Kauai First Day

Maui was fun and beautiful.  I feel like we would've gotten more out of it if the weather had been warm enough to chill on the beach a bit.  But as we were leaving I was thinking that I never got that feeling I had last time I was in Hawaii.  I thought it must be because it wasn't my first time so the novelty has worn off.  Sad.  Not that I didn't enjoy it.  I did.  I just didn't feel like I was in a completely different element with a vibe that seemed to GET me.  As we flew into Kauai, my first glimpses of the dramatic mountain peaks against the water, I immediately had the feeling back.  It's Kauai!  It has my heart.  I'm obsessed.  Mountains, palm trees, rivers, waterfalls, ocean.  It's just the epitome of beauty in my eyes.  The fact that it's not as commercialized helps too.  This was from the airplane window:

We were busy in Maui and I hadn't had a good opportunity to get a nice run in.  I was ITCHING to move.  We couldn't check in to our place until later so we drove to this path on the beach (that happened to be just blocks away from our airbnb) and Ryan dropped me off.  I was in HEAVEN!!

 This little side path took you up to a parking lot off the main road, but I was fascinated by the tree canopy so I ran up it and then back down.

 This was what Ryan was doing while I was running my 8+ miles.

When we were looking for lunch, I searched Yelp for some tacos.  This place came up as one of the first ones. Tiki Tacos.  I put the address in maps and thought it looked very similar to our airbnb.  Well, that's because it WAS our airbnb.  Our room was right above this taco joint.  It was yummy too!

 Ryan saw this colorful little guy on our stairwell.

 Some cool art in the alley behind the taco place, view from our window.  You could also see the mountains back there over the buildings.

After we got checked in, we decided to walk a mile down the road to get some shaved ice.  This apartment was very central located as well, just down the road from the grocery store, RIGHT NEXT door to Ryan's favorite fried shrimp joint from our last trip (score!) and close to the helicopter, the river, etc, etc.  It was awesome.  So we started walking down the road and got pretty close when we pulled up the map to see where exactly it was and found out that Jo Jo's closes at 6.  So no shaved ice for us.  We stopped at the grocery store and got more veggies and macadamia chocolates.  We enjoyed the view anyway.  Palm trees and mountains... <3