Marianne's Big Island Birthday 🌴🐋📚🐈🍧

Happy Birthday in Hawaiian

After visiting Oahu for a few days, we “hopped” over to the Big Island to visit Marianne’s mom and her husband to celebrate Marianne’s birthday. Here are a few pictures from that day.

We started the day driving up the leeward side of The Big Island from the town of Kona to the picturesque town of Waimea, where we had brunch at Merriman’s restaurant. After filling our bellies with delicious food and an even more delicious birthday dessert, we headed back down the coast, making a few stops along the way.

Our first stop was at the stunning Waipi’o Valley Lookout. If you have an Apple TV, you may have seen the nearby Waimanu Valley featured as one of your screensavers! From this vantage point, we could see the black sand beach where the Waipi’o Valley meets the ocean, bordered by taro fields. This sacred valley was the boyhood home of King Kamehameha I, and an important center for political and religious life in Hawaii.

Waipi’o Valley Lookout

After feasting on the views, we drove out to the little town of Honokaʻa to visit the Tex Drive-In and feasted on some scrumptious malasadas—another food found in Hawaii that has contentious opinions on who makes the best!

Next we headed down to the Lava Lava Beach Club on the Anaeho’omalu Bay, where we enjoyed some refreshing cocktails by the ocean, and surprising views of a couple of breaching whales for a good 20 minutes! It was better than anything we have seen on any whale-watching cruise!

Lava Lava Beach Club

When we arrived back in Kona we stopped at the Kona Bay Bookstore (a must for Marianne’s birthday) for her to stock up on as many books she could cram into her suitcase, and we got to meet their friendly resident cat, Tobi. Then we headed over to Marianne’s favorite (so far) shave ice shop, Gecko Girlz for a delicious treat before heading back to the condo for yet another sweet treat — a birthday cake made by Marianne’s mom. It was a perfect, sweet-filled Hawaiian birthday! 🎂

Tobi, the bookstore cat (photo from Twitter) Yummy shave ice from Gecko Girlz