Day #4

Day #4 was a long, but fun day. We left our hostel a little after 7:00 in the morning and headed up toward La'ie. We stopped at the temple and were given flowers by one of the missionaries there. We looked inside the visitor's center and spent a little time there. I love that temple. It is so beautiful, but then again, I think all temples are beautiful. Even the Provo temple (which I must admit was not beautiful when I first saw it), has beauty of its own and grows on the viewer. But then again, people have always said that beauty is in the eye of the beholder.
Next, we went to BYU-Hawaii and walked around. It is a small, but clean and beautiful campus. It is definitely smaller than I expected. We went to the book store and looked around before deciding to get some lunch. I had been told about this restaurant on the north side of the island called Taste of Paradise. We went searching for it using the address I got off the Internet. We had a hard time finding it. We passed it before we even began looking on the side of the road. Eventually we realized that we were too far and headed back. They changed the name to Island Shack, so there wasn't even a sign we could follow, but we found it. It was really good. I had grilled mahi-mahi and it was to die for. I couldn't believe it, I really felt like I had a taste of paradise in my mouth.
After that, we headed over to the PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center). We took a canoe tour and watched some island shows. I love Polynesian dance, it is is beautiful to me. My favorite is Tahitian, so when we saw that show and they invited people up, I took the chance to dance on stage with the other tourists. (The picture to the left shows Kandice and I with the Tahitian dancers. The girl on the right has the typical belt that adds to the hip movement, showing how hast they are really moving them).
We wandered around a little, got free tattoos, tried some Polynesian food and some a few more shows before heading over for our dinner. The dinner was great. We had entertainment and real Hawaiian food. There was something called a Taro roll that was really good. If you've never tried taro, I would highly recommend it. They also had marinated raw fish (see right). I've liked raw fish before when I've had it, but that was disgusting. I think the texture got to me, it was different than the raw fish I had before, too slimy for my tastes. The guava cake was awesome, though. (Notice that in the picture above, my tattoo is showing. Of course I got one saying Tahiti!).
I didn't mention this, but we also got these free flower leis with our dinner/show package.
After dinner, we wandered around some more, checking out the pictures that had been taken of us and deciding not to take them, and then walking around the gift shops. I got to try blowing a conch shell for the first time. That was really cool.
Finally we went to the show. That was great, too. We were asked not to use flash photography, but Kandice's flash accidentally went off. Luckily, it gave us this great picture! I really enjoyed the Samoan fire dance.
After the show (which was called Horizons, by the way), we took more pictures. On the right you can see me making the usual Hawaii sign. We had an incredible, but long day and our day wasn't over. We headed back to Honolulu, but it was very annoying because first there was traffic, than construction, and next, a car behind us lost control and ran into the wall of the tunnel we were driving through. It really freaked Kandice out (probably because she was the one driving). All in all, it was an eventful day.