Kaua'i 2023 Day 1: An Island With No Major Cities

On Friday we traveled to San Jose to meet with Daniel's parents, his sister Hilary, and her children. We were flying the next day early. We have TSA PreCheck through our Global Entry membership, but we will take the same shuttle as everyone else and see how much faster we get through.

We took the shuttle to the airport and arrived at the same time. We went through the TSA PreCheck line while the rest of the group went through the regular line. We were through about twenty minutes earlier, which was nice. The nicest thing was not having to take off our shoes or take our laptops out of our bags.

We got on the plane and we were the only ones with a non-family member sitting next to us. Thankfully he was nice and although he had the aisle seat he was accommodating about the kids wanting to move and sit next to us (in particular next to Auntie Catherine).

After a fairly easy flight we arrived in Kaua'i!

We picked up our car, which is a Jeep like we had in Maui a few years ago.

We couldn't check in to the house until 4, so we had to find other things to do. Daniel's parents, Hilary, and the kids decided to go to the beach, while we decided to get lunch at the food trucks in Koloa. We tried a food truck called Naruto Noodles, which had a lot of interesting options.

We got the lilikoi (passionfruit) juice, some pork lumpia, and the local-style noodles. Then some ube (purple yam) flavored malasadas for dessert.

The weather was interesting, with frequent heavy rains punctuating a basically sunny but humid day.

Finally, we were able to check in to the house! It was the same house we stayed in when we visited in 2019 and it is beautiful with lots of room for all of us. We are so happy to be able to stay here again. We got things unpacked and then the two of us went to mass at the church in Koloa.

We tried an Indian place in a nearby shopping center. We got samosas and a lentil dal, which was delicious. The restaurant had lanai dining, and we could hear the live music from another nearby restaurant.

Overall, it was a wonderful day and fairly eventful for a travel day.