After yesterday’s comic misadventures in travel, today was an easy, perfect day in paradise. We’re not a big couple for grand gestures and super-elaborate plans; we’re more in the “play it by ear” mode of operations. But David had tucked a Valentine’s Day card in his bag and this morning he made coffee and brought me “breakfast in bed.”

Okay, so it was a breakfast bar, because we got in so late last night we didn’t want to take the time to go to the grocery store to stock up.

We woke up relatively late for the first morning in Maui; must have been our very late arrival the night before. Just now David remarked that he already felt acclimated to the time; it’s after 1am Chicago time, and we’re still going strong.

Anyway, we got pulled together and went for a nice long walk up the beach, toward Wailea, enjoying the warm breezes and the soft sand on our bare feet (and picking our way around the occasional outcrops of lava and coral). Everybody and their dog were out today, and in fact it seemed like it was Golden Lab Play Day.

We came off the beach feeling like it was time for Second Breakfast, and I asked a local lady for an “anything but Denny’s” recommendation. She said “Mana Kai Maui,” or the Five Palms, a place we’ve been to before for dinner but not breakfast. She thought it was peaceful there, and you could see the water.

 

Good enough, so we walked back to pick up the car.

 

And a fine breakfast it was – we sat indoors, which isn’t really indoors as they had the huge teak shutters folded open all around (they’re about 12 feet high). While eating, David spotted a paraglider coming down right over the beach in front of us, and we watched him spiral around and around before landing perfectly on the dry sand. A few minutes later, a second paraglider came down, same spot.

After breakfast, we walked up the beach a while, and ran into the paragliders, who had gathered up their chutes and thrown them over their shoulders to haul them back to their cars.

It looked like a gigantic load of laundry.

Then we got back in the car and headed off to Safeway’s to stock up for the first week, and even though we thought we were being conservative about buying small amounts and trying to keep it simple, we still ended up spending $200, even with a pretty good discount going with our Dominick’s card, which is part of the Safeway’s chain.

Once back, we spent some time relaxing on the lanai, I fooled with my new tripod, and David tried to do a reverse update on his iPhone. Then we had lunch – our favorite kind of tuna poke, some tako poke, and I had poi. Yes, I’m weird like that.

Otherwise, it was the typical Sunday afternoon stuff, except with a view of…

LOLWhales! O HAI!

And then there was some fun tail-slapping featuring a mama whale and her calf.

After that, the Fleet was on maneuvers…

and then passed in review.

After all that, I went across the street and wonder of wonders, found two pair of board shorts, to replace the pair I seem to have lost on a previous trip. And these fit me better, being (rather large) men’s shorts and also I’ve lost weight from my hips (yay) although I still have more to lose.

David was still working on his iPhone software reversal thing, so I went down and got in the water, both in the surf a little and in the pool, which was just the right temperature. With all the walking, had a pretty good workout today.

David had spent some time photographing and just hanging out on the lanai and downstairs on the lawn, so it’s been a nice relaxing day for both of us.

Dinner was grilled tuna with rice and steamed veggies (and beer and snacks) and so here we are. It’s the first time I’ve uploaded anything substantive to Flickr in a while, other than mobile pictures, and clearly my skills are rusty. But I also took some photos I’ll be using for textures in Second Life, so it’s been quite a productive lazy day, too.

Think it’s time to call it “another shitty day in paradise.”