la vie en rose

The Saturday that we spent in Hawaii was a rainy one. We decided to use that day for our indoor stuff that we wanted to do, since we wouldn't be at the beach.

(And when it rains in Hawaii in March, it's still almost 80 degrees.)

We started off the day in Chinatown, which all the guidebooks say is definitely worth a stop and when we went last time, we thought not. We wanted to give it another go, this time when the markets were open.

When you're in the International District in downtown Seattle, to me at least, it still feels like Seattle. Different yes, but different in the way that Capitol Hill is different from Ballard. It's all still Seattle. Chinatown in Honolulu feels like a different country.

We didn't get a lot of pictures because we were just absorbing it all. It was really fun to feel out of our element and so foreign. Not that people were looking at us weird or anything (well, if they would be looking at anyone they would be looking at me, not J), but just the shops and the market and everything was so different.

We planned on eating lunch in Chinatown to try something new. Our guidebook recommended a dim sum place called Legend Seafood, so we headed up there. We have never had dim sum, we did not know what dim sum was. We did not know how to order dim sum.

We were quickly sat at a table in the middle of the cacophonous dining room. The host placed a card on our table. It was covered in Chinese writing with corresponding numbers. J grabbed a menu that was stuck in between the soy sauce and sugar. As we figured out what looked good, a lady came by and offered us tea. We accepted. Then another lady came by and offered us some steamed buns. We accepted. Then another lady came by and offered us some dumplings. We accepted. And another and another. We quickly realized that we wouldn't be ordering off the menu, but instead from the carts as they rolled by. The card was for them to stamp - the more plates you get, the more stamps you get. And that's how they know how much to charge you. We also quickly realized that we had no idea what we were eating. One definitely was shrimp, another we're pretty sure was pork, the egg drop soup may or may not have had shark fins in it...as we were leaving I saw the other side of a cart and saw that they do, in fact, have signs on them, and that we probably ate oxtail. But maybe it was better that way, because we tried everything without reservations. And everything we tried was delicious.

We walked off our lunch around downtown, checking out the huge banyan trees around the state capitol and Iolani Palace.

Is that belly full of shark fins or a baby?

Anyone who knows us knows that we love the TV show Lost. As in, don't call us on Wednesday nights. (Well, call away. We won't answer the phone.) As in, we looked up filming locations so we could visit them. If you haven't seen the show, I recommend starting at the beginning. We're in Season 5 right now and I couldn't possibly bring you up to speed unless you have a couple hours to kill this Saturday. I'll explain it all.

So if you're not familiar with the show, these pictures will just look like a nice Gothic church. But in reality, this is the scene of Daniel's Oxford, Desmond's Scottish monastery, and Charlie's boyhood Liverpool chapel.

This is the hallway that Desmond caught up with Daniel in to tell him that he was from the future. We were playing the role of the giddy fans.

After our 1st Lost set experience (more to come on that another day), we hopped on the bus and headed for the USS Bowfin, adjacent to Pearl Harbor.


Since we saw Pearl Harbor last year, we went to see the USS Bowfin, a WWII-era submarine docked in the same waters as the USS Arizona remains and the USS Missouri. It was cramped, smelled like oil and metal, and really cool.

The Captain's quarters

Torpedo room

The shower is on the left. The toilet is on the right. You could crap your pants and get cleaned up in 2 steps.

I took the wheel

while J manned the guns.