Weddingbee Blog

Our other favorite day in Kaua’i was our visit to Hanapepe. It turned out to be a long day, but we loved it.

Mr. Oyster is really into coffee. It’s like his personal hobby or something! He even roasts his own coffee beans, and hand-grinds them every morning and has his own fresh-roasted cup of coffee. So of course, we went to the Kaua’i Coffee Museum. It’s a nice place; it includes a small museum inside, a coffee shop (of course!), a gift shop, and then you can take a self-guided walking tour of the grounds.

The coffee fields, with rain clouds looming overhead (there are always rain clouds looming in Kaua’i):

What’s a trip to Hawaii without a photo of a frangipani? I couldn’t resist this pretty flower in the sunlight:

Baby coffee beans:

If you just want to spend some time walking around, and have some pretty good coffee, I highly recommend this place. My mom likes coffee, too, so I bought her a bag of coffee beans and the gift shop shipped it for me!

If there’s an independent bookstore anywhere, Mr. Oyster, despite being, um….directionally challenged, will find it. We found ourselves at the Talk Story Bookstore. We both love to read and we spent some time here. I was not reading, though (I’d brought my own electronic books and did not want to carry anything else on the plane!).

Instead, I was walking around the empty bookstore trying to silently jump out from behind shelves, or trying to make Mr. Oyster blush with some honeymoon-themed type of book (it never worked). The bookstore also has four cute little cats that like to hang out there.

We also loved Salt Pond beach. I think this is the best beach for swimming. The water is clear and there aren’t too many rocks to step on. I also have a little bit of fear about the ocean (I have no idea where this comes from), so I liked that there’s a big huge reef protecting it. It’s a great beach for kids and families, of which we saw many.

While I was standing/swimming in the water, I spoke to a wonderful woman who was there doing her physical therapy after a stroke. On another day, I met a mom and her grown daughter on vacation, from my hometown! Small world. And of course, Mr. Oyster and I swam together a lot.

Here I am doing my stand/swim:

We left around sunset.

The man at the bookstore let us know about the Arts Walk that was happening that evening, so we decided to go back and check it out.

We were so glad we stumbled upon this; it happens every Friday night in July. There was a lot of good live music, the art galleries are open, there are a few restaurants, and a local baker brought lots of pies for sampling.

An artisan works in her shop:

This curious little girl listened to the live band on the other side of the fence:

Mr. Oyster checked out one of the art galleries. The lady in here quickly caught on that Mr. Oyster knew what he was talking about when it came to art, and she gave us the super-hard sell! We practically had to sneak out of there to get away.

I almost forgot to mention our favorite restaurant, Red Salt in Poipu. It’s part of the beautiful Koa Kea resort. We loved our meal here, and went back again for our last night in Hawaii.

This is a salad. It wasn’t quite what I expected!

This is the cheese that goes with the salad.

I’ll finish up next time by showing you our beautiful condo, highlights of iPad honeymoon travel, and our unbelievably crazy, never-ending trip home!