Leaving the Bay Area
Starting a journey, requires leaving somewhere and that is how this first step begins. It’s been nearly a year since the initial thoughts started forming in my mind, on living abroad and walking away from the career and life as we knew it. It also meant leaving our house of 6+ years, the only home our daughter has known. We do expect to come back in a year or two, so we decided to rent it out.
The Lord of the House
We have a new master of the house, and it is this spectacular cat who quickly took a liking to his new home and exerted dominance by rolling around on the coffee table. By his permission, he is allowing his two caretakers to serve under the same roof! In a more serious note, we are blessed to have friends take care of the place and keep the place from falling into neglect while we are away. I think they will like living there too, it’s a friendly neighborhood and walking distance to the chill downtown of San Carlos.
Waikiki Hawaii
Our first stop, Hawaii. The original reason for flying through Hawaii was to land in Japan as close to the wife’s family as possible. When we bought our tickets, Japan was requiring 10 days of quarantine on arrival, along with strict rules about avoiding public transportation. So our original route was to land in Nagoya, Japan which has limited international flights but Hawaii was on the list. Long story short, and many flight cancellations/rebookings later, we were diverted to fly into Osaka with just a couple days in Hawaii.
Macarons
On our way out of the house, our friends gave us a box of Macarons from Alexander’s Patisserie. Alexander’s Steak House is well known and while we have walked past their bakery on a few occasions, it was too fancy of a treat to indulge ourselves, so we were really excited to finally try out their box of Macarons. I believe our daughter’s long flight was made incident free due to the treats. She ate more than the rest of us, and she’s usually quite picky about what she eats. Yummy!
Diamond Head
Every trip to Hawaii, we have a routine to hike up Diamond Head Crater the morning after we arrive. The last time we did this was last summer, and I couldn’t help but reflect on how much changed since that last hike. Back then, we were still working and slowly formulating the idea of retirement in our minds. I remember thinking about finances, work and how hot it was climbing up the short hike. This time, I still thought about finances after seeing the rough day on Wall Street, but I felt better in shape, a big benefit of retirement. Our daughter didn’t complain at all this time… she was slightly disappointed though, about the lack of a pineapple smoothie stand. She just shrugged and said, “oh well, guess we’ll just have to get ice cream later.” Progress for all.
Sheraton Waikiki
We loved our stay here last year, so we booked it again for our short trip. They are located in the middle of Waikiki, have a family friendly pool with water slide and just steps away from the beach. We spent an afternoon lounging around the pool/beach and some local beers were consumed.
Ice Monster
We can’t leave Hawaii without some shaved ice, can we? I believe Ice Monster came originally from Taiwan, and has a variety of flavors including matcha, bubble tea and fruit flavors. We opted for the strawberry this time, and it didn’t disappoint. There is something about Hawaiian weather and a treat like this, we nearly finished the mountain of strawberry goodness.
