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shannon_aIt's always been our plan to go over to Oahu a few times a year, to get a bit of culture, including plays, museums, a wider variety of restaurants, and the other things we don't get on the very rural island of Kauai. Yeah, it's $100 roundtrip nowadays, but that's 12 or so round trips from Berkeley to SF on BART, or a full tank of gas, so it's comparable to other potential trips when it's just a few times a year thing.
Obviously, the pandemic got in the way of that. We were out to Oahu one time last year, around June, but Kimberly was in doing tests at Queen's, and I spent some of the time visiting her and most of the rest of the time working — though I had at least one nice walk the length of Waikiki (and got to walk through Honolulu every day to go see Kimberly, which was less nice, but started to familiarize me with the city).
Well this year, back in May, we started seeing ads for "Beyond Van Gogh" in Honolulu. Not only were we just past the 14-day mark of fully vaccinated at that point, but the islands had been offering vaccines to anyone who wanted them for about a month. So we decided to go, but to push our trip all the way to the end of the Beyond Van Gogh run, and got tickets for the next to last week of the show. Because we figured that the pandemic problems would be really great by then, because sufficient people should be vaccinated at that point, and COVID, already at low numbers, should be in complete retreat.
Ha.
(We'd have done better to go before July 4th.)
We knew that people were people anti-social adolescents throughout the pandemic. That they wanted all their freedumbs, but without any responsibility, like they were 13-years-old or something. But I think the numbers for vaccination stalled out more than anyone expected, and certainly we didn't think that a new grossly contagious variant was going to kick up.
But it did, of course. The kowtowing of Trumpists, conspiracists, faith healers, and crunchy-granola science deniers to the Delta variant is going to be another mark of shame in this pandemic.
So last week we had the highest daily COVID count ever for the island, at more than 600, but there were some delayed results in there. The next two days we hit 400s or 300s, also higher than the previous highest day.
We did actually talk about whether we should still go. Because Oahu is having somewhat worse problems than Kauai.
But, I mean, we're vaccinated, and we knew we'd be masking. Is there some point where we can say it's still responsible (and relatively safe) to do stuff? I dunno, but we kept to our plans. We caught a plane to Oahu this morning.
An incredible act of kindness from the Hawaiian airlines staff at Lihue. After Kimberly popped in to get a tag for her knee scooter, the clerk then came back to us without prompting and exchanged our boarding passes for seats 20A and 20B for boarding passes for seats 5A and 5B, because she didn't want Kimberly to walk too far.
Which was indeed very helpful for us.
The amazing thing was its unprompted nature. She just saw Kimberly's scooter, and figured out a way to make life better for her.
OK, Hawaiian, you've come off my s***-list, though I'm aware this is probably about the character of people in the islands, not in the corporate offices.
I choose an AirBnB out on the corner of Waikiki and Honolulu, mainly because it was pretty close to the convention center where our Van Gogh exhibit is. But it turns out to be pretty nicely located, as we can get to some of the more urban stuff in Honolulu and I could also walk over to the nice lagoon I like in Waikiki. (Will I? Dunno.)
The host for the AirBnB is extremely hands on, which is somewhat nice because he's a friendly guy, who was even willing to let us in a few hours early so that we could drop off our bags, but he just doesn't seem suited to running an AirBnB because he's really paranoid about the place being damaged, and has long lists of rules as a result, and says that he threatens people to not mess up the AirBnB, even if they're twice his size.
But the AirBnB is nice. A compact little place, much much better than a hotel room, nicely furnished, and with enough space not to feel cramped.
After we landed at the AirBnB the plan was to scoot out 2 miles to the Honolulu Art Museum, getting lunch on the way out and (possibly) dinner or the way back. (We weren't entirely sure how long we'd spend at the museum.)
Lunch was dim sum, which was great, as it's not really available on Kauai. For dinner Kimberly got Indian, while I got a portobello sandwich elsewhere.
In between was the museum.
Which was much nicer and had much better content than we expected.
To a certain extent, it's a hodge-podge, with a lot of small, eclectic collections. There's a pretty rapid move through a huge swath of American art, a similar fast-forward through European art, and a wide scattering of art from different Asian cultures.
We found something to really like in almost every room, from impressionists (of course) to Hawaiian art (mostly art of Hawaii, not art by Hawaiians) to Indian statuettes to daggers from a variety of cultures to a lot more.
The whole museum was also really beautifully built, with a number of open courtyards that had tables for sitting out in and were really attractive and pleasant.
All around, a great little experience, and we'll definitely return.
Upon returning to our AirBnB we learned that the front window moans like Myrtle for some reason. Fortunately, we won't be able to hear it in our bedroom.
The islands hit a new high for COVID tests today, again over 600.
Meanwhile, as has been the case all summer, the islands refuse to take any counter-measures, because maintaining the tourist season is more important.
I'm guessing there will be lockdowns the day after Labor Day, as our politicians don't even seem to hide the fact that they care more about tourists than residents.
But in this case, that means we get to tour.
Obviously, the pandemic got in the way of that. We were out to Oahu one time last year, around June, but Kimberly was in doing tests at Queen's, and I spent some of the time visiting her and most of the rest of the time working — though I had at least one nice walk the length of Waikiki (and got to walk through Honolulu every day to go see Kimberly, which was less nice, but started to familiarize me with the city).
Well this year, back in May, we started seeing ads for "Beyond Van Gogh" in Honolulu. Not only were we just past the 14-day mark of fully vaccinated at that point, but the islands had been offering vaccines to anyone who wanted them for about a month. So we decided to go, but to push our trip all the way to the end of the Beyond Van Gogh run, and got tickets for the next to last week of the show. Because we figured that the pandemic problems would be really great by then, because sufficient people should be vaccinated at that point, and COVID, already at low numbers, should be in complete retreat.
Ha.
(We'd have done better to go before July 4th.)
We knew that people were people anti-social adolescents throughout the pandemic. That they wanted all their freedumbs, but without any responsibility, like they were 13-years-old or something. But I think the numbers for vaccination stalled out more than anyone expected, and certainly we didn't think that a new grossly contagious variant was going to kick up.
But it did, of course. The kowtowing of Trumpists, conspiracists, faith healers, and crunchy-granola science deniers to the Delta variant is going to be another mark of shame in this pandemic.
So last week we had the highest daily COVID count ever for the island, at more than 600, but there were some delayed results in there. The next two days we hit 400s or 300s, also higher than the previous highest day.
We did actually talk about whether we should still go. Because Oahu is having somewhat worse problems than Kauai.
But, I mean, we're vaccinated, and we knew we'd be masking. Is there some point where we can say it's still responsible (and relatively safe) to do stuff? I dunno, but we kept to our plans. We caught a plane to Oahu this morning.
An incredible act of kindness from the Hawaiian airlines staff at Lihue. After Kimberly popped in to get a tag for her knee scooter, the clerk then came back to us without prompting and exchanged our boarding passes for seats 20A and 20B for boarding passes for seats 5A and 5B, because she didn't want Kimberly to walk too far.
Which was indeed very helpful for us.
The amazing thing was its unprompted nature. She just saw Kimberly's scooter, and figured out a way to make life better for her.
OK, Hawaiian, you've come off my s***-list, though I'm aware this is probably about the character of people in the islands, not in the corporate offices.
I choose an AirBnB out on the corner of Waikiki and Honolulu, mainly because it was pretty close to the convention center where our Van Gogh exhibit is. But it turns out to be pretty nicely located, as we can get to some of the more urban stuff in Honolulu and I could also walk over to the nice lagoon I like in Waikiki. (Will I? Dunno.)
The host for the AirBnB is extremely hands on, which is somewhat nice because he's a friendly guy, who was even willing to let us in a few hours early so that we could drop off our bags, but he just doesn't seem suited to running an AirBnB because he's really paranoid about the place being damaged, and has long lists of rules as a result, and says that he threatens people to not mess up the AirBnB, even if they're twice his size.
But the AirBnB is nice. A compact little place, much much better than a hotel room, nicely furnished, and with enough space not to feel cramped.
After we landed at the AirBnB the plan was to scoot out 2 miles to the Honolulu Art Museum, getting lunch on the way out and (possibly) dinner or the way back. (We weren't entirely sure how long we'd spend at the museum.)
Lunch was dim sum, which was great, as it's not really available on Kauai. For dinner Kimberly got Indian, while I got a portobello sandwich elsewhere.
In between was the museum.
Which was much nicer and had much better content than we expected.
To a certain extent, it's a hodge-podge, with a lot of small, eclectic collections. There's a pretty rapid move through a huge swath of American art, a similar fast-forward through European art, and a wide scattering of art from different Asian cultures.
We found something to really like in almost every room, from impressionists (of course) to Hawaiian art (mostly art of Hawaii, not art by Hawaiians) to Indian statuettes to daggers from a variety of cultures to a lot more.
The whole museum was also really beautifully built, with a number of open courtyards that had tables for sitting out in and were really attractive and pleasant.
All around, a great little experience, and we'll definitely return.
Upon returning to our AirBnB we learned that the front window moans like Myrtle for some reason. Fortunately, we won't be able to hear it in our bedroom.
The islands hit a new high for COVID tests today, again over 600.
Meanwhile, as has been the case all summer, the islands refuse to take any counter-measures, because maintaining the tourist season is more important.
I'm guessing there will be lockdowns the day after Labor Day, as our politicians don't even seem to hide the fact that they care more about tourists than residents.
But in this case, that means we get to tour.