A Summer Rain in Kona is Still a Delightful Hawaiian Vacation

Elizabeth Weintraub at the breezeway of Coast Grille Restaurant in Hawaii.

Living in a paradisiacal state of mind for some people is utopia but not very realistic. I’m more the cup is overflowing sort of person than the cup is half full, but even I know that sometimes you’ve got to deal with a little rain before the sun comes out. I could not believe, however, that my hotel required a $30 deposit on an umbrella. That seems a little bit excessive and makes me wonder about the types of people who visit the island of Hawaii and why they feel compelled to make off with a four-foot instrument that would most certainly break if one clobbered a bellman over the head with it.

We’ve had a little bit of showers yesterday afternoon, a summer rain, in an area of Hawaii that rarely sees rain. If you want to experience a lot of rain, you go to the eastern side of the island of Hawaii, which is OK and lushly beautiful except for those darned singing tree frogs all night long.

There are times in Sacramento when I miss a summer rain because we don’t get rain in the summer either. We make up for it in the winter. During the summer, though, nada. The problem with rain is sometimes you get thunderstorms, and thunderstorms scare the bejesus out of me. If you want me to confess to a crime I did not commit, just strap me to a chair under a bare light bulb and fill the room with sounds of a thunderstorm, lightning rods, cracks in the sky, and I’ll admit to anything to make it stop.

But soft falling rain is delightful. Just not the heavy rain. Probably the most delightful soft misty rainfall I’ve ever had the pleasure of experiencing was in Ireland. It was so light and silky that it would not have astonished me to spot leprechauns dancing through the square in Dublin.

When I walked to dinner last night, to the restaurant at my hotel, it was a good 10-block hike from my suite. And very complicated, too. Walk 3 blocks to the elevator, and go down to floor two. Walk another 6 blocks and take the elevator to floor 8. Go through the lobby and around the corner to reach a third set of elevators and go down to floor 4, and then take the stairs to the restaurant. I feel like I need a GPS.

Fortunately, this particular restaurant, unlike Brown’s at the Fairmont Orchid, has a breezeway where guests can still dine outside if it’s raining. I enjoyed the theme for this month, which is Dragon Fruit. It comes in a dark cherry, a vanilla and a cotton-candy-pink version. The Dragon Fruit salad contained all 3 versions of this seedy fruit, along with Kamuela tomatoes, watermelon radish, and baby cucumbers, tossed with a garden citrus vinaigrette.

Grilled ono with Dragon Fruit salsa and pumpkin hash

The ono, pictured here, arrived with a Dragon Fruit salsa and pumpkin hash, surrounded by bits of exotic things — I can’t tell you what they were except mouthwatering. In my opinion, the chef glazed the ono a bit too long, and it made the soft, fleshy fish somewhat dry and tough. The waitress was very nice about it, and I almost didn’t even tell her except that she asked what I thought. She offered to take my photo earlier, and I didn’t want her to feel like I did not appreciate the meal, as it was lovely.

As I type this, an agent called to complain that her listing is on my Sacramento real estate website and she wants me to remove it this instant! LOL. As standard service, my website contains every agent’s listing in Sacramento, along with my own listings. Why do these agents not understand how the internet works? Just another day in paradise. I’ll be back home in 8 days.