Buzz’s; a Kailua Classic
Our last night in Kailua, and we are on our way to Buzz’s, a Kailua institution, where the wait staff greet our friend by her first name and show her to a table.
This is our table. It is right next to the President’s table. We are sitting where the Secret Service bodyguards probably sit when Presidents dine there.
We speculate what would happen if the reality-star Republican were elected, would he sit at that table or buy the restaurant and tear the plaque down? It’s a glorious night, we drink our drinks, look at the menu and we all decide, after our huge ramen lunch, we are ready for Buzz’s famous salad bar. Buzz’s is also famous for fabulous steak and even better local fish, but we just aren’t hungry enough.
It’s a grand night, we visit the beach, we take a drive and we head back home, where we have the best time of all.
What Matters in Kailua
AdventureMan and my friend left early, early in the morning to see Pearl Harbor, and come home full of their adventure, all the things they saw and did. A helicopter had gone down the day before they were scheduled to tour the site, and it wasn’t clear it would open again in time for AdventureMan to visit. There were few people, early in the morning, and they could go and see everything. They were pumped – and hungry.
We knew where we were going to eat until we got there only to discover it was closed! Next door was a noodle house, Daiichi Ramen, so we gave it a try. Wow. Totally different cuisine, delicious and filling, and as exotic as anything we have ever eaten with a full range of additions to the ramen or udon noodles. Along with each order came gyozo, like a Chinese crescent dumpling, but . . . different 🙂
Even the side of rice was delicious. We ate too much!
Kona Brewing Company: One of the Best Meals I have Ever Eaten
I’ve been doing reviews on Trip Advisor for ten years, starting with out trips into Zambia, and the Robin Pope Camps. From time to time, when I give a restaurant five stars, Trip Advisor asks me “Is this one of the best meals you have ever eaten?”
We’ve eaten some fine meals in our lives and travels, memorable meals, in Monterey/Carmel, in Germany and France, in the Middle East. Some stand out. Maybe only once or twice have I said “Yes” that this is one of the best meals I have ever eaten.
At the Kona Brewing Company, in a little marina on the back side of Diamond Head, I had one of the best meals I have ever eaten.
It started with a ginger lemonade. Have I ever mentioned how much I love ginger beer? This was one of the strongest gingery drinks I have ever had, and it was magnificent.
My lunch was Shoyu Chicken, with spinach and carrots. The chicken was divine, with a teriyaki marinade and sauce. The spinach was equally wonderful, very garlicky. The rice was rice, but I was so far gone over the chicken and spinach that it just wouldn’t matter.
My Kailua friend had a root beer.
With Shrimp Tacos
And a mango slaw, which she said was surprising and also, wonderful.
AdventureMan had fish tacos, which he thought very good.
We left very happy people. It was one of the most delicious meals I have ever eaten.
Pah Ke’s in Kaneohe; Really Good Chinese Food
I had asked my friend if we could eat “really good” Chinese food at some point while I was visiting, and she knew just the place.
My friend is a very laid back driver, but she is puzzled, she has never seen the parking lot so full before. It is so full we have to park across the busy street and walk across. The lot is full of small busses, and vans, and there isn’t a parking space to be had. Even all the illegal spaces are taken!
When we walk inside, we are filled with horror. There is an event going on at Pah Ke’s. Does this mean we won’t be able to eat there? There are about thirty very large tables, ten or twelve people at each table, eating some of the most delicious looking food I have ever seen. The waitress ushers us to a table over at the side; there are maybe three or four tables for people not in this large group.
“What’s going on?” we ask the waitress.
“Special celebration for this retired group; Chinese New Years,” the waitress replied.
The place was packed, many of the Chinese women in traditional bright red silk.
“It doesn’t look like much,” my friend said, “but everyone who loves Chinese food eats here. We have to start with their special salad”
The food came quickly, in spite of the large crowd. We got to watch the crowd depart as we savored our own delicacies.
I had never heard of a special Chinese salad before, but this salad is special Chinese-in-Hawaii salad, with tropical fruits and a sweet dressing, and watermelon. It is fabulous.
Scallops and asparagus on a bed of spinach. Great!
Our very favorite: Szechuan Eggplant and pork
Huge shrimp with walnuts
We ate it all. We didn’t take home a drop. We ate at Pah Ke’s again, on our way to the airport the day we left, and it was just as good. What a treat.
This is where we spent the rest of the day . . . 🙂
Business in New Orleans
Once we discovered how easy it is to go to New Orleans, even just for the day, we are hooked. When Zito’s Metal Polishing & Plating called to tell us our pieces were finished and offered to mail them (free of charge) to us, AdventureMan said “Oh no, we’ll come get them” and set the date. We invited a friend who also has some pieces that need re-tinning to be usable, and off we went.
You may think this is trivial, but for us, it is beautiful:
Gas is so much cheaper in Louisiana. Of course, it takes nearly half a tank to get there, so I don’t suppose we are saving so much, LOL. Â When I saw my old friends, my copper pots, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I don’t think they looked this good in Damascus, where I bought them, on The Street Called Straight. Who knows if we will ever be able to walk the streets of Damascus again?
Zito’s was able to replace a handle on the brass piece we bought, oh so long ago, in the Khan al Khalili in Cairo.
These pieces are, I believe, more beautiful now than when I bought them! I had the pots re-tinned because I have used them cooking many many times over the last 35 years, but now I am afraid to use them, they are so beautiful!
We stayed out of the tourist areas with Mardi Gras madness in full swing, and found a fabulous Thai restaurant, La Thai, on Prytania, (voted Best Thai in New Orleans,) when our two Ethiopian restaurants were both closed. It was a wonderful happenstance; we had a great meal (scallops!) and we also were able to finish our day in New Orleans with a tour of City Park and ice cream at the Creole Creamery. Oh wow. Flavors like King Cake Ice Cream, and Red Velvet Ice Cream and 5 Spice Ginger. It was a great day.
The Fleur de Lis, Chartres Street, New Orleans
When we awake, it is raining once again, raining raining raining. AdventureMan knows just the place we need to be, we jump into our levis and clothes that rain can’t hurt and hurry up the street and around the corner to the Fleur-de-Lis, a little breakfast place beloved by locals and tourists alike.
Once again, we feel like we are just in time. We get a great table, and place our order, and before our orders arrive, every table in the cafe is filled and the place is hoppin’. The tables are so close together that I can’t photograph my french toast and fruit bowl, made with slices of French bread (delish!) or AdventureMan’s eggs and bacon special. I got a great cup of coffee. AdventureMan said I like the Fleur de Lis better than he does. It was a perfect rainy morning place for breakfast. And really good coffee.
The French Market Restaurant, New Orleans
Have you ever eaten Ethiopian food? That injera is so delicious, but hours later, it has swollen in your tummy, and even after a long long walk, and several hours, even though it is dinner time, you are still not very hungry.
We didn’t want to go to a restaurant with courses and sauces. We weren’t that hungry. We had passed the French Market Restaurant as we strolled through the old French Market, and we liked that they had a good selection of boiled, steamed and healthy foods on their menu. It was just a few blocks from our hotel, an easy walk, so we decided to go there for dinner – or anyplace else that struck our fancy, but this was our destination if we didn’t find any place else.
We passed a lot of restaurants with lines, but not the foods we wanted.
When we got to the French Market Restaurant, we were so glad we had waited. The greeting was warm, the wait staff looked happy and like they knew what they were all about, and we had a nice table. The place was about half full when we got there, and within the next fifteen minutes, was packed. The tables are close together, so you get to see what everyone is eating, and hear about everyone’s lives, but it’s just that kind of place; cozy, comfortable, and the food is divine.
I stuck with my plan – I ordered the shrimp and crab salad. It was perfect. AdventureMan ordered the oyster poor boy, of which he could only eat about half, and just the oysters. Oysters are rich! Battered oysters are richer! We started with the onion rings, which were fabulous, real onions dipped in a peppery batter, big pieces of pepper. This was unusual, the batter was light and tasty, and the dipping sauce piquant.
We split a dessert. Hey, it’s New Orleans. I’m not a big sweet eater, but we ordered a piece of the Bourbon Pecan Pie which arrived cut in half with about a cup of whipped cream. It was SOO good. They were kind, my piece was the smaller “half” but still, if it weren’t so good, I wouldn’t have eaten my whole half. It’s all their fault, making such a delicious pie. AdventureMan is intrigued, and thinks he will try incorporating bourbon into his famous pecan pies now, too. (Wooooo Hooooooooo!)
Grenada, Spain; One of the Most Beautiful Cities on Earth
Did you know the Spanish word for pomegranate is “grenade?” I didn’t know that either, but pomegranate is one of my favorite fruits. When I was a little girl, my mother would buy me a pomegranate now and again (these were not common where I grew up) because of the legend of Persephone. I was heavy into Greek and Roman mythology and she encouraged my explorations.
Grenada in named for the pomegranates. They grow everywhere in Grenada, and were in full fruit when we visited. After some of the rainy touring days we had, Grenada shone forth in warm sunshine and blue skies with perfect clouds for photo-taking. We toured the town, and then (dramatic pause) (hushed voice) we visited the Alhambra.
What I have loved about this journey is the intermingling of Arabic in the Spanish; Guadalquivir River “wadi al kebir”, Alhambra “al hamra”, and it really is very red. And it really is very beautiful, so very beautiful in glorious detail. I’m going to bore you with more photos than you ever wished to see because . . . well, I hate to be rude, but .  . . it’s my blog. I love each and every photo.
This is our group, gathering around our guide to enter the Alhambra.
If this were a fabric, I would have a dress made of it. I loved the intricate intersection, and the blending of the blue and cream and brown.
This is my favorite photo, for any number of reasons, cats, light and shadow, intricate tracery on columns, etc. but it is also a reminder of a very strange occurrence. I had just finished taking this shot, hunched down for a low angle, when a young woman in a group of four came along and shoved others, and then me, out of the way. Literally, she took my arm and started to move me and said “we’re taking a group photo now.”
Normally, I tend to defer, but her arrogance, and her disregard for the feeling of others prickled me, and so I pulled my arm away and looked at her cooly, and said “as soon as I am done with my photo, I will move and you can take your shot. Or you can shoot it from another angle.” I don’t know why I did that, I am surprised at myself. I don’t like to cause trouble. But who has the right to shove others out of the way???
That is the memory this photo brings back.
Please look at this photo, not that it is anything special but because there are people in it. I want you to appreciate how really, really, very hard it was to take some of these photos without people in them. I had to wait and wait, sometimes, (gasp!) I even got separated from my group for a short time, in the interest of getting an unimpeded shot. We were there at a lovely time of the year, perfect weather, and we thought there would not be too many tourists. We were astonished, in Seville, in Cordoba, in Grenada just how many tourists there were.
And here is where AHI Travel did something really right. This is the last day of the tour, tomorrow we all disembark and head for the Malaga airport and from there, to places scattered around the world. Just a short walk from the Alhambra is a beautiful hotel, beautifully situated, the Alhambra Palace. We’ve made note of it because we intend to come back to Grenada, and we want to stay in this hotel. This is where we ate lunch.
Our group had a closed in verandah with a beautiful view. Lunch was served in courses, and each was carefully prepared, and delicious. Very very clever way to end the tours on a high note 🙂
The room was beautiful. The table service was beautiful.
The view was beautiful.
After the meal, we got back on the bus to head back for the ship. Once on board, we had a Smithsonian meeting and then another lecture and then dinner, and something happened that has not happened to me for a long time, I had to pack at the last minute. Our suitcases had to be outside our door before we went to bed so they could be loaded to go, very early the next morning, to the airport.
I was coming down with something. I felt hot and feverish, and my nose was running. All my life, I have had nightmares about last minute packing. I hate doing last-minute anything, I am a planner, I like having a certain amount of control over my life, even though it is an illusion, it is an illusion I work hard to maintain. How did this happen to me? How is it that I am packing at the last minute, feverish and anxious?
It all got done. Fortunately, there are a limited number of places you can put things. For some reason, I am not able to download all our boarding passes, so we have only the first ones and will have to get the rest at the airport. I know where my passport is (I never have found the one I lost somewhere in my office) and my tickets and somehow we are finished and all is well by bedtime. I just hate that feeling of being rushed; when I am rushed, I make mistakes.
Every now and then something good happens. There is a huge line in Malaga, but our new friends also have tickets that put us in another line, and we get through quickly, with no problems. We say goodbye, we’ve exchanged e-mail addresses, and we go our separate ways. We have time to relax.
We arrive in Paris barely on time, and it is a Sunday morning with long lines at security, and there is no way out, we have to stand in line. We watch one very elderly man, unsteady, but with a great sense of humor, cope as he has to go through the full-body scan. Even though it is a few days before the bombing, security is tight. The airport is a nightmare. We have no idea where our next gate is, and we are almost running, as it is already our boarding time and we are not there. We have to go down this hall and that, then down to some gate where we catch a bus, then from that bus to somewhere else where we get to our plane with five or ten minutes to spare. That is cutting it way to close for me, but I know by now that I am coming down with one of the world’s worst colds and I sleep all the way from Paris to Atlanta, waking up now and ten to drink some Pomegranate Pizazz with honey to make the cold go away.
Not only does the cold not go away – I very generously shared it with AdventureMan. We both felt so bad we were sleeping all the time and didn’t even notice the jet lag 🙂 so by the time we were well again, we were also sleeping on Pensacola time. As soon as we were well, we got the super-strong flu shots to protect ourselves from anything worse than we’ve just had. 🙂
Fez and On to Tangiers
We walked a thousand miles today, or so it seems, through the narrow streets of Fez. There was no going off on our own; Fez is complicated. The last time we were here, we hired a private guide who could take us through the souks and to other sites in Fez. This time, we were 40 people following a sign held up saying “Turquoise.”
I was behind an otherwise perfectly nice man who was using an i-Pad to take photos. As we went through the narrow streets with bread bakers, cookie sellers, date sellers, etc. from time to time he would stop, totally blocking traffic, and take his photo, and then start again. There were places he could step out of line and take a photo, but he evidently didn’t want to give up his place in the long narrow line. For the first fifteen or twenty times he did it, I just wanted to clobber him, then I found a way to get ahead of him and it was no longer my problem.
The leather dying souks that were so colorful and stinky were closed for remodeling! Whoda thunk it?
My first shopping on the trip; a silk weaving factory, and the colors are irresistible!
Another group dining experience, a lovely space, sort-of Moroccan food, Palais Mnebih feeds hundreds in a short time.
And on to Tangiers, where our ship is waiting for us at the dock!
Palais Medina and Spa in Fes, Morocco
We were delighted to get to our hotel in Fes, the Palais Medina and Spa Hotel. Our room was very comfortable, but my shoes were muddy from Volubilis, and I forgot to take a photo of the room because I really, really needed to wash my shoes off and hope they would dry by the next day as we hike around Fes. Â It was very large, very beautiful, had a seating area and a huge bathroom. The bed was marvelous.
The Hotel had some quirks. As we were about to board the elevator, others from our ship were getting off and saying “We are NOT going to stay here!” and we wondered what that was all about. On our floor, the hallway was so dimly lit that we struggled to figure out where the card went into the door. But the room was lovely, comfortable, quiet, and it had a wonderful view.
We hurried down to dinner, seeing a sign that said “group dining” we knew where to go.
(I didn’t take this photo; I lifted it from the hotel website, but it looks like the room we stayed in)
From the elevator area into the lobby area:
View at night from our balcony looking left
View early in morning looking out
More view. It really was a lovely room.
This has to be one of the worst experiences of the tour, tied with trying to get through Charles DeGualle to catch our Atlanta flight. The dining room was chaos.
“Grab a place, quickly; they are already starting to take the food away!” one fellow passenger urged us. We found places with friends, then went to search the inevitable buffet. There were still plenty of salad-y things, but entree pickings were slim. People in this hotel were elbowing one another out of the way, as if they had never seen food before, and this food was not worth elbowing anyone out of the way. It was buffet food, and the message it sent me was “this hotel takes groups because we have to in order to stay afloat, but we hate groups.” Dinner was purely awful. I can’t even remember what we found to eat, but except for a pumpkin soup, it was not good and not memorable food except for being not-good.
You’d think it would be hard to screw up breakfast, but breakfast was worse. They had those two little coffee maker things, and long lines waiting for both tea and coffee. Worse – there were no coffee cups! Not one! After a while a few showed up, and what happened when fewer coffee cups than coffee drinkers were available showed us just how very thin the veneer of civilization is. This was our experience at this ultra-first-class hotel. Horrors!
Lesson learned: I did spot a restaurant separate from the group dining restaurant. Knowing now what I know, I would choose to pay for a good Moroccan meal at the private-dining restaurant. Morocco just isn’t that expensive, and Moroccan cuisine is delicious, worth paying for! I would never settle for a mediocre meal, paid for as part of our tour, just because it was paid for. Life is too short!
On the other hand, it was late, we had a long day, I still needed to make sure my shoes were cleaned, and we just wanted to grab a bite and go. This was a nice hotel, but not a stellar experience.
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