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| First stop… |
How often do you get to spend Thanksgiving in the USA? Or, more importantly, how often do you get to shop at the Black Friday sales in the USA??
Whatever Neil may say, he was just as happy to hit the stores this morning as I was. He desperately needed new clothes and we were on the hunt for Christmas gifts too… and I wasn’t averse to picking up a few trifles for myself either 😉
We went to Macy’s first and picked up some great bargains in clothes for ourselves and Liam… excellent quality and heavily reduced. The store was busy but not crazy busy – the really determined bargain hunters would have visted last night when the store was open from 6 pm to midnight.
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| The results of the morning! |
We looked in some of the other stores in the mall but didn’t see anything else very exciting so we decided to head across the road to check out our first American Costco. It was HUGE – twice the size of the Sydney stores and pleasantly uncrowded. With our luggage limits we really couldn’t let our heads go, so I had to leave the cheap Dyson vacuum cleaner and Keurig coffeemaker on their shelves, but we picked up a few useful items that WILL fit in the carry on. We were a little surprised to learn that the only credit card accepted at USA Costco is Amex, but fortunately we had ours with us.
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| Old Koloa Town |
Then it was time to take our booty back to the hotel and grab some lunch before heading to Port Allen for our Napali Cliff Sunset Sailing Cruise…. we shouldn’t have hurried, on our arrival we learned that the wind and seas were too high for the Napali coast so the cruise was being re-routed along the south shore instead. After a rapid discussion, we decided to take the option to cancel and get a refund. We had really only booked the cruise to see the Napali cliffs and if that wasn’t on offer we really weren’t keen on spending the whole afternoon on a windy sailing boat.
Instead, we decided to take the time to explore the local area around Poipu… and if that included checking out a few more shopping centers I’ll declare loudly that Neil was perfectly happy to do so! As our dinner cruise was off we needed to make a decision about our evening meal… would we try one of the local restaurants? But, the lure of our lovely lanai was too strong so we picked up a BBQ chicken and salad in Koloa to pop in the fridge for later.
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| Poipu Beach |
It was nice to explore the pretty Old Koloa Town, it reminded us both of Eumundi in the Sunshine Coast, except instead of a huge market they have chickens wandering around the streets. We’ve seen a lot of chickens and roosters wandering around Kauai, I’m not sure if they’re beloved pets of a pest – but there are lots of them!
We went for a walk along the beach from our hotel, past the big Sheraton resort and along pretty Poipu beach. It was late in the afternoon but the beach was very popular and the water was quite warm. Back at the resort we did a load of washing ( HUGE American Maytag washing machine and dryer) and popped down across the road to catch our last sunset in Kauai before settling down on the Lanai to enjoy our chicken dinner.
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| Neil on Poipu beach |
We have just loved this place, I’m a little concerned that we’ve had the best up front and that the rest of our accommodation will be a bit of a come down after Poipu Kapili… but then we get a free buffet breakfast at the next hotel so that’s got to count for something!
Next post from Maui…
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| Sunset from Poipu |