Wednesday, January 4, 2012

Christmas in Hawaii

This Christmas, Steve and I decided to spend time in our timeshare at the Kaua’i Marriott with our family from Sweden. You know the old song, “I’m dreaming of a warm Christmas.”  Before flying to Kaua’i, we spent two days in Honolulu where we celebrated Steve’s 71st birthday at Roy’s in Waikiki. Roy’s is one of our favorite restaurants for their wonderful selection of Hawaiian fish and I can tell you that their famous Melting Hot Chocolate Soufflé is as divine as ever.

The highlight of this trip was spending time and catching up with Steve’s nephew Bruce, his wife Tove-Lise and their daughter, Isabelle. We spent five days swimming in both the pool at the Kaua’i Marriott and the ocean at Kalapaki Beach and enjoying the variety of restaurants on property. For excellent Italian food, I recommend Café Portofino. Be sure to try the Scaloppine Piccata – you won’t be sorry. The owner, Giuseppe Avocadi, is from San Remo and he is delightful and attentive. You can’t beat the ambience since Café Portofino overlooks Kalapaki Beach which is mesmerizing at night with the tiki torches lit.

Our biggest adventure was when Bruce, Tove-Lise and I decided to go ziplining deep into Kaua’i’s lush green interior. We were lucky to be able to do it since Christmas week is the busiest on the island and we had no advance reservations. It was just one of those things we decided to do at the last minute. We used Kaua’i BackCountry Adventures and I highly recommend them. The guides were both concerned about safety and entertaining. I still can’t forget our guide Chris’s vivid description of what he would need to do if we got stuck on the zipline and didn’t catch the rope he would throw us (envision hairy, sweaty legs while being rescued and I think you’ll get the idea). The three of us had a lot of fun descending a mountain via seven ziplines and flying over the tops of bright green tropical plants. It wasn’t as scary or thrilling as jumping out of a perfectly good airplane but it was fun, the scenery was gorgeous and I did get a couple of adrenaline rushes from it.  Ziplining videos

We have owned our timeshare in Kaua’i since 1998 and this was the first time we had been back since buying Cruise Holidays in Bellevue in 2007. As nice as it was, I find cruising to be a better value (Hawaii is pricey!) and more exciting. We were lucky that our timeshare has an oceanfront view so we could watch the cruise ships come and go from Nawiliwili Harbor.