We were up and out at a normal time today, so we made our traditional trek to the park and then the market for coffee. The locals we remembered from our other trips are still there at the first table on the patio. Nice to know some things never change.
We don’t do much for the rest of the day. Just sort of hang out, read and relax. Tonight though is market night, so we will be going up to the town center to peruse the trucks, food, and veggie vendors. First though we go to Lanikai Brewing, a local brewery we had no idea existed. I don’t know how we found it, I think I stumbled across it on the web somehow. But we decide to try them out. We park in the Target lot – because we’ve done reconnaissance and there is no parking at the brewery. Plus this puts us right in the middle of the brewery and the market. So it works.
At the brewery, it is only a tasting room. And a very small one at that. It is packed with people – meaning 6 people – it’s that small. We get tasters of Pillbox Porter (nice) and Okole Maluna, a chocolate, coffee, coconut stout (also nice). As we are standing there tasting, more people come in and we hear the Lanikai guys tell them that beers are $1 and $2 to taste? But they didn’t charge us, so, we’re not sure what the deal is. We finish our beers, but decide not to buy any, because honestly? We don’t need any, we don’t want to walk back to the car and they are crazy expensive. Plus as more people come in, it is just getting tightly packed in there, so we decide to leave. But, first we want a sticker. So I go to buy one, and the guy tells me it’s $3. Well, I’m already committed, so I just pay him, but $3 for a sticker? Then I think, oh, wait a minute. Bet it was $1 for each beer tasting and then $1 for the sticker. That would make way more sense. But no one ever told us that…..just conjecture on our part.
We’re a little too early for the Market, because we figured we’d spend more time at the brewery. We’re right next to Boardrunners, one of the dive bars here, so we went in for a drink. Ok, its a dive, but we normally do well in dives. Not so much here. The wine choices sucked. I had water. The beer choices sucked, Ed ended up with a Longboard, which is his least favorite Kona beer, by far. To make matters worse they were blasting country music. Argh. This is just so not good.
We finally decide to leave, pay our bill, which is an astounding $5.75 for a happy hour crappy beer? This place is off our list. We walk through the market, which is bustling, then decide to head to Whole Foods for their bar – yes, we hate to do it, they’ve got a good reputation –and as it turns out have great wine and beer happy hour specials and great food specials. But we’re just drinking right now.
In the end we decide to go out for dinner tonight, we try the Market, but they have a 45 minute wait, so we cross the street to Cactus which is traditionally our go to happy hour food place and just do pu pus. I have the pork empanadas and goat cheese/yellow squash fritters while Ed has the empanadas and the killer cheese fundido. They really know how to do tapas here.
Thoroughly stuffed, we head home to veg on the sofa and plan the rest of our time here in Kailua.
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