1.13.1 Volcanoes!

We spoke to Eric the day before or two days before and he was going to
Hawaii’s Big Island after the wedding. I thought it would be fun to
do a day trip, so I bought us tickets (on Go! airlines for about $90 a
person) for a day trip. I think this is the first time I’ve done a
flying day trip. We were supposed to fly out at 6:40am, but got there
at 6:20am and didn’t make the flight. We got the next flight, and
made it there by about 8:20am.

Eric met us and we had breakfast at Ken’s Pancake House which was
great. I really liked that place. We had done an IHOP breakfast
before, so I’m sure Risa was like, “Man Americans eat too many
pancakes!” but I was like “yeah! Pancakes!” We split a dish because
like I said, I think I was about to explode. It was great though. Go
there. Eric had a Filipino sort of burger sausage thing, and it
looked amazing. We had banana pancakes and they were great. I didn’t
really like the passionfruit syrup (too citrus-y) or the coconut syrup
(too coconutty) or the guava syrup (uh…) but the raspberry and
normal syrup (not to mention the bacon) were great.

Then we hit the volcano. The volcano was cool. Especially cool was
the lava tunnel. We could have used more flashlights. It was super
dark. I felt like a real spelunker. I really enjoyed it. We also
saw lots of steam fields, there was lots of stink, and it seemed
pretty volcano-y all around.

For lunch we planned to eat at Thai Thai restaurant in Volcano Village
but it was closed until 4pm. So we went to Ning’s Thai in Pahoa which
makes the Hippy list. The food was quite good and reasonably priced.
The spicy Tom Yum soup was really spicy, while the pumpkin curry was
sweet and tasty.

After lunch we got a coffee (thanks Eric! Man I am hopped up on
coffee lately) and then hit the airport where we did make our trip
back.

1.13.2 Dinner at Roy’s

We had a bit of trouble getting an address, but eventually I got one
and we headed out to Roy’s for dinner. (Or see yelp reviews.) It was
very nice. Since I messed up my Filet Mignon order at DK’s
Steakhouse, I got Filet Mignon again and did it medium rare this
time. Very good. They gave our table an appetizer as well: the fried
something balls that were very good.

My filet mignon was great. Risa had the rack of lamb which was quite
good. I liked the place. The concierge was great. There were a lot
of Japanese people there (not a bad thing as far as I am concerned,
but that does seem to bother others – strangely, mostly Japanese
people from what I can tell!) It was nice eating with the Tanaka
family again, but it would have been nice to have more Evans – Tanaka
time. That is a bit hard though due to the language problems, like I
said before. I really need to work harder at being a better bridge
between the two worlds.

We then headed home and brought a bunch of Pyramid Beer to the Tanaka
family. We bought a sampler pack (12 beers, 4 types) when we first go
here, and had half of it left. So we dropped that off at the Moana
Surfrider, and Risa’s sister Rie tried on her wedding dress. It
seemed to be a fun time all around, except for me because I was
exhausted. I brought a book and read, not engaging the translate lobe
for as much as possible.

Then we came home and I tried to sleep, Risa stayed up late doing
laundry and playing on the computer. I somehow managed to get bitten
by something on Hawaii, so was itchy and had a hard time sleeping.
Volcano bugs?