Our last day in Hawaii didn’t consist of too much activity. We got up and checked out, then headed into town on Ali’i Drive, the first time we’d taken it since it’s not the way to go if you’re in a hurry. We eventually found our way to an OfficeMax where I printed our boarding passes (having a laptop along is nice, but no printer was tricky, so I transferred the pdf American sent me to an SD card), then we found Kona Bay Books – brother store (literally) to Hilo Bay Books and made a couple dropoffs and purchases. I picked a shopping center at random for lunch, and Jill decided on Island Lava Java, where she had the chicken quesadillas and I had a turkey sandwich. I tried to find a place that served macadamia nut pie, but the location of the place I found was vacant – I did buy a Hawaiian shirt nearby, though.
The last thing we needed to do was ship back the books we’d read but wanted to keep, so we found a post office and did that. With nothing else to do, we headed back to Starbucks, I surfed and read while Jill knitted. We had to turn the car back to Enterprise at 6, so I dropped Jill and the luggage off at Kona Brewing Company, parked the car and walked back. We had to wait a while for a table (there were some inside, but it was just too noisy), but we had already decided what to order when we were seated and got our food quickly. We split a salad to start (I’ll miss Maui onions, they’re sweet and tasty) then split a Commander Cook pizza (pepperoni, sausage, mushrooms and ham). The pizza was a little soggy due to all the toppings, but still pretty good. The star of the show was the beer – the Pipeline Porter (made with Kona coffee) and Wailua Wheat were just outstanding. After dinner we had a taxi pick us up and drop us at the airport, and we were soon fast asleep and bound for LA.
In LA I went to withdraw some money from an ATM and discovered my ATM card was gone. I reported it lost, and there are no charges against it – I think I might have left it in an ATM machine in Hawaii. Only problem was trying to get a cab that took credit cards when we got to Miami (the guy that stopped got a decent tip for the effort). We checked in to the downtown Hilton and relaxed for a little while before showering and getting ready. The restaurant we were headed to was in the Design District, so we headed down early to check it out. But there was only a single gallery and a couple shops open on a cool Saturday night, so we headed in early to Michael’s Genuine Food and Drink and sat at the bar. We enjoyed some cocktails and fried hominy as we chatted with a local woman who was in DC for the festivities as well, then headed over for our table at 7. The food was exquisite – I had the wood roasted double yolk egg to start, then the pork shoulder, which was so tender it was falling apart. Jill had the wood roasted grouper and fingerling potatoes, which she enjoyed, then we shared banana and lemon ice creams and cherry sorbet to finish (she liked the banana but my favorite was the lemon). Then we caught a cab back to the hotel, and we called it a night as neither of us had gotten that much sleep on the plane.