I'm ba-aaacckkk!!

I wish I could come up with some awesome title for this post, but I am typing this late after traveling and getting stuff done all day, so sorry. Well, I am back...barely. My trip was great, but let me tell you...flying has become a ginormous pain in the ass. I almost didn't make it to Hawaii and on the way back, I almost didn't make it back to LA. Luckily, I made it both ways and my luggage only got delayed once. Remember the days when flying used to be easy and even somewhat glamorous? Yeah, me neither. Now it is just a big shit show of people waiting in long lines and going crazy having to get between terminals. That all said, I had a really good vacation even though I missed my kitchen and all of you!! Having no internet connection besides my BlackBerry made me feel really disconnected with the world. I am happy to be back and here are some pictures of my Hawaiian adventure.

So, I spent the last four days in Kona, Hawaii. The big island is really nice, but unfortunately I couldn't escape the rain that has been plaguing LA...although, this time it was warm rain. The first full day (Christmas Eve), I got doused by a rainstorm while visiting the volcano park, but we did manage to see this beautiful double rainbow before the heavens opened up on us.



Christmas day was nice and relaxing spent at a couple of beaches before the rain came.

The next day we were up early for a trip to Kealaekua Bay (which has my sis' name in it!) to kayak and snorkel. Without going into details, there was an episode of me getting out of the kayak where I resembled a beached whale. I definitely worked up an appetite that day which was great because we went to a luau that night. Here is a pic of my plate piled sky high with food. I promise there were veggies and fruit on this plate underneath all the meat. Bonus was the fire dancer being kinda hot!!



The last full day we drove the entire circumference of the island. Here's a pic of me at the (supposed) southern most point on earth and we also did another trip to the volcano, but the air quality was so bad, we didn't get to go too far in. Let me tell you, the smell was enough to keep thousands away.



We finished with an earlier dinner at Merriman's which focuses on locally grown, organic, and sustainable ingredients...just my kind of place! It was a great dinner (lamb pita and fries), before heading out to our delayed flight and nearly missing my connection to LA.


I hope you all had a wonderful holiday. I literally headed from the airport straight to the farmers market so I am looking forward to bringing you some great food in anticipation of the New Year's celebration. I hope you have the whole week off, but if not, I hope it is a short one and that you get to enjoy a New Year's Eve with wonderful people you love.