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OUR DAY ON KAUAI

Later today the Pride of America departs Nawiliwili Harbor, and will take us on a cruise tour via Kilauea to Haena and beyond.  Then, back to Honolulu by Saturday morning.  But about yesterday, first, lunch of Spaghetti Bolognese, plus.

By the way, do you know that Stella Artois Beer is around 600 years old?  Den Hoorn brewery in Leuven, Belgium was founded in 1366.  That was 126 years before Columbus "discovered" America.

After lunch, we took a shuttle to Anchor Cove and walked around, beginning with Kalapaki Beach, which had a couple of strange birds, not quite pigeon, not quite dove.  

Found ourselves our way to The Royal Sonesta Hotel and Marriott Kauai Beach Club, with a Koi pond.

Once called the Kauai Surf, Chris Hemmeter (here with former governors Waihei and Cayetano) upgraded the facility to the Westin Kauai with 36 holes of golf.  He was the one who began the development of resort hotels in Hawaii, and, wrote James Michener, Hemmeter's Hyatt Regency (now the Hilton Waikoloa Village) on the Big Island:  It's the kind of place God would have built if he had sufficient cash flow.  Hemmeter grew up next to Stanford University, went to Cornell, and came to Hawaii in 1962 as a trainee with Sheraton.  I went to Stanford, graduated in 1962 and returned to my home state (and it was not yet a state when I first left) as a C. Brewer trainee, assigned to Naalehu on the Big Island.  Hemmeter left Hawaii in 1991 to build better casino/resorts, and never quite made it big, passing away 20 years ago of liver cancer.


From these hotels, you can see the Pride of America.

Dinner was at East Meets West, with a teppanyaki area and sushi bar.  Note the boy who got my birthday cake was in line with his mom and dad.  Had an excellent meal of wakame salad, salt and pepper squid, pot stickers, egg drop and corn soup with cognac, and soup noodle.


Super Hurricane Lee lurks in the Atlantic Ocean, just north of the Caribbean and generally heading for the USA.  Was up to 165 MPH yesterday, weakened to 155 MPH today, the lower limit of what is considered to be a super hurricane.  Here are two graphics about where Lee will go:

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