Earlier this month I took a brief trip to Hawai’i, specifically to Honolulu, on the island of O’ahu. Almost exactly three years earlier, I’d visited Maui, which was the first time I’d been to Hawai’i. I enjoyed getting to go back, to a different part this time.

The weather was warm and sunny throughout my stay. I did a lot of clumsy stalking of birds, including zebra doves, spotted doves, cattle egrets, red-crested cardinals, common mynas, feral chickens and some adorable chicks, and a black-crowned night heron in the Ala Wai Canal (remember the one I saw in Central Park?). I got to wade a little on various crowded Waikiki beaches. I had hoped to walk a long ways along the ocean, the way you can walk from Santa Monica to Venice in LA, but there were a lot of barriers which made this impossible, so I alternated between beach and not-beach as I walked east.

I also got to taste a lot of good food, including a beet “poke,” ‘ulu (breadfruit, nicely starchy in the preparation I had), pohole (a type of fern, crunchy and tasty), and pa’i’ai (a type of pounded taro, a stage before poi). I ate an order of chocolate haupia pancakes, which were not bad and satisfied my taste for chocolate and coconut. Isabelle had introduced me to haupia (a coconut gelatin dessert), having learned of it herself from someone who’d been a grad student in Hawai’i. My last evening, I also had a sort of Hawaiian plate lunch, which I’d been hoping to try before I left.

Here are some photos:

Waikiki

Pretty fish!

Diamond Head, from Queen Kapi’olani Regional Park

The Ala Wai Canal

Dinner at Sam’s Kitchen: garlic shrimp, rice, salad, and potato salad (I was actually glad to get this because while macaroni salad intrigued me, I suspected I’d like it less!)