Live from North America
- Thread starter Petri
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Petri
Senior Insider
I was referring to the old vibe that everything seems to have on these islands
On the coffee front we had coffee here on Big Island after picking up the rental car at konamountaincoffee.com's shop. Wow, the best coffee we've had on HI so far -- great taste, right temperature, and perfect milk foam (she even asked if we prefer "foamy" or "wet" -- "wet" was the right answer). They seem to roast the beans at the shop and do some chocolates as well. Promising!
We're staying at the Fairmont next to the Mauna Lani. Not really our type of place but we'll suffer through. I even left tip to the maid at the previous place! (Not like in Gran Cayman years ago -- they told it's customary to leave tip to the maid, I asked how much, 15%? -- and left 15% of the amount we paid for the accommodation itself. I haven't left anything to the maids since then.)
Reed
Senior Insider
Hey Petri,
We spent 5 winters on the Big Island. Try going North from where you are up to the funky little town of Hawi (pronounced HA-VEE). Have a drink at Bamboo and for a scenic drive from there take HWY 250 down to Waimea. Beautiful! Even though we lived there on Alii Drive in Kona, I am not a great fan of the town. Head down to the Captain Cook and you will pass numerous coffee spots before you get to CC which is a great place to kayak. Our favorite coffee place (I believe you would have to make an appointment) was Pele Plantation. 100% organic Kona. They use to do a private label for us that we used for catering gigs on Nantucket (before we felt compelled to use a local Nantucket source). Nice people. Our favorite resto there was without a doubt the Grille at the Four Seasons. We are not resort people so that was not the lure. Amazing food at their more casual resto on the property. Also some decent restos in Waimea like Merriman's.
You really should take a trip over to the Hilo side and be sure to do the "scenic tour" and then the Akaka Falls hike. I have not done this, but my husband "Kona" recommends the night time walk to the lava fields starting at the Yaegar visitor center, take the road down (about 25 miles) and park. Bring a flashlight and comfortable shoes. Back in the day, this was not an organized tour but a park ranger will guide you in the right direction. If you want to the the luau thing I would suggest going to Kona Village (also a cool place to stay in a "hale"). Great kaula pork. The poi, not so much.
Just a few suggestions that come to mind. PM me if you have any questions. My husband spent more time there than I and he might have some other ideas.
Aloha!
Kimberly
We spent 5 winters on the Big Island. Try going North from where you are up to the funky little town of Hawi (pronounced HA-VEE). Have a drink at Bamboo and for a scenic drive from there take HWY 250 down to Waimea. Beautiful! Even though we lived there on Alii Drive in Kona, I am not a great fan of the town. Head down to the Captain Cook and you will pass numerous coffee spots before you get to CC which is a great place to kayak. Our favorite coffee place (I believe you would have to make an appointment) was Pele Plantation. 100% organic Kona. They use to do a private label for us that we used for catering gigs on Nantucket (before we felt compelled to use a local Nantucket source). Nice people. Our favorite resto there was without a doubt the Grille at the Four Seasons. We are not resort people so that was not the lure. Amazing food at their more casual resto on the property. Also some decent restos in Waimea like Merriman's.
You really should take a trip over to the Hilo side and be sure to do the "scenic tour" and then the Akaka Falls hike. I have not done this, but my husband "Kona" recommends the night time walk to the lava fields starting at the Yaegar visitor center, take the road down (about 25 miles) and park. Bring a flashlight and comfortable shoes. Back in the day, this was not an organized tour but a park ranger will guide you in the right direction. If you want to the the luau thing I would suggest going to Kona Village (also a cool place to stay in a "hale"). Great kaula pork. The poi, not so much.
Just a few suggestions that come to mind. PM me if you have any questions. My husband spent more time there than I and he might have some other ideas.
Aloha!
Kimberly
Petri
Senior Insider
Thanks! We did the Akaka Falls hike today although the weather hasn't been on our side here. With the rain and fog, this island could well be flat. Hopefully the weather improves over the next days.
Andy, we walked the beach trail today before sunset and the Mauna Lani looked the best of all (apart from the few huge villas). Too bad we're not there, this Fairmont is pretty disappointing.
The Royal Caribbean commercial has been running so often on TV at the fitness center that L checked it out and now wants to get on a Oasis of the Seas cruise next month. She says it would fit the "Hawaii experience" perfectly, I was thinking more about setting foot on Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico, all countries not high on my list otherwise -- I'm more of a North Korea, Abkhazia, Myanmar, Transnistria etc. kind of a person, lol. Once in a lifetime, perhaps?
Andy, we walked the beach trail today before sunset and the Mauna Lani looked the best of all (apart from the few huge villas). Too bad we're not there, this Fairmont is pretty disappointing.
The Royal Caribbean commercial has been running so often on TV at the fitness center that L checked it out and now wants to get on a Oasis of the Seas cruise next month. She says it would fit the "Hawaii experience" perfectly, I was thinking more about setting foot on Haiti, Jamaica and Mexico, all countries not high on my list otherwise -- I'm more of a North Korea, Abkhazia, Myanmar, Transnistria etc. kind of a person, lol. Once in a lifetime, perhaps?
Petri
Senior Insider
Booking new accommodation, flights, cancelling previous reservations, ... world of a travel agent
We'll be hiking the lava fields on thursday evening. The weather has been sunny for the last two days on this side of the island, seems to improve on the other side as well.
I have diligently been using cash to acquire suitable notes for the future tipping needs.
We'll be hiking the lava fields on thursday evening. The weather has been sunny for the last two days on this side of the island, seems to improve on the other side as well.
I have diligently been using cash to acquire suitable notes for the future tipping needs.
Petri
Senior Insider
Any recommendations for a place to stay in Miami +- 100 km area? Preferably towards condo than resort style. Anyone with a inexpensive villa/house there that would be available for behaving finns?
We need to get our trip back on track but I doubt it will happen in a few weeks :guitar:
We need to get our trip back on track but I doubt it will happen in a few weeks :guitar:
Petri
Senior Insider
Still on the islands, we moved to Oahu yesterday and L is participating bachata course over the weekend.
We also learnt that one needs both dollar notes and quarter coins.. lots of them.
I'll report all the islands together when we eventually leave this place (the delayed spring isn't helping. Apart from the frequent sunshine, not really that much happening anywhere. We'll do one quick crazy thing when get back to mainland and hopefully return to normal after that
We also learnt that one needs both dollar notes and quarter coins.. lots of them.
I'll report all the islands together when we eventually leave this place (the delayed spring isn't helping
. Apart from the frequent sunshine, not really that much happening anywhere. We'll do one quick crazy thing when get back to mainland and hopefully return to normal after that 
Oahu is my least favorite of the three Hawaiian islands I've visited. The north shore is nice, but Maui and Lanai are nicer. Honolulu reminds me of Chicago, but with worse food, worse traffic, and tiger sharks off a beach slightly larger than Chicago's. The Missouri tour is interesting once though.
Petri
Senior Insider
The hotel charges more for washing a T-shirt than they cost at the store.. but they have a DIY laundry -- with a credit card reader that doesn't work. As Oahu is an extension to Japan, it's quite fun to watch the japanese girls wondering how the laundry works.
DMLewin said:
Yes, this is very different from the other islands so far. We'll probably see what the fuzz about Pearl Harbor is and drive around the island, depending how the weather goes as it has been raining today.
We've been watching the Big Bang Theory tv-series from the tablet on the plane etc. and visit the Cheesecake Factory yesterday. I guess we'll need to do Olive Garden as well. American institutions, you know
Otherwise the diet has been mostly fish although I wonder how MikeR rates the fish here.. On Kauai we went to a restaurant and ordered some white zinfandel, ahi poke to share as a started and I ordered a steamed whole fish; the waiter checked that we were ok with a) the wine, b) raw fish in the poke, and c) having a full fish with the bones, head and everything. LOL.
Petri
Senior Insider
While L was dancing, I visit a local Verizon store to get us mobile Interweb. Originally I had planned to get something prepaid from Virgin Mobile but the idea of Sprint's WiMax as 4G and CDMA as 3G didn't sound that good. Instead I decided to see if the smart people at Verizon Store would sell me something.
And voila, got a 4G LTE MiFi device (although the prepaid models are the old ones) and a prepaid monthly subscription w/o contract. $130 for the device and 3G/month for $60 is pretty steep but I guess we'll live with that. They didn't have problems opening an account with just an e-mail address, didn't even check my ID. The sales clerk did call their customer services to activate the data plan so when I walked out of the store, the MiFi device was up and running.
The performance is "ok" here but not exactly in the 4G category. Verizon seems to transit all the traffic to the continent so I'll wait until we get off the islands to see what the real performance and coverage is.
And voila, got a 4G LTE MiFi device (although the prepaid models are the old ones) and a prepaid monthly subscription w/o contract. $130 for the device and 3G/month for $60 is pretty steep but I guess we'll live with that. They didn't have problems opening an account with just an e-mail address, didn't even check my ID. The sales clerk did call their customer services to activate the data plan so when I walked out of the store, the MiFi device was up and running.
The performance is "ok" here but not exactly in the 4G category. Verizon seems to transit all the traffic to the continent so I'll wait until we get off the islands to see what the real performance and coverage is.
KevinS
Senior Insider
I contend that in the US the term 4G is little more than a marketing term. It will be interesting to see what your opinion is.
Petri
Senior Insider
Our carriers also rank dual-carrier HSPA+ (up to 42 Mbit/s) as 4G but the marketing is getting better now that LTE is getting up and running around the cities. I can't say I have seen much dual-carrier HSPA+ but the 20+ Mbit/s HSPA+ has very decent coverage, and as that's the case, I don't really plan to rush to an LTE phone. Maybe next year.
We drove today to the northern shore in Oahu and I got full bars on the device there, somewhere nearby a mast. Speedtest from San Francisco gave ~15 Mbit/s down, ~20 Mbit/s up, which was pretty good IMHO. The download speed could have been better but the LTE's upload speeds are just amazing.
Our carriers use mainly the 1800 MHz frequency and there is space for wide 10-20 MHz channels, making it possible to give the 50-100 Mbit/s speeds people are seeing. The AT&T and Verizon's ~700 Mhz LTE is better for the coverage (our carriers will be doing 800 MHz (this/next year?)) but the channels are typically narrower.
My guess is that I'll be impressed by the LTE coverage in the US and less impressed by the speeds.
Petri
Senior Insider
I'm surprised Verizon's LTE exists here on Lanai as well, and way faster than the interweb Four Season offers (for free, $20/day gets you better interweb for multiple devices although I had no trouble registering multiple devices to the free service either).
But the product management for the prepaid service gets some rap. I wanted to see how much data we have used so far on the 3GB/month plan. Trying to register to My Verizon results; "We're sorry but you cannot register your tablet on My Verizon. Please set-up your account information on your device."
Eh? Some googling VZ forums and their customer support has responded to someone with a similar need:
"
I understand, exactly, how important it is to view and keep track of your device usage and not only is it important but convenient when you can do this all online. The 4G VZ Jetpack that you are using at this time can not be viewed online. Customers using this device must call in to our 24 hour customer service line to view all usage and make payments. I do apologize for any inconvenience this may cause."
.. and it turns out the customer support doesn't really know much about the prepaid service either and the only place to get the real information is the technical support with it's 30+ minute waiting times.
L used the MiFi to access interweb at the HNL airport and asked why don't we use it all the time (the interweb at the hotel in Honolulu was pretty slow and bad WiFi coverage). I had to tell her about the concept of data caps..
Petri
Senior Insider
Language barriers
Most of the time our names get spelt wrong, which isn't really surprising.
If I say my first name the way I say it in english followed by spelling it letter by letter, it usually results something like "Patrick". We were thinking how should I say it to get it written properly and "Pee Tree" might work, but it sounds a bit funny.. (or Tre really, no double i's at the end).
One hard word is "water". Years ago I said the wrong way and eventually learnt the proper british pronunciation. Now we've learnt that no one really understands the british way of saying it here.. but usually pick it up from the context (ice-, sparking-).
We are slowly getting along with the "how are you" but the "did you find everything ok" and "do you have questions on the menu" are still slightly surprising..
Most of the time our names get spelt wrong, which isn't really surprising.
If I say my first name the way I say it in english followed by spelling it letter by letter, it usually results something like "Patrick". We were thinking how should I say it to get it written properly and "Pee Tree" might work, but it sounds a bit funny.. (or Tre really, no double i's at the end).
One hard word is "water". Years ago I said the wrong way and eventually learnt the proper british pronunciation. Now we've learnt that no one really understands the british way of saying it here.. but usually pick it up from the context (ice-, sparking-).
We are slowly getting along with the "how are you" but the "did you find everything ok" and "do you have questions on the menu" are still slightly surprising..
Petri
Senior Insider
Actually, I thought " pee tree" was the way to pronounce your name!
We pronounce exactly the same way words are written, so if one imagines how it would be pronounced in italian or spanish, it gets pretty close. Abroad I've used a version between "Pee Tree" and "Patrick", which kind of explains the Patrick -thing.. but as the spelling doesn't seem to help here, we started to wonder how to get it right.
Coming from a "I tell you if I need anything" culture, all the questions, oh well..
We will finally leave HI in a couple of days and have something "interesting" booked, after that we might do a sidetrip to Belize before actually starting to look at the US temperature map for >=70F places. Not exactly the US tour we intended yet, no idea how we managed to so stuck here on the islands either..
