Hawaii, Day 3

Sunday morning had us up and out of the house in time to see sunrise from the Japanese Fishing Shrine on the east side of Oahu. Thankfully the east side has lots of easy-to-access beautiful spots to watch sunrise from, you'll see other locations in future posts about this trip! The shrine has a pull off from the road, space for about three cars. And the walk to the shrine is up approximately 10 to 15 stairs, that I navigated my slowly without my cane.
(photo description: F in silhouette against the sunrise over the east side- he is standing on top of a rock with his arms spread wide in the air) 

(photo description: looking back at the shoulder of Koko Head, you can see the highway in the foreground, in the distance you can see Sandy Beach and the shoulder of Makapu'u)

For brunch we hit up Koko Head Café, which has a really nice outdoor seating area (right now they have some annoying aggressive chickens!!). We shared some amazing dumplings, more on that later, and I had some breakfast ramen.

(photo description: the top shows our dumplings appetizer, with dumplings floating in a soup that includes beautiful shaved radishes on top. Below is a picture of my breakfast ramen, with jammy eggs, pork belly, and bok choy)

It was a gorgeous day, and we decided to go to my absolute favorite beach- Lanikai. As it was a holiday weekend, the parking vice closed for all of the Lanikai area, but thankfully we have a friend that lives there that allowed us to park on his property. 🙌 (Thank you, B!)

(Photo description: looking back the toward a house along the coast, you can see sand in the foreground and tropical trees rising above, silhouetted against a bright blue sky)

(photo description: looking out toward the water, you can see an outrigger canoe in the foreground, people on the stretch of sandy beach in the middle, the turquoise water, and then the Mokulua Islands in the distance)

Inspired by our delicious dumplings for brunch, we took a trip to Don Quijote in town to buy ingredients to make dumplings of our own for dinner. On our way, we passed this sign that made me giggle- I use MCAS all the time to refer to mast cell activation syndrome 😂. (In fact, I have hives from MCAS right now!)
(photo description: a green sign has an arrow pointing straight labeled with Honolulu, and an arrow pointing forward into the right, labeled with Kaneohe MCAS and Kaneohe)

My friend and I love to cook together and normally take on a few big cooking projects when I am in town. The dumplings turned out to be a bigger project than we thought, I think our 1 pound of meat ended up making almost 50 dumplings! But the meal turned out absolutely delicious and now he has a bunch of dumplings left in the freezer. 🥰
(photo description: dumplings, mushrooms, morning glory in a soup bowl)


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