Monthly Archives: September 2008

Maui Winery

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http://www.mauiwine.com/

We had a late start to the day so we only made it to one stop today. We spent the morning planning Ron’s scuba trips and snorkeling for me. Should be more interesting if we get some good pictures while out on the ocean.

Back to today, we stopped at Maui’s Winery, aka Tedeschi Vineyards. It’s quite a drive from our resort and at first we thought we went the wrong way. But if you follow their directions, just keep going, even though Highway 37 becomes Route 31, you’ll reach the tasting room of the winery eventually, just be patient…

They offer free tours but only at 10:30am, 1pm, and 3pm. We just missed the 3pm tour so went directly to the tasting room instead. They offer each person 4 tastings or 6 tastings per couple for free. They have grape wines, pineapple wines, and raspberry wines. They have sparkling and still.

In the Bay Area, they sell the Maui Blanc (pineapple wine), Maui Splash! (pineapple and passion fruit wine), Maui Sparkling (pineapple wine with a bit of fizz) at Cost Plus and/or BevMo! At the winery they also have a blush, reds, another sparkling, and a raspberry wine. They weren’t serving all of their selection today but it didn’t matter, I fell in love with the raspberry wine. You could just pour it over ice cream by itself or it’d go really well with a bar of dark chocolate or a chocolate lava cake! Makes your mouth water? We bought a few bottles to bring home, so invite yourself over to have a taste test 🙂

As we were leaving the tasting room, there was a beautiful cat sitting outside.

He or she didn’t really want to stay put though and kept on wandering away from us.

We also walked away with a box of their white chocolates with macadamia nuts and infused with their Maui Blanc Pineapple Wine.

Since we didn’t get to try this red, we bought a bottle to have with the rib eye steaks that we bought to BBQ in the next few days.

Another beautiful sunset in Maui.

Lahaina

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For lunch today we decided to try the Cool Cat Cafe, voted the “Best Burger on Maui”. Ron and I ordered the Frings (1/2 basket of fries, 1/2 basket of onion rings). The onion rings were well fried and the onions very sweet. The fries had some sort of spice mix on it.

I ordered the Jailhouse Rock burger with sauteed mushrooms, Jack cheese, mayo, lettuce, tomatoes, pickles, sweet Maui onions, and thousand island dressing on a French roll. Oh so delicious!

Ron ordered The Duke burger with bacon, melted cheese, and golden onion rings covered in their special BBQ sauce.

I enjoyed both burgers equally… hee hee…

Ron topped off his burger with a light Hawaiian beer.

Needless to say, we were both really stuffed so we went for a bit of shopping to walk off some of the calories. We went in search of two jewelry stores that I saw ads for in all the Maui magazines. The first one called Maui Divers advertised these pretty bamboo pendants. I think I liked them because they remind me of a flute but I didn’t like them as much when seeing them in person. We also visited another store called Glass Mango Designs which advertised these glass jellyfish pendants. At the store we found out they are made by an artist called Jeremy Sinkus. They were beautiful but the lady at the store quoted me the price of $225 for the most expensive to $180 for the least expensive. I was like “thanks, but I’ll have to think about it…”. I’m glad I didn’t buy as from an online store, they range from $60 to $90! Click here for one place that you can buy online.

We did some more walking around downtown Lahaina and before getting back to the car, saw this interesting sight, it looked like a recent ship wreck.

We almost couldn’t get out of our parking spot because they were having some sort of kids marathon on the street so it was closed off. Apparently it is the “Front Street Mile” for kids and adults. We got out of there just in time before they wouldn’t let us out.

Before heading back to our hotel, we stopped at the MauiGrown Coffee store. They have samplers which you can request before buying a cup of coffee. Ron and I weren’t too impressed by their coffee overall but maybe they’re still a young company. They do have a plantation with a free self-guided tour so hopefully we’ll have time to check it out as the store employee said there are cherries on the trees right now.

After we got back to the hotel, I fell right asleep.

I missed the beautiful sunset but Ron caught a great picture of it for me.

Cool Cat Cafe
658 Front Street
Lahaina, HI

Glass Mango Designs
858 Front Street
Lahaina, HI

Maui Divers
658 Wharf Street
Lahaina, HI

MauiGrown Coffee Company Store
277 Lahainaluna Road
Lahaina, HI

Maui Day 2

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Our first stop this morning was at Burger King for breakfast. Last time we visited Hawaii, we went to McDonald’s and they served Spam with breakfast so we wanted to see what BK offered. They do have spam or portuguese sausage served with rice and scrambled eggs.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

Next we visited the Kula Botanical Garden. It’s a bit of a drive but quite peaceful.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

They have a small aviary with white doves and love birds. These two were very cute as they were the only ones really sitting next to each other and they kept on pushing each other, kind of like they were having a disagreement or something.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

The bumble bees look a lot different here, almost like a beetle.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

There are some interesting wood sculptures throughout the garden.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

There is another enclosure where they keep other fowl. This was an interesting bird.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

They also have this three-horned gecko in an enclosure. Never seen anything like this before. It was changing it’s skin.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

After the walk through the botanical gardens, we headed to Surfing Goat Dairy. We saw this hilarious set of signs on the way there.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2
From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

We arrived at Surfing Goat Dairy.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

We were greeted by the “kids”.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

We don’t normally like goat products (milk, cheese) but thought we’d try out the chevre flight, 6 soft spreadable cheeses of your choice. We tried:

Purple Rain – mix of dried lavenders
Rolling Green – fresh garlic chives
Alaskan Delight – smoked salmon, green peppercorns
Mango Supreme – fresh mangoes, mango chutney
Ole! – jalepenos, artichokes, cilantro, lime juice
Mandalay – apple, bananas, curry

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

They serve it with a large basket of crackers. We were surprised that they didn’t have that pungent goat taste or smell. We’ve tried other cheeses and milk which we could hardly swallow because the smell and taste was overpowering. Not the case here, the cheeses were very light and pleasantly flavored. It was a good snack.

The farm also has friendly dogs and cats. They love the cheese and crackers.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2
From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

After our snack, we headed to check in at our hotel. We had a high floor room with a beautiful view.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

For dinner we stayed in and had Safeway club sandwiches and Hawaiian beer, wheat ale with passion fruit.

From 09-12-2008 Maui Day 2

For more pictures from the day, see below.

If you can’t see the slideshow above, click HERE.

Arrival in Maui, Hawaii

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I know it’s a bit weird to go on vacation so soon after coming back from Singapore but we planned this vacation last year. Since it was such a crazy time during the first week before I started work, I think it’ll be good just to lay on a beach chair and relax.

The flight was relatively smooth and we arrived in Maui around 11:30am. We picked up our rental car and went to find a place to eat. We asked the Alamo rental car employee for a suggestions and she recommended a place closeby. So we begin our journey.

From 09-11-2008 Arrival in Maui

We got a bit lost but finally found “Da Kitchen“.

From 09-11-2008 Arrival in Maui

Ron and I were looking forward to having a good Hawaiian lunch.

From 09-11-2008 Arrival in Maui

We tried the specials on their blackboard. We had the Combo #4 which as rice with salad or mac (I chose the mac) and pulled pork, hamburger with onions, teriyaki chicken, and spam.

From 09-11-2008 Arrival in Maui

We also had the fresh ahi poke.

From 09-11-2008 Arrival in Maui

Ron and I were so stuffed! The place was pretty busy too, lots of people ordering take-out and people were waiting outside. We got there just before 12 so just beat the lunchtime crowd. We also had free-flow iced coffee and tropical iced tea so lunch was about $20 for both of us. We left very satisfied but also very sleepy with food coma.

We went to check-in at our hotel for a nap. We’re staying at the Maui Seaside Hotel tonight before checking into the Marriott Maui Ocean Club tomorrow.

It’s been a nice lazy day.

Da Kitchen Cafe
Triangle Square
425 Koloa St. #104
Kahului, HI 96732
808.871.7782

Spices II on 6th Avene & Clement

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http://www.eatspices.com/

Today I went to go get my dad’s iPhone screen fixed. He has cracked the screen a few times so that the “touch” no longer works. I made an appointment with an Apple store “genius” to see if they could replace it. I was a bit disappointed because I wanted to see how it was done… instead, they just give you a new phone! If the phone is no longer under warranty, it costs $200+ to replace the phone but I guess it’s cheaper than buying a completely new phone off-contract.

Afterwards, Ron and I went to find somewhere to eat. Although we live around lots of difference restaurants, we always have trouble choosing a place. We ended up on Clement St. and decided to try Spices II on 6th Avenue. Our friends had mentioned this place before and said it was good so we thought we’d check it out.

We ordered the Numbing Spicy Cucumbers. I’ve been looking for a place that serves this type of cucumbers the way I like them (my favorite place is Sho Mi in Stockton, CA). This was almost what I wanted except that the cucumbers were a bit soft but the spice was good.

From 09-09-2008 Spices II on Clement Ave

Numbing Spicy Mandarin Noodle (I think). The egg noodles were chewy and the sauce not all that spicy but was an okay dish.

From 09-09-2008 Spices II on Clement Ave

Stir fried potato strips. Ron mistakenly ate the green pepper thinking it was a bell pepper and he almost choked! It was spicy. The dish was a bit weird though, sort of like stir fried hash browns instead of fried. The spice numbed your tongue and lips for a while but then suddenly goes away.

From 09-09-2008 Spices II on Clement Ave

Three spiced chicken. We saw the table near us having this dish and were wondering what it was because it looked good. By chance we ordered the three spiced chicken and it turned out to be the same dish. The chicken was really crispy and it was filled with hot peppers and was very yummy.

From 09-09-2008 Spices II on Clement Ave

Needless to say, we were stuffed. We didn’t realize how big the portions were so we ordered way too much so we have leftovers for the next day. Surprisingly, the spice wasn’t overpowering and it disappeared pretty quickly after we stopped eating.

I don’t know if it’s good or bad that this place is close to where we live. I predict we may be visiting this place more often to try other dishes.

Spices II
291 6th Avenue & Clement
San Francisco, CA