Hawai'i -- Hilton Humor... [Two]

 We did get some beach time...

I need to more fully tell the story of how we spent one of our Hilton days with no hot water in our room, or no water at all! We never quite got a full explanation, & we did survive without showers. But that was a negative experience for us all, including the sales staff trying to convince us to sign up for a time share plan with Hilton Grand Vacations. 

Obviously, we know how to make our own travel plans. The nice people with the sales job ("this is not a high pressure sell") had to acknowledge that for themselves. We don't have the usual 1 or 2 week vacation schedule, we don't have kids' entertainment to include, we don't play golf. We like to eat better [& usually later] than the few restaurants this place offered, with the exception of the last evenings' wine-pairing... when we were seated at group tables when we would have preferred to eat as a couple in that view with whales breaching in a brilliant sunset. These were, generally speaking, "not our people... not our thing".

We were happy to say Aloha to another sort of holiday!

We did find several sunny beach afternoons with our friend Zeke, who lives closer to Hilo... a fair bit of driving... he knows many more secluded spots to explore on his Island.

I was in the mood to read in the shade rather than swim with them. A fix of quiet... Ahh!

With much livelier shades of humor...

We stayed the last four nights with friend John Holliday, who lives looking down to the surf, most of a mile away...

His home has a sumptuous screened living room in a steep garden of citrus, with many orchids. A lovely pool with a huge avocado tree nearby. 

On our last visit it had been fun to help imagine the house as it would look after the remodel he was planning... using blue tape to mark where walls would move & new doorways would open. It was even more fun to walk through the finished project!

The lamp on my side of the bed danced me to dreamland.

One evening we were invited for cocktails to the hillside home of another friend, who had roomed with us at our 2019 visit to the Radical Faerie Gathering at Breitenbush Hot Springs in Oregon. Tom's home was delightfully quirky, with a tall wooden giraffe sculpture lifting into the two-storey stairway...

...its head surveying a palm tree chandelier in a jungle of art deco beveled glass!

With a rich sunset as we imbibed (martinis) on the deck beyond.

We met Zeke & Randy for a concert of young pianists with the Symphony... quite amazing talents!

Another wine pairing dinner gave us a second major food experience on which to fly home, quite happily!

Even as we arrived to weather which brought several inches of snow! Lovely in its short lived charm.