golf Day for NYAB, and because I was too lazy to drive him, that meant he took the car so it was Pool Day for the kid and me.

This is actually a measure of some accomplishment, because the pool was ... well, it was gorgeous by any normal person's standards. But it was also expansive, and fancy, and didn't look like your standard industrial pool. The kid section had a sandy bottom. It was all enclosed in black rock (except the Infinity Pool, and can someone please tell me the appeal of these things? I guess they fit in nicely with the decor, but if your backdrop is a beach with an ocean, do you really want the pool dribbling off into it? Why not a definite end?) and had lots of plants. In short, it looked very "natural."  The YP is anything but. We started this trip with some reservations about him, because pretty much every time we've ever taken him to an ocean he's insisted there were sharks and refused to go anywhere near the water. 

We seem to have gotten over all that.

After the pool, we met NYAB for lunch and then headed to Kona, where we did the obligatory Buy Stuff For Folks trip, at the end of which we found ourselves at Wawaloli Beach, a nice unsandy, mostly smooth rock beach with tidepools behind the Energy Lab (which we did not tour.) 

That was pretty much it for Tuesday. Though Tuesday was also the day I figured out that jet lag really can surprise you in some ways. Like, we were all up and ready to go by 6 a.m. every day, and ready to drop by 8 p.m. If you know us at all, you know this is almost exactly backward from our preferred hours at home. And we were all STARVING at 2 p.m.  "But ... we had a huge brunch just a few hours ago?" my brain said. "Yeah, moron," my internal clock replied. "But you weren't really hungry then, and now it is DINNERTIME at home!" Ohhhh. Riiight.

Wednesday we got up and ran around on Hapuna Beach.

(Note, these were taken on disposable cameras that were developed at a CVS in Virginia.  I do not recommend this. Not only do they look like scratched up and grainy slides from the 50s, the colors are TOTALLY off. )

We then bopped on over to the Hilton, which is wow-boy-fancy. The beach fronting it is absolutely gorgeous, but very rocky and rather dangerous looking, so they've created a whole manmade extravaganza for guests. It is very Disney-esque. There is a train-tram thing to get guests from the lobby to their rooms, and there's also a boat that traverses the manmade lagoon, which feeds into the manmade beach/pool thing they've got with a waterfall.

I was sort of wishing we'd stayed there instead, until I looked at the amenities and realized that what we saw was pretty much it. The rooms weren't any nicer, and there weren't any ocean-related activities you could get to from there to speak of, whereas the Marriott had a stand on the beach where you could rent snorkeling equipment or sign up for boat tours or whale watches. The Hilton had a few more kid-related activities, but since we had our days lined up and were all falling asleep by 7 p.m., it wouldn't really have been worth it.

But. The other thing the Hilton had, aside from all the window dressing, was Dolphin Quest.  This is where you pay scads and scads of money to wade into one end of a rather nippy pool of salt water  with a group of other folks and listen to a (very young! Very enthusiastic! Very perky!) trainer (all of whom are girls, as near as I could see,) who works with 3-4 dolphins who shuttle between your group and another group at the other end of the pool. It's pretty cool, actually. You get to pet them and learn some signs to make them do tricks and so on. You also can't take any of your own photos or video. But you can pay extra to get their stuff, which is probably better than what you'd get with a waterproof camera anyway, so it all balances out, I guess? I think if we had it to do over again, the kid and one parent would probably suffice.

After the dolphins we had a disappointing lunch at the Hilton -- for starters, the guy never placed our order, then when we got it, the food was meh. But it was also comped for us waiting so long, so that's not all bad, I guess. I was feeling kind of cruddy, so after that we went back to our hotel and the boys romped in the pool while I lounged around and napped. Room service dinner, annnnd ... scene.

We are up to Thursday. I think Thursday was the YP's favorite day, even better than the dolphins. Why? Tune in next time!

Comments

[ardentdelerium]

I haven't been to that hilton, but the hiton hawaiian village is nice (its in waikiki) although the embassy suites in waikiki is a better deal--same awesome rooms and stuff, but cheaper. though its not directly on the beach. and it doesn't have penguins, which HHV does have....

[Mary]

I actually really like the disposable-camera photos. They look nostalgic, which is perhaps how you're feeling about your trip now. :)