Solomons!

This is a test.

Birthday boy

I am in Waikiki for my Birthday. I hit the beach and watched the canoe races, the sunset and the fireworks.

Then I wondered the streets to find some entertainment. Successfully! I found a strange convergence of tastes in Waikiki... Thanks go the crew of the HMCS Ottawa, the girls at Femme Nu, and that crazy Australian four piece ukulele band providing the music!

Lava is cool!

On top of the World

Yesterday, I went up to the summit of Mauna Kea. At 10000m from base to top, it's the biggest mountain on the planet. 4200meteres from sea level, it's an ideal location for an observatory. What a place for a nerdly tourist to visit...


The sky was clear, the view stunning. My pictures are in the gallery!
At this time of year, because we're so close to the Equator, you can see both the star Polaris and Sirius. Wow!

Sunset was awesome. (You can check it out in the gallery of course), but above, is my favourite picture of my whole trip. That's not another mountain on the horizon... it's the shadow of the mountain I am standing on, cast across the top of the clouds. Those are my legs and so my shadow is cast to the very edge of the world.

No Break for the Brakes

Getting to Hilo was fun. I flew from San Francisco to Honolulu, and embarked on a regional flight to Big Island. As we we taxiing up for takeoff, the brake warning light came on and we had to swap to a "better" plane.

They have a sense of humour here!

Aloha!

I am in Hawaii! I am staying on the outskirts of Hilo, on Big Island. It's a bit of a rest stop on my way home :)

This is where I went swimming this morning.


This is where I went swimming yesterday.

w00t!

Clean clothes

Years in the planning, months in the organising... I finally ate a meal with my dear friends Tanya and Dan at Thomas Keller's French Laundry.


This place has an intimidating reputation. A very good reputation. Many of their ingredients are grown on site:


Staff can bee seen scurrying from the kitchen, secuteurs in hand to harvest from the surrounding gardens. Slight Faux pas... I didn't bring a jacket. So they lent me one. lol.

Insisted on it. How cute.

OK. After that I wasn't going to make a fool of myself snapping away at every plate served up to our table during the 4 hours it took to have lunch. So I will summarise; we had around about 9 courses along with several rounds of amuse bouches, two bottles of wine and finished up with ports and other sweet stickys.

It was wonderfully good. So good in fact that I lost track of what I ate... But I know I have never eaten better.

To be completely honest, I have eaten almost as good elsewhere, at a much more affordable rate. However, as I was pondering this very weighty matter sometime after the 7^th course, it occurred to me that that's hardly the point and certainly not worth considering whilst in situ. Then dessert won me over. It's not that it was really good, which it really was. It's that it never seemed to end. Wave after wave of smaller and more instense servings turned an epic and ultimately indefensibly indulgent meal into something more.

It was symphonic.

Supper Club

After our gastrogasm at the Laundry, we all needed to rest...

Soon enough though, the food fairies were bewitching us and we followed their call to Bouchon for dinner. Unfortunately they were fully booked. Fortunately the hostess invited us to wait and sample some liquor libations from the well stocked bar...


We had Manhattans, Martinis, Juleps, Aviations and more, I'm sure.


Oh yeah, eventually had dinner too. A dozen mussels with vodka and some girly sandwich.

Hearty Breakfast

It all finished off with Breakfast at Ad Hoc. Today's brunch service was Roasted figs with goats cheese, toasted walnuts and a light salad with an aged balsamic reduction. That was course one..

Then came the eggs baked with cheese and marinated capsicum, finger potatoes and pork belly:


And honestly, what breakfast is complete without a dessert of apple fritters, vanilla ice-cream and a pomegranate and champagne cocktail?

So hungry, So thirsty

San Francisco has some real dining and drinking highlights. I have with Tanya and Dan's help, dined and drunk my way around a selection of venues, some outstanding, some not and some just plain fun.

The City Beer Store is one of the fun ones. It's a bottle shop selling only beer. Yeah, only several hundred different kinds... Oh and you can linger instore and drink your amber investments right there and then!

Sugar Cafe is a swanky Internet cafe/bar... Worst. Cappuccino. Ever.

Revolution Cafe is a live music venue. Filled with hipsters, it's very cool. Cheap but satisfying sangria.

Berettas is also aimed squarely at the way too cool. We arrived for supper and were immediately seated in the uncool section, out of sight of patrons, passers-by and the attractive staff. Luckily, I am cool about not being identified as cool. And they served very good food!

Bourbon and Branch is a recreation of a speakeasy. It's so cool that it does not publish or advertise its location. The sign out the front is for a completely different business and you need to know a password to get in. Cocktails are plentiful, delicious and reasonably priced! I don't remember how I got home that evening..


Brainwash is a combination laundromat and cafe. Go figure. No surprise all the fixies parked out front.

The cafe inside Google's San Francisco office is filled with the geek. The food is pretty good; the apple juice, the best ever.

Boulettes Larder has a table fancy table right in the kitchen, and a dog so hairy that you just cannot tell which end is which and outstanding carrot soup.