I’ll Pass on the Street Snails

Adelle

Day 3 – Louvre, Eiffel Tower

Day 4 – d’Orsay

Well, the jet lag hit us hard this time, but we didn’t realize how hard until we slept for 12 hours the second night in Paris.

The walks to the Louvre on the first day and d’Orsay on the second day took roughly 40-45 minutes, broken up at about 20 minutes to have brunch. Turns out the Palais Garnier (Paris opera house) is exactly half way between our hotel and the Seine. The Saturday walk was uneventful, and the places we stopped to eat were meh. The Sunday walk we stopped at Le Cafe de Paix, which was built in the 1800s and sits right across from the Palais, but otherwise it was just an all right place to eat, certainly not worth the price we paid. And it turns out if you sit outside you have to sit with the smokers.

If you’re into Jazz, these players were decently funky.
Cafe de Paix on the left; Palais Garnier on the right.

Sunday’s route also brought us through the fashion district, where we passed numerous people who apparently — or apparently thought — they were famous celebrities. It took seeing a model testing poses in the street and double-cheek air-kissing an acquaintance, and the fancy black cars picking up who I assume were probably some kind of sports stars and their entourage to even realize where we were. At that point I figured I was making my own fashion statement wearing my classic Cabin Radio t-shirt.

Cabin Radio fashion score!

Between the fashion district and d’Orsay there were no less than 2 street vendors selling what looked like snails being roasted over a garbage can fire in a shopping cart. In hindsight, they were probably actually chestnuts, but my brief look at them in passing suggested otherwise. Neither of us cared to take a closer look.

The Louvre was fantastic as usual, but there is just so much to see it’s hard to decide where to go when you only have one afternoon. It’s really a lot. But we got to see the Venus de Milo and the Winged Victory of Samothrace, and Dan’s favourite was The Coronation of Napoleon, painted in 1807 by Jacques-Louis David

The second largest painting in the world (by a small margin).

The d’Orsay left a much better impression on us (hehe, see what I did there? If you know, you know…). We found its focus on artworks of the greats made for a somewhat more enjoyable visit, with many more familiar artists like Van Gogh (my hands down favourite), Renoir, and Degas. I can now say I’ve seen both versions of The Starry Night. And we’ve seen Rodin’s The Thinker and his intended place of thought above The Gates of Hell.

Saturday evening we experienced a ridiculously expensive Grand Dame menu at Madame Brasserie’s in the Eiffel Tower. I won’t say it was worth the exhorbitant price, but it was a phenomenal meal with extraordinary service, and an excellent view of the Seine.

Sunday evening we followed our hotel concierge’s recommendation and walked around the block to Le Basilic for supper. We were not disappointed! It was absolutely fantastic, and we would highly recommend going if you’re in the Montmatre area.

Other than my hips, knees, and feet protesting almost the entire time, we enjoyed our brief stay in Paris. Tomorrow, however, is the beginning of a new chapter to this particular adventure, so an attempt at sleep must be made.

Aurevoir!

Adelle and Dan

A Lot of Gargoyles for a Church

Adelle

Travel Day 1 and Day 2

05 and 06 March 2026

This is how we left Yellowknife Thursday afternoon:

A roughly 1.75 hour flight to Calgary, roughly 3 hour layover, and roughly 8.5 hour overnight flight to Paris later, and we arrived Friday afternoon to practically balmy weather in comparison. There’s supposed to be comparative photos on our arrival to the above, but I was tired enough to forget to do it…

The flights were uneventful, and WestJet service was very good, but our seats were not comfortable enough for a red-eye flight of this length, despite purchasing econoflex with extended comfort. Especially with at least one unhappy 18-month-old sharing the cabin (poor thing). I think we’re going to have to splurge next time on the Premium seats on the outgoing leg, because honestly it’s taking way longer for us to physically recover than it used to. It’s a non-issue going home because we’re flying during the day on that leg, so we don’t need to sleep on the way.

We had a very smooth passage through customs at Charles de Gaulle, aside from a brief hiccup with the passport scanner giving Dan some grief. But he wasn’t the only one having that problem, and staff was there to sort it quickly. Our luggage arrived promptly (whaaaatt?) and we found a legit taxi exactly where the signs said we would. The driver was really friendly and chatty, but kept showing us on his phone while he was driving where to find places to see. I still don’t know how he didn’t crash the car in the process. But he got us to our hotel in one piece for 80€ — which his fellow drivers thought was too cheap, but I feel like it was a lot.

After checking into Hotel Le Relais Montmartre, we took the teeny-tiny elevator separately to our fifth floor room.

To our incredibly spacious fifth floor room with a reasonably spacious bathroom.

To say the least, we are very pleased with this hotel!

Once we got settled and had a very short nap, we endeavoured to push through the jet lag and adjust to the local time zone by going for a walk up to the Basilique du Sacré-Cœur de Montmartre (Sacred Heart Church). My intention was to take the funicular up to the church. That didn’t happen. We didn’t realize until we were pretty much there that the directions we were given walked us all the way up. We were pacing ourselves anyway (because, you know, tired) and it brought us past some lovely places, like this restaurant with a windmill on its roof: Le Moulin de la Galette, which has been there since the 17th century.

And an artists market. Sorry, no pictures of the market. But it was very busy pretty much everywhere, especially the church. We were way too tired to stand in the line to go inside, so we just walked around the outside of the church before taking the funicular back down.

My hair was doing wonderfully weird things. I forgot how humid it is in Paris.

The funicular turned out just to be an expensive ride down the hill, one that was way too full of people to even get a view, let alone a picture of the view, out the window.

We made our way back to our hotel, stopping at La Boheme Montmartre for supper. I had sea bream fillet while Dan had burrata with tomatoes and a pasta (macaroni) and ham dish. I forced myself to stay awake until about 9:30 pm, and then we crashed until 8:00 am Saturday.

Bonne nuit et bonjour,

Adelle and Dan

Planes and Trains and a River Boat

Adelle

This was not supposed to be the trip it is this year. This was supposed to be Scotland Trip #3, and it was supposed to happen next month. However, work obligations on my part guilted me into changing our travel days to March instead of April. March, to my dismay, turned out to not be the greatest time to go to Scotland, at least not for our interests.

So what to do? Hmmm… well, we had talked about wanting to do a Rhine river cruise someday. So with some research I discovered a Rhine river cruise was a viable option in March. And after chatting with friends and getting a referral for a Canadian travel agent (Dani Hill Travel / Vulcan Vacations) we narrowed down the cruise line options, and settled on Scenic’s Rhine Highlights 8-night river cruise from Amsterdam, Netherlands, to Basel, Switzerland.

I say “settle” but that’s very clearly settling up, not down. Scenic cruises are luxury cruises, so we’re paying a lot, but we’re getting a lot for it, too. A large room with a private balcony, butler service, laundry service, complimentary mini-bar, meals, entertainment, and shore excursions. There’s a fitness room, a walking track, a pool/hottub, a spa, etcetera. So there’s lots to be excited about on this cruise.

In an effort to alleviate the jet lag before getting on the cruise, we decided to spend three nights in Paris, and then we’ll take the train to Amsterdam to get on the boat. And we’ll be spending two nights in Basel before taking the train back to Paris and flying home. Hence the title: Planes and Trains and a River Boat … Off we go!

Shaka, Hawaii!

Adelle

Our last full day in Oahu was relatively unscripted as we were really just trying to kill time before our red-eye flight home. So we got up when we got up, we packed our things, and we returned to the Kalapawai Cafe for brunch. This time we sat in the cafe and ate a breakfast burrito and a lox and cream cheese bagel. To be repetitive: the food was great!

We decided to see if we could find Robin Master’s Estate (from the original Magnum P.I), which was southbound from Kailuia on the Kalaniana’ole Highway. We found it, but didn’t realize it until we’d blown right past it. It’s not like we could see through the hedges anyway, so we just kept on going South to see what we could see. It turned out to be a great drive along the coast where we stopped at a couple of scenic outlooks before reaching Maunalua Bay. We stopped briefly at the beach park, noting that the bay itself is really quite sheltered and shallow. The waves could be seen breaking way out at the mouth of the bay.

We decided from this point to see if Shaka Guide had any audio road tours for Oahu, and lo and behold they did. Several, in fact. We decided to try and follow the East Oahu guide backwards back to Waikiki, but we were already too close to Waikiki to actually get anything other than the Hawaiian music from the tour. But then we took the “Honolulu’s Backyard Rainforest Tour”, which took us through Manoa, to the Lyon Arboretum, back down past the Manoa Chinese Cemetery, up to the Tantalus Mountain (Pu’ukakea) lookout, and down the other side of the mountain on a lovely, windy, zigzaggy drive through the rainforest to the Punchbowl Memorial (National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific). The tour proper ended shortly after this, but offered an extended tour into downtown Honolulu “to discover a few hidden gems”. We took part of the extended tour and did stop at what was a visually lovely little inner-city waterfall, but the water was contaminated and almost all the areas we drove by were really sketchy. The main tour was really cool though, so I would definitely recommend taking that part.

It was fairly late in the afternoon by this point, but we figured we’d go to Pearl Harbor to see if we could at least walk the grounds. After navigating the ridiculously convoluted highways and roadways (the engineers must have been on drugs to create that mess), we made it to the Pearl Harbor Visitors Centre just before 4:00 p.m. We only had about an hour to look around, so we took our time and got a good browse through half of the museum before checking out the gift shop. We had already decided at this point that we’d be coming back to Maui in five years, so we’ll take the first two days of that trip in Oahu to do a proper tour of Pearl Harbor, and go back to Kualoa Ranch, and maybe do one of the other Shaka tours.

We hit gold again for supper. We did a Google search of “restaurants near me” and at first we tried to find Boston’s Pizza out of curiosity, because, you know, Boston Pizza… Boston’s Pizza… but again because of the ridiculous highways and roadways we ended up blowing right past that place. So we got off the friggin’ highway and looked again at Google and this time found a place called Da Seafood Cartel which had great reviews and looked interesting. We followed non-highway streets to get to the restaurant… which was located on the side of Kamehameha Highway <insert face-palm emoji here>. At any rate, the restaurant is a smallish sized cafe kind of place that calls itself “Mariscos Sonora Style”, which is basically Mexican seafood dishes from the Sonora region. It was fantastic! We shared a bowl of house made tortilla chips that were delish and not salty (yay!), with salsa and a blue crab tobiko spread. I had the fish and shrimp tacos. There was so much fish and shrimp and toppings that there was no way I was going to be able to actually make a handheld taco with the two small tortillas, so I dug into it with my fork instead. So yummy! Dan had one of the quesadillas (I can’t remember which one: smoked marlin, steak, or shrimp). We will definitely come back here next time.

It was still early but we didn’t have anywhere else with time to go to, so we went to the airport to see if we could check in. Given that we were five hours early, the check in counters weren’t open yet. There weren’t any kiosks either. I had been trying since last night to check in through the Westjet app and online, but it would not work for me. At any rate, we were the second couple who had tried to arrive early. The counter didn’t open until three hours before our flight departure time, so the four of us sat on the benches and waited. Dan and I took a stab at the Globe and Mail’s Christmas 2024 crossword puzzle (which I had started and saved a few weeks ago). We made a good dent on getting that done, but it’s not finished.

We finally got checked in and proceeded through the TSA gate where they take your picture to compare to your passport. The camera thought Dan was wearing a mask (he wasn’t, it was just his beard) so it wouldn’t take his picture, but they let him through anyway. The rest of the process went smoothly and we made our way home. Other than a ridiculously long lay over of about 6 hours in Calgary (because I wanted a direct flight home, not the one that stopped in Edmonton on the way — I may rethink that the next time) the trip was uneventful. The power went out as soon as we walked into the terminal in Yellowknife, but it wasn’t out for long. The Boy picked us up and drove us home, and we chatted with him for bit before going to bed.

All in all, Dan and I had a great time on this trip.

Take care, everyone, and stay safe! We’ll see you next time.

Adelle and Dan

Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

Adelle

Yesterday was a travel day, so I did not bother writing. The title of this entry says it all, pretty much. Although I did manage to leave my backpack behind in the condo in Maui, so they’re going to have to mail it back to me in Yellowknife. Thankfully it only has souvenirs and gifts… and my water bottle. At any rate, we returned the Charger to Avis and took a Southwest Airlines flight across to Honolulu. That was actually a little surreal. I felt like I was flying on Canadian North 10 or more years ago; Southwest doesn’t assign seats, rather they call boarding by group numbers and you can sit in whatever seat you want. I had to stop myself from overthinking about manifests and such. And they flew us on a 737-Max 8, too, so the flight took a whole 24 minutes. Sorry, no inflight service for such a short flight, lol!

We landed in Honolulu and picked up another car from Avis. This time, since we were only going to be on Oahu for two nights, we decided to have a little fun and rent a convertible. They gave us a Ford Mustang. Sweet ride, and we’re having fun with it, but it’s a pretty tight fit for us and really not a practical vehicle.

At any rate, we made our way to Papaya Paradise B&B in Kailua. It’s in a residential area and not a true B&B (no breakfast), but a lovely guestroom attached to the owner’s home. The yard is beautiful and there’s a small pool next to the lanai.

We decided to get some ramen for supper and found Rei Rei Ramen not far from the B&B. It’s a small restaurant but very clean and fresh, and the ramen was wonderful!

Today we got up relatively early to make our way to Kualoa Ranch Private Nature Preserve. On the way we stopped at Kalapawai Cafe and Deli for breakfast on the road. One Cinnamon Roll and one Nutella Brioche, a hot chocolate (of course) and a coffee, and hit the road. The pastries were soooo good!

The drive to the Ranch is about 40 minutes or so (depending of course on construction). The Preserve is a huge area that includes everything from fish/oyster ponds and fruit and vegetable gardens to cattle ranching. They offer multiple tour options for the area. Dan and I took the Kualoa Grown Tour in the morning. Our guide Wonka took us around to the gardens and fish ponds, and a sampling of poi (still as tasteless as the first time I tried it), dried tuna (very tasty — making up for the poi), and a piece of pineapple as a kind of palate cleanser. Later in the tour we also got to try a piece of raw cacao, which is actually not bad until you actually bite into it. The bitter part is clearly in the centre of the bean. This tour also took us by the sites where the outdoor cafe scenes were filmed for 50 First Dates and where Chris Pratt’s character lived in the trailer in Jurassic World.

After that tour we had lunch at Aunty Pat’s Cafe while we waited for the second tour. The food served there is primarily sourced from the Ranch’s produce, including the shrimp I had and the pork bulgogi. It was very good, and the price was reasonable.

The second tour we went on was a lot of fun. It was the 2-hour long UTV Raptor Tour. Dan drove us in a Kawasaki side-by-side in a group of about 7 vehicles following our guides Michael and Raymond throughout the property. What an amazing property! Our guides were fun and informed, and provided not only a description of what movies were filmed where, but also cultural stories and legends. It was totally worth getting covered in dust for.

We returned to the B&B and showered the dust off before going out for supper. We picked a place at random again by surfing Open Table’s top 10 restaurants near me and went to Goen Dining + Bar. I cannot emphasize how lucky we have been with our choices of places to eat during this trip. The service and food here were fantastic yet again. We shared the Burratta Caprese appetizer, I had the Misoyaki Butterfish, and Dan had the special baked Penne with marinara and alfredo sauce and all sorts of meat and cheeses. Dan’s dish was very generous, so much so that he couldn’t eat more than half of it. We’ll see if he actually eats the other half for breakfast as planned.

Thus ends our last night in paradise, although we do have all day here tomorrow before our flight home leaves tomorrow night.

Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan

Last Full Day in Maui

Adelle

This will be a short post for our last day in Maui. It’s been a very casual day that started with chocolate croissants on the lanai followed by a couple of hours at Mokapu Beach.

We had reserved an umbrella at Auntie Snorkel Beach Rentals in Kihei, but when we got there David recommended against the umbrella given how windy it was today. We took his advice and got a second beach chair instead (the kind that folds fairly small and has backpack straps).

The beach was actually beautiful and we managed to secure a shaded area under some trees. A couple of swims and a few chapters of my book later, and we brought the chair back to Auntie Snorkel’s and went for a late lunch at Cafe O’Lei upstairs from the store. Lunch was very good, but Dan pointed out that we haven’t made a bad choice yet for places to eat.

We stopped back at the condo from there to drop off our beach gear and chill for a beat before heading back out. We had been wanting to walk the Wailea Beach Path, so we parked at the Polo Beach parking lot and walked for about half an hour before stopping to watch the sunset. Then we walked back to the car and returned to the condo.

I went and picked up some food from Island Gourmet Market to nibble on for the rest of the evening while we did laundry and binged on more Murder, She Wrote.

Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan

An Abundance of Moseying

Adelle

Nothing really exciting happened today, but it was lovely non-the-less. We woke up on our own and still ended up with both of us awake before 8:30. Very odd.

We moseyed our way over to the Maui Swap Meet in Kahalui and browsed through the abundance of vendors, picking up a few mementos and gifts.

Then we moseyed our way over to Chic-fil-A for lunch, just to say we did. The restaurant itself was really nice, but there was nothing really special about the food.

Then we moseyed our way over to the Iao Valley Monument, but not before Lady Sat Nav took us to the state office first <insert eye-roll emoji here>. The Valley was beautiful, with a garden, walking trails through the forest past converging rivers (creeks, really), and steps up to an amazing view of the Iao Needle.

From there we moseyed back to the condo to drop our packages off before moseying over to Mama’s Fish House to see if we could get walk-in seats. We could not, so we moseyed over to Kuau Beach to see if we could see some turtles. We could! Not just one, but three were on beach when we got there. The surf was quite high again today, too, so in the process of watching a few surfers Dan’s shoes and socks got completely soaked.

Having gotten our view of turtles outside the water, we moseyed over to Paia Fish Market for supper. The line was out the door, but it moved pretty quickly so it didn’t really take long for us to order and get a seat. The fish was really good, as were the clam chowder (for me) and the deep-fried butterfly shrimp (for Dan). We moseyed across the street for some ice cream for dessert, moseyed back to the car while we ate the ice cream, and then moseyed our way back to the condo. All that moseying got us home fairly early this evening, so as I write this I’m also binge-watching episodes of Murder, She Wrote.

Aloha ahiahi, everyone!

Adelle and Dan

100% Nickelback Free Road to Hana

Adelle

As the title indicates, today was our Road to Hana day. Despite the 620 curves, the road is actually pretty great. Just take your time, pull over when safe to do so to let others pass you, and be courteous at the single lane bridges — of which there are many.

Many other blogs and articles about driving the Road to Hana tell you to leave at stupid-o’clock in the morning so you can see and do everything and still make it back before dark. We did not do this. I am not a stupid-o’clock-in-the-morning kind of person, so it frankly would have ruined my day to have to get up that early. Instead we focused on only doing enough to still get to the beach on time for our reserved time slot.

With that in mind, we left the condo at about 9:00 a.m. At the recommendation of my friend Michelle, we downloaded an audio app called Shaka Guide which offers narrated driving tours for all over the world, including the Road to Hana. BEST RECOMMENDATION EVER! This app had cool narration, spot on navigation with points of interest, recommendations for stops and when to take them, travel time estimation, and local music and stories between navigation instructions. The music was appropriate to the drive — in that it was soothing Hawaiian music to keep you calm on the road rather than heavy metal or rock which would stress you out.

The scenery was amazing on the drive. Our first stop was at the Ke’anae Peninsula where we got a close-up view of the ocean breaking against young lava rocks. We ate chili and hotdogs at Aunty Sandy’s Banana Bread, and yes, we also picked up a loaf of banana bread, which is totally everything it’s hyped up to be.

We continued on our way and didn’t stop again until we reached the Wai’anapanapa State Park, which is where the Black Sand Beach is. Very cool place! The way the black pebbles on the beach move tickled my feet, and the black sand itself was slippery(?) due to how round it was — although not as much as the sand at Ho’okipa Beach. I swam in the water twice while we were there, and we ate some more Maui Gold pineapple, before meandering along a path to an outcrop overlooking a blowhole and looking back towards the beach. It started raining at that point, but our timeslot was nearly over anyway.

We moved on to the Hana Lava Tube, which is the 18th largest lava tube in the world. You pay for entry and they give you a flashlight so you can see where you’re going. You go down these steps into the pitch black (hence the need for flashlights) and then walk in the tube for a quarter mile following information panels. There were very cool features throughout, and the ceiling in most of it was at least 20 feet high (no worries about claustrophobia here). We didn’t see them, but apparently there are a few kinds of insects and worms that live in the tube that are specifically evolved to do so. Dan managed to find a single stalk growing out of the ground on one side, apparently without light. At one point there’s a feature of a type of stalactite that looks like chocolate, although to me they look more like cacao beans before they’re dried out. The entire tour only took about 30-40 minutes, and we thought it was well worth the $15 entry fee.

By this time it was already quarter to 5:00, so we just drove straight back to the condo. We agreed that the Road to Hana is a worthy repeat adventure, given there are so many wonderful places we could have stopped along the way. But the drive itself is worth it all on its own. On the way through Paia we noticed a lot of traffic parked on the side of the road and speculated that it might be to watch some surfing. We recalled that earlier in the day there had been high surf warnings, and sure enough as we drove a little further down the highway where we could see the shore the waves were spectacular! They were maybe three times higher than the last time we passed by that area (Ho’okipa Beach).

When we got back we were quite hungry, so after a quick shower and change we looked up Italian restaurants in Wailea and picked the first one that came up: Olivine. We made a reservation through OpenTable without really thinking about it and left right away. What we didn’t realize until we got there was that Olivine is at the Grand Wailea Resort (a Waldorf Astoria property). There’s no self-parking, it’s all valet parking which is included. The restaurant is all the way at the other end of the property on the ground floor by the pools — we had to take the elevator down four floors from the lobby. We had to ask directions from the Bellman to get to the right elevators, and then we had to follow another young couple going to the same place through the dark pathways to find it. We ended up inadvertently treating our selves to a VERY expensive Italian dinner that was SO worth it! The wait staff was very friendly, and despite the price we had a lovely evening.

After a long but wonderful day I’m ready to just relax and read for a bit. So with that, Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan

It’s All in the Hips

Adelle

Beach day today! As we had nothing scheduled until this evening we were able to get up whenever we wanted to and do whatever we wanted to. So we decided to find our way to the beach behind the condo, and then figure out the easiest path to take the wagon with beach chairs, etcetera, through the property down to the beach gate. Oddly, that took longer than it probably should have (I’m not sure if this property is actually that big or if we’re just confused). Additionally, it turns out the property changed the gate codes two days before we arrived, so the codes we got from the property manager in the welcome package were already wrong. Thankfully one of the neighbouring guests provided the correct code to us. At any rate, I think we’re finally getting the lay of the property’s land, and in the process I also found the fitness room! Now let’s see if I actually get down there before we leave…

We finally got settled on Keawakapu Beach at around 11:00 or so, relaxed in the chairs, sunk our toes in the sand, went for a swim twice (well, I went for a swim twice; Dan just got his feet wet), snacked on Maui Gold pineapple, Crunchmaster crackers, and Surfing Goat Dairy’s Ivory Coast cheese, read a chapter of Craig Alanson‘s fourth book in the Expeditionary Force series (Skippy is such an asshole), and watched some whales play (fight? carouse? court?) just off the beach.

After a couple of hours of all that, we returned to the condo, showered the salt and sunscreen off, chilled for a minute or two, and then took off to Lahaina again. On the way we realized we hadn’t actually had anything substantive to eat today, so we stopped in Olowalu for lunch at Leoda’s Kitchen and Pie Shop. We did not have the dessert pie, which looked amazing, but Dan did have the chicken pot pie while I had a BLT sandwhich on the softest and freshest bread I’ve had in a long time. Both were really tasty, and the restaurant was a nice little diner that was clearly very popular because by the time we had ordered there was a line-up out the door.

We intended to return to the Dragon Fruit Farm to purchase some preserves and leave the tip we didn’t get to when we were there, but they ended up not being open when we got there. So we just kept going to the Hyatt Resort for the Drums of the Pacific Lu’au. We received kukui nut leis (kukui trees are the state tree of Hawaii, by the way), a complimentary photo of us, and we sat at a table right in front of the stage. The servers were great, the show was great, the food was great, the company at our table was great… everything was great. The dances represented south pacific regions: Tuamotus, New Zealand, Tahiti, Tonga, Hawai’i, and Rarotonga. They included a Haka and a fire dance, which was pretty spectacular.

The highlight of the evening, though, was when Dan actually said he would want to come back to Maui again. I’m on it…

Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan

Don’t Touch the Cacao Trees

Adelle

Two tours were on the agenda today, both of them out of Lahaina. Which meant we had to plan for an hour’s drive each way for what should have been 45-minute drives due to construction — and not trusting Lady Sat Nav after Monday’s experience. This time we used the Google Maps app on my phone, and it got us to our first stop more than half an hour early.

That first stop was a chocolate-lover’s dream. And I think most of you know that chocolate lover is me. We took the Maui Chocolate Cacao Farm Tour at the Maui Ku’ia Estate. As their advertising says, our Guide Brittany educated us on the building and development of the estate, the cacao trees themselves, the harvesting of the pods, the processing of the beans, and finally a tasting of nine different pieces of chocolate. The estate grows 20 acres of cacao plants that they harvest from, but their #2 guy travels the world visiting cacao farms and brings back beans to process alongside their own beans at their factory in Maui. All of the cacao is ethically and environmentally sourced. What’s really interesting is that the cacao from each country or region has it’s own underlying flavour, dependent on the soil and other environmental factors that the trees are grown in. The flavours that they add to some of their chocolate is concentrated directly from the fruit. So everything is as natural as can be. It’s also rather remarkable that they have only two experienced harvesters to pull the pods from the trees when they’re ready.

We also learned that the chocolate factory is entirely powered through an array of solar panels installed on top of their parking structure, which we though was really interesting. And it turns out that all of the company’s profits are donated directly back into several community non-profit organizations. The owner of the company is a billionaire who doesn’t really need the money and is doing this work simply out of his own interest in it — and to keep from being bored in his retirement years. This was another really great tour that we had fun with, and we would recommend taking the time to experience.

From there we made our way to the beach near Whalers Village shopping mall to check in with Gemini Charters for our catamaran whale watching tour. Because I just know you’re all wondering: yes, I did remember to take Gravol before hand; yes, I still got a little queasy anyway; and no, I did not upchuck this time. Lots of steady breathing, sitting on the deck in the fresh air and breeze, and focusing on the horizon helped. But honestly, that was not remotely the focus of this wonderful excursion, so let’s move on, shall we?

Rather, the focus was on going out to see the humpbacked whales. We did not see George and Gracie, which is good because if we had then we’d also have to wonder, what kind of time warp did we go through??? We did see many other whales, though, all of them competing for the favours of a few females. We got really lucky in that we saw at least three competitive pods and at least three males actually leaping out of the water fairly close to our catamaran. And then to close the evening off, on the way back to the beach we saw a mama whale with her calf. We got a pretty great show, well worth the expense, and the captain and crew were top notch. Our tour did include a catered meal, but given my queasiness we thought it best not to partake. Which is really too bad because the menu looked amazing.

It didn’t take long once back on land for my stomach to settle down this time and instead it told me I was hungry, so we decided to stop for a bite at the mall. We took a chance that a table might be available at the Monkeypod restaurant — which is actually a really popular place — and for the second time that day got lucky. They had a table available right away for us. A margherita pizza, black cherry Shirley Temple, burger and fries with aioli sauce, and iced tea later, and we made our way back to the condo, sorting our prizes from the day, writing stories, and generally relaxing.

Aloha ahiahi!

Adelle and Dan