(no subject)

[missroserose]

I know I stopped providing updates mid-honeymoon, so hopefully the upcoming pictures (*looks pointedly at Brian*) and a few more highlights will suffice:

• If ever visiting the Big Island, I cannot recommend snorkeling in Kealakekua Bay strongly enough.  It's a beautifully sheltered area on the western side of the island (therefore with the better weather, especially in the morning) with some of the clearest water and most amazing coral reefs - it's like snorkeling in a giant aquarium.  It's part of a state preserve, so you have to either get there without a car (hiking and kayaking are two popular choices) or take one of the many cruises; we went on the Fair Wind II morning cruise and would recommend it without reservation.  Get it?  Reservation?
• I bought two bikinis, despite living in a place where I barely use them.  To be fair, both of them look fantastic, and one was on clearance, but, still...why did I buy two bikinis?  Oh yeah, because the place that sold them had posters all up the (very spacious) fitting room saying "Love Yourself", and the woman who ran the shop was extremely helpful and sweet.  I figure that's the sort of place that's worth supporting.  Maybe I'll see about going swimming more often, too.
• Hapuna Beach does not look real.  It looks like every beach Hollywood has ever shown you, in full Technicolor glory - white sand, bright turquoise blue water, palm trees swaying in the wind, more coral reefs off to one side if you're a good swimmer and feel like snorkeling.  Well worth the forty-five minute drive from Kona, and the sand in crevices you didn't know you had until days later.
• On a related note - boogie boarding is possibly the most fun I've had in ages.  (How did the sand get between the layers of fabric in my swimsuit?  How??)
• True Blood, while firmly placed in the land of "guilty pleasure TV", is actually quite well written and decently acted, even if some of the actors' accents are all over the map (quite literally - Bill Compton's especially seems to take a drunken tour of the South whenever he speaks a sentence).  It's a good turn for Alan Ball; I enjoyed Six Feet Under up to about the fourth season, after which it completely blew off the fine line between black comedy and gut-wrenching drama that it'd been walking and went almost straight depressing character self-destruction (to the point of unwatchability for my lightheartedness-appreciating self).  With True Blood, the subject matter at hand is so completely ludicrous and so firmly in the realm of pulp entertainment that it keeps Ball from getting too serious with it, which I think works in its favor.  There are still some excellent dramatic moments, but when it comes right down to it, it's a Southern Gothic pulp vampire romance - there's just no way a story like that can take itself seriously, and Ball wisely doesn't try.
• I have now stood on the northernmost point of the United States (Point Barrow, at the very tippy-top of Alaska) and the southernmost point.  The literal-mindedly-named South Point is an interesting place for a lot of reasons.  The trade winds blow directly and continuously (there's a wind farm there that provides a good chunk of the southern Big Island's power), and that combined with the strong currents make for excellent, but very hazardous, fishing.  The native Hawai'ians' solution to the problem was rather ingenious; they would bore holes in the volcanic rock, thread strong ropes through those holes, and tie their canoes to the ropes so they could haul themselves back to shore when they were done.  You can still see the holes - Brian got pictures of a couple - and when you see the fierceness of the surf around that point you feel sorry for anyone who fell overboard, especially as (our guidebook informed us) the currents continue uninterrupted all the way to Antarctica.  I guess if there were a southern Hawai'ian Mafia they'd send you to 'sleep with the penguins'...

The trip back was not entirely happy - I somehow managed to mix up our departure times and by the time I'd realized my mistake we'd already missed our first flight.  Fortunately we were able to catch another intra-island flight in time to get our original to-mainland booking, which saved a lot of hassle but cost us $200 a person in ticket change fees.  (And once I stopped panicking, I realized I could've gone to their website and booked us with a different reservation on that same flight for roughly half that.  D'oh.)  So I spent a lot of the time feeling upset and frustrated at myself, and Brian once more got to prove that he's the best husband in the world by being supportive and understanding and not even getting pissed at all.  I swear, I'm still occasionally surprised that boy married me.

We stopped in Seattle on the way back, which was fun; we went and saw the 80's music laser show at the Pacific Science Center, which included some very amusing animated drawings to the Ghostbusters theme, as well as my favorite moment - a laser-outline-drawn DeLorean (complete with the OUTATIME license plate) traveling through a time warp to Huey Lewis & The News' "Back In Time".  Plus we got to have dinner with a high-school friend of mine, and when our path back to the hotel was blocked by a parade along 4th Avenue, he took us through the transit tunnel underneath the street, which was really quite cool to see.  Plus now we know where the light rail from the airport ends up if we feel like making a little effort to save $70 in cab fare next time we visit.

I was going to write about the readjustment period we've been going through this week, but it's time to go see Easy Virtue at the recently-revamped local art-house theater.  We'll have to see if they've gotten any cushions for their infamous benches...

Comments

[tygenco-x.livejournal.com]

Good to know that the light rail is now up and running; makes me want to go to Seattle just to see it.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

Yeah, one of my Facebook friends is a dude we met at PAX who lives there and is heavily into promoting public transit (and other green stuff) in Seattle - he belongs to all kinds of citizen action groups. So he was pretty jubilant when they finally opened it. Sadly, the last link to the airport isn't finished quite yet - supposedly it'll be up and running by December, and until then they've got a shuttle bus that goes from the airport to the current endpoint. We thought about trying it out, but when we got in it was super late at night and we just didn't feel like messing about with it.

[cyranocyrano.livejournal.com]

This Hawai'i place sounds kind of nice.

Looking forward to your movie review.

[roseneko.livejournal.com]

A++ would honeymoon there again.