Having a full kitchen in our condo saved us the expense of ever eating breakfast out during this two-week vacation, and many of our lunches consisted of yummy “leftovers” from the previous evening’s meal.

But every night, except those where we had a scheduled luau or magic/comedy show where the meal was included, we faced the difficult task of deciding where to go for dinner. Difficult, because there were so many fabulous choices, and we only 14 nights to try as many as we could!

We enjoyed everything from kalua pig pizza to ahi fish tacos. I’m extremely partial to coconut prawns, so I ordered those at several different restaurants, often building my meal only from the appetizer offerings.

Mostly, we ate at unique (read: quirky) little one-of-a-kind places you’d never experience on the mainland, but there was one place we went back to a second time, both for the food and for the view: the Bubba Gump Shrimp Company.

And while you may argue that (OMG!) it’s a chain restaurant, we don’t happen to have one on the peninsula, or even in Washington or Oregon. The prices were comparatively reasonable, the service was great, and the restaurant was right on the water.

So we ate at Bubba Gump’s twice: The first night and the 12th night. Both times we thoroughly enjoyed ourselves, arriving in time to watch the sunset, and bantering with the servers, struggling to correctly answer all their Forest Gump movie trivia questions.

Naturally, I had the “Shrimper’s Heaven” entrée—four ways to enjoy shrimp, some French Fries, and a little coleslaw, too. Now I’ll admit this entrée is not so friendly if you’re aiming to eat healthily, coming in at a whopping 1400 calories for the one meal, but I shared a few shrimp with Rick (who had the shrimp mac and cheese) and I had exercised extra hard that day in anticipation. Nevertheless, I relished every single bite. Abso-freakin-lutely delicious!

Aloha! Stay tuned!