Remember back in November when Zac and I mixed up some wine and beer? Well, the wine was ready for bottling so we brought Megan, Paul, Bernadette and her husband along for the fun. Riesling. Yum. I brought some cheese and crackers and we sat around and chit chatted. Truthfully, this installment in the vacation didn't have any bumps to speak of. The only complaint I had that afternoon is that the Triscuits were too salty. I don't remember Triscuits being that salty. Good thing I brought Wheat Thins too.
Here's us on New Year's Eve down at Waikiki. We thought we'd be able to bar hop along the beach for the night, having a drink here and there, ending with us watching the fireworks display over Waikiki. The best laid plans . . .This is one of those bumps where our ignorance was the culprit. We figured parking Downtown would be awful on New Year's Eve so we agreed to meet with Bernadette and her husband for an early supper, thereby ensuring a parking spot. After eating and talking, it was only 7:00. We still had five hours to kill. That's a lot of time. We walked along the strip for a little while and tried to go to Duke's for a drink. All the tables were full, of course, and the bar was packed. We managed to get a drink and stand out on the beach part of their bar. We decided that we'd try to move to the Shore Bird. As we were walking down the beach it started to rain. A lot. As you can see from the above photo, Megan is making a sad face. And Paul and Zac are wet.
We finally got to the Shore Bird, drenched, and found that place to be just as packed as Duke's. There was no good way to have drinks there. We decided to try the Hale Koa. We figured we were already wet and there was a break in the rain, so we headed further down the beach. We got to the Hale Koa's outdoor bar and found out that it's not a regular bar for the night. Instead they're charging $14 per person for cover. True, they had a DJ and party favors, but you still had to pay for drinks. We weren't too keen on paying that much so we headed to the Hale Koa's inside bar because we were getting tired of walking around. It was basically vacant with a couple of bartenders and a few flat-screen tvs playing SportsCenter. Not exactly the atmosphere we were aiming for on New Year's Eve. We forced ourselves to have a drink (second drink in three hours - I'm out of control!!) and finally realized that we weren't going to be able to stay awake til midnight (still two hours away) unless we went outside to listen to the DJ blare music.
We headed back outside, ponied up the $56 to get in, had one more drink (last of the night) and tried to have as much fun as we could. We danced a little and tried to lighten the mood, but frankly we were all pretty grumpy because the night had not turned out like any of us wanted. Instead of a fun evening of relaxing, tossing back some drinks and enjoying each other's company we instead were damp, tired, wandering nomads that were getting on each other's nerves.
Finally midnight came along and everything was okay. The countdown from 10 seconds, the kissing at the stroke of midnight, the fireworks going crazy over the ocean.
As soon as the fireworks ended the four of us looked at each other and just nodded. "Let's go." We were home, in bed, in less than 40 minutes. Not the best New Year's I've ever had, but not the worst either.
No comments:
Post a Comment