Aloha
Day 147 – August 25, 2003 – Monday
Today was my last day in Hawaii. I wish it had been overcast. Instead, I opened the window this morning to see the prettiest day yet!
I met Al and his wife in the elevator. Wendy, Steve, and Nadine checked me out. I met Helen at the valet parking stand. I was almost out of beads. Aloha.
Last night, 11-year-old Haley told me about a place her Mom loves — Leonard’s Bakery. They serve a Malsadas — a Portuguese Donut. I tracked Leonard’s down, got directions, and went there for breakfast. There were cars coming and going and a lot of folks waiting in line. I met Star, Cindy, and Joyce as they were waiting for their Malsadas. Star was from Honolulu, and she enjoys Malsadas often. Cindy and Joyce were tourists, and they heard about Leonard’s from a tour guide.
The donuts are yeast-raised donuts (as are almost all “glazed donuts” that most of us know so well). But, the Malsadas are made from a Portuguese recipe and mix, and they don’t have a hole. They’re fatter than the normal donut. The most popular are either covered with a sugar or a cinnamon sugar. They serve them hot right out of the fryer. They were absolutely fabulous! Very soft, great flavor, hot, and they melt in your mouth. They remind me more of a beignet than a donut because of the shape. Since I started a donut franchise two years ago, I know donuts. These are without any question the best donuts that we’ve had on the trip, so I named them Best Donuts in America. Thanks, Haley, and thank your Mom for me, too!
We ended the trip with 181 pies! Three Hawaiian pies made the Top Pies List, and we are naming the Malsadas the Best Donuts in America! Aloha.
From Leonard’s, I went to Pearl Harbor. It was a moving experience. I looked all through the Visitor Center and Museum, saw the movie, took the boat ride out to the USS Arizona Memorial, saw the USS Bowfin submarine, and saw the Battleship Missouri. I met Edie and Jason from Houston at Peal Harbor; I then saw them again tonight at the airport as we were on the same flight to Houston. I also met Liz, Doug, Amelia, and Maddy at Pearl Harbor. Doug breeds dogs and shows them at the Westminster Dog Show. I forgot to ask him what he thought of the movie, “Best in Show.” We did both comment that Pearl Harbor and Ground Zero were quite similar. Very sad places to visit. And in both cases, the US was caught with its pants down.
After Pearl Harbor, I drove all along the southern coast of Oahu out to the westernmost point — Kaena Point. The southwestern part of Oahu is the least pretty, but it is still beautiful. As I drove back toward Honolulu, I went to Ko Olina and saw Paradise Cove — a beautiful resort in what I suspect was once a less-than-beautiful part of Oahu.
I ended my sightseeing in downtown Honolulu at the Aloha Tower Marketplace. I saw the Hawaii Maritime Center and the beautiful Aloha Tower. I had a Mango Hawaiian Shave Ice at “Bite My Dogs,” but it was nothing like the fabulous Mango Snow Cone I had at Freddy’s Fast Lube & Snow Cone Stand in Escobares, Texas.
The sunset came and went too fast. I was still driving in Honolulu without a good view. I visited the State Capitol, but the sun had set, and there was no light, so my photo shows little more than the red light on the street corner.
At the Honolulu International Airport, I met three really nice ladies with Continental Arlines. As I’ve written before, I have found Continental folks to be unfriendly and downright rude in my many years of flying 50,000 to 100,000 miles a year. But Mary Helen, Galynn, and Nalani were delightful. Nalani asked about the beads, and the rest was a long story.
The last meal for the Round America tour was served a little after midnight on Continental Airlines en route to Houston. The flight left at 11:30 pm Hawaii time, and it’s a 7-hour flight — due to land in Houston about noon on the 26th.
Aloha.
The Daily Journal of Round America:
Each day, we collect our thoughts on a web page just like this. We drop in some of the photos from the day. Our goal with the Daily Journal is to write about the towns we visit, the sights we see, the people we meet, and the pie we eat. We write about where we are, where we’ve been, and where we are going, but we also make observations about what we’ve seen and done as well as about life in general.
You can follow our travels from the Daily Journal section of this website. Other pages of interest include the running report of “vital statistics” on the Trip Scorecard, our nominations for the Best & Worst of the trip, as well as a rating of the pie we eat. If you’d like to see information for a specific state or town, click here, and then click on the state of interest, and the full itinerary is shown.