Today, we got up and walked the mile down the road from our resort to the local coffee shop named in honor of the Hawaiian god of coffee, Starbuck. :) Anyway, after a decently small breakfast, we got into the Jeep and drove the 25mi or so down to Kona. Now, if you know anything about triathlon (me and Cin are both triathletes), you know that Kona is the site of the Ironman World Championships every year, so this place has special significance for us. If you’d like to read about our experience there, and our run along part of the course, check it out over in my other blog, Tri, Jeff, Tri!
After we finished our run, we ate lunch at a cool place on Ali’i Drive called the Fish Hopper Restaurant (their website is here and their TripAdvisor page is here). Cin had a Kona Cobb Salad, which she really enjoyed, and I had some panko-crusted Ono, which was my first experience with Ono, a local Hawaiian fish. Delicious! They also had really good iced tea here, which we each drunk about ten glasses of after our run on the Kona course, and great service from Cisco, our bartender and server. After lunch, we checked out some shopping in downtown Kona. Kona reminds me of any other little beach town that I’ve ever been in and has escaped commercialism thus far. It’s awesome and a great place to visit with a lot of old world charm, even more so than Haleiwa on Oahu. If you’re on the Big Island, spend some time in the town of Kona…even if you’re not a triathlete, you’ll love it.
After Kona, we drove back to the Hilton and rested up a bit. We then booked a helicopter tour ride for the next day to see the active lava flows (sounds awesome!) and spent some time relaxing on lounge chairs right off the lagoon in the center of the resort. This Hilton features a huge lagoon that is awesome for swimming and other watersports, and even has a section with a dolphin encounter and you can see the dolphins swimming around in their area in the evening. Very sweet.
We spent an hour and a half or so there and then went back to our room, cleaned up again, and went to dinner at Bella Vista, an Italian joint at the Hilton. This place was decent…we both had make-your-own-pasta with variations on tomato sauce and meatballs, along with salad. Pretty good food and good service as well. After dinner, we headed to the main lounge in the resort and each had a drink while listening to the band they had in, which was really good. Then, a short boat ride back to our room area, some TV watching, and off to bed.
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