The CityGirls Go Hiking

Our good friend TheSailor spent the month of July sailing from Hawai’i to California aboard the tall ship Robert C. Seamans.

Today, the ship sailed into San Francisco Bay through the Golden Gate, passing under the Golden Gate Bridge. We packed a picnic and some warm clothes and went to watch the ship come in.

Such a fancy, pretty ship. Just don’t run into the bridge now! (Yes, it’s foggy, but not that foggy.)

The coastline in front of our condo on Kaua’i was rough bluffs and pounding waves. Clearly not good for swimming. And yet, there were all these warning signs on the path along the bluffs enumerating the reasons why swimming was not a good idea.

(more…)

Chocoholics that we are, we were super excited to learn about a chocolate farm tour on Kaua’i. Hawai’i is the only state in the US where cacao is grown, and very few growers of cacao process it into chocolate.

One place that does the whole cycle from bean to bar is Garden Island Chocolate, a sustainably-run fruit farm and small-batch, artisinal chocolate producer.

Before our farm tour, we fortified ourselves with macadamia pancakes with coconut syrup at a place that celebrated one of the island’s most notorious denizens: the chicken.

(more…)