Events:
· Big Walk on beach, subway breakfast sandwich
· Visit Hale Koa
· Room Switch
· Wal-Mart/Sam’s Club
· Spam Jam
Saturday we woke up early (6-ish) and went for a long walk. We grabbed a smoothie and a couple of Subway breakfasts sandwich near Hale Koa. By the way, Subway has free internet service (wireless) if you buy a sandwich there, you can hook up your laptop to their wireless for free. We then grabbed a soda at Hale Koa (a military hotel resort, but you can enter from the beach side and eat at their snack bars and maybe even the restaurant for cheap. Tax free too). We walked back and got rooms swapped. The room Jenivee talked them into was a pretty good one. It was smaller than the executive suite, but it was a corner room in the back tower on the 20th floor. So we could see Waikiki from the balcony and Waikiki and towards Sans Souci beach from the window. It is still plenty spacious for two, with a big king bed. I think it is not quite as soft as the other bed though. I think the other one had a down comforter under the sheets and this one seems to only have a pillow-top layer under the sheets. Still quite luxurious though. The room was pretty decent, but much smaller, maybe 350-ish square feet. It was slightly over standard size as it had a window nook on the south where a desk was situated, and it was a corner room. Room 2051, which is pretty high up and has just one lanai facing westward and a window facing southward from which we could see our old room straight across and up a bit, Diamond Head, the Natatorium, and some more beach out easterly. Pretty good views. I think last time we were here we were, it was the same tower in a 24th floor room, but more in the middle. It was a mini-suite with two balconies; probably something like 500 square feet. So the view was very similar, but perhaps we could see more of the westward beach in front of the Royal Hawaiian (the Pink Palace) whereas we could not see too much of the actual beach even on the 2oth floor and being clear over to the corner.
Oh my, oh my. But Jenivee was happy with the view so that is all that really matters. We couldn’t get in it until 4 or 5 though, so we made the ritual trip to Wal-Mart/Sam’s club for basics like boogie boards, beach mats, case of water, pop, etc. Stuff you don’t want to bring with and don’t want to pay for as you go along at ten times the price. We bought some Ahi Poke at Sam’s. Know what that is? We were walking by the deli in Sam’s and they had all kinds. Jenivee thought it was for stir fry but they were sampling 2 kinds about 6 feet later in little plastic ramekins. So I tried them and they were awesome! I made her try them too. She liked it! So then we went back to the deli counter and ended up trying about 12 things. At least 6 ahi poke’s, some seaweed salads, oysters, mussels, and whatever else the guy kept handing us. We finally picked a 1/2 pound of spicy Ahi Deluxe Poke – Yum! After getting back, settling in to our new room, showering, etc, we went to the Spam Jam! They have it every year about this time on the main Waikiki street, Kalakaua. We tried a spam wrap with mango salsa and garlic fries. Later we tried garlic shrimp with garlic curly fries. The spam was fine in the wrap, actually. It was pretty good. But by and large, the whole festival could have just as easily been about garlic. Every other thing had garlic in it. The music was good; they had two stages: one on each end of the blocked off stretch of Kalakaua. The whole thing is done every year to support the Hawaiian food bank, so it’s a good thing.