A Nice Surprise At The Royal Hawaiian Center

...Continued from yesterday:

​      Friday afternoon, after we finished shopping and strolling around the market (see yesterday's post),

...Theresa and I - Tom had left to pick up the bikers, who'd finished their biking and hiking around Diamond Head - exited at the other end of Dukes Alley and found ourselves back on Kalakaua Avenue across from the Royal HawaiianCenter,

...which, happily, happens to be next door to the Island Vintage Shave Ice stand (see post from 5/2/2019, "Hula Dancers And The Best Shave Ice On The Island").

     After having spent the better part of the morning first walking around looking for the market then walking around the market, a nice, refreshing shave ice seemed the very thing.

     Theresa ordered a Heavenly Lilikoi, with strawberry and Lilikoi ice over frozen yogurt and a side of lilikoi popping boba,

​...while I had a green tea and lychee with popping boba, which was indeed very refreshing.

     We ate our shave ices in the Royal Hawaiian Center Grove.

      Afterwards we went into the Royal Hawaiian Center mall next to the Grove, where there was a food court,

...in which there was a bakery that displayed the most charming little pastries.

     I swore that if I ever came back to Honolulu I would come back to this food court and snag myself one.
    But it was in the mall restroom where I discovered the most pleasantly surprising gem.
    A couple of years ago a member of my Panera Posse,  the group of beautiful ladies with whom I meet every Wednesday morning for coffee, tea, and discussion,

...anyway, one of the Posse members went on an educational tour of China.
     Among the photos of her trip that she shared with the Posse there was a picture of an item that so captured my imagination that for a while after seeing that photo of that item I had a strong desire to find and possess said item.
      The item - which my friend discovered in the bathroom of her hotel in Shanghai - is a jet-spray toilet called a Toto Washlet Performance Toilet (see post from 11/13/2014, "All I Want For Christmas Is A Toto Washlet"). This toilet had a remote control button that sent cleansing jet sprays of water upward. The press of another button controlled an upward-blowing air dryer. Hence there was no need for toilet paper.  The Toto Washlet was invented in Japan, and while it is commonly found throughout that country, one  would not expect to find such an amenity in any public restroom in the U.S.
      But when I entered the stall of the ladies' room at the Royal Hawaiian Center, what to my wondering eyes should appear, but a Toto Washlet Performance Toilet,

...with all the fixin's.

     Was the Toto Washlet experience everything I imagined it would be? It was.
     Do I now wish I owned one? I do.
     Will I ever go out and buy one? Eh, probly not.
     Theresa and I then walked back to the Hale Koa,

...to which the biker-hikers had returned, and were chilling in their hotel rooms,

...before we all headed back down down to the beach.

    There's a place on the beach that rents beach furniture and toys such as boogie boards, scuba gear, floating carpets, and giant sea bikes that one can ride in the water.

       The equipment is rented on the honor system, with the renters leaving their rented items on the beach when they leave and the rental company employees combing the beach at the end of the day to pick up the items.
       For this reason there is a practice of people who leave the beach before the end of the day giving their rented toys to others still on the beach to use for the rest of the day.
     Thus my family, who generally stayed on the beach until day's end, tended to be the daily recipients of beach toy swag given to them by people who were finished with their toys for the day.
       Among the toys we scored to use over the week were two children's beach chairs, an inner tube, .a floating carpet,

...and on this day two boogie boards, upon which my  grand daughters stood at the edge of the surf, "riding," squealing with excitement every time the water came up far enough to wash over their feet.

     We stayed on the beach until the sun began to think about setting,     

...and the rental company workers began collecting the rentals from the beach.
      Then we headed back to the hotel by way of the botanical garden.

     Tom invited the adults over to our room for a "beer-thirty" happy hour.

     When the little ones were dressed and ready,

...we headed down to the Koko Cafe for dinner, where this night we were given our own dining room with a nice view of the beach and the sunset,

...and where I guess we must have found something hilariously funny.

      After dinner we walked down to the beach,

...to join the crowd that  had gathered to watch the Friday night fireworks.

    Then we followed the crowd along the beach,

...into downtown Waikiki,

...that looked so pretty and alive on this Friday night.