Back on the Circle Island

We decided to go back on the Circle Island bus this past weekend again, but this time the goal was to go to one of the many beaches along the route. After a stop at Longs Drugs to pick up beach mats (for the oh-so-expensive price of $1.99 per), we got onto the bus headed north through Mililani again toward Haleiwa.

Now, part of the reason we had decided to go back to Haleiwa was because when we were there last time, we had not partaken of the main tourist attraction in Haleiwa. Matsumoto's Shaved Ice. Now, you may ask, shaved ice is all the same, isn't it? I mean, it's just crushed ice and flavoring. Could there actually be anything that would make Matsumoto's shaved ice better than what we could find out in Waikiki?

The answer to that question is a resounding yes. And here's why: The key to Matsumoto's Shaved Ice is the fact that you can get it with vanilla ice cream underneath it. We were both extremely skeptical when we heard about this, and probably had similar questions to the ones above. However, when we got down to the ice cream (which was after about 1/2 of the shaved ice had been eaten and another 1/4 of it had melted), mixing the two together made for an extremely smooth taste and flavor.

Now, we actually didn't start at Matsumoto's in Haleiwa. When we got into town, we noticed that there were shrimp trucks right off the side of the road. Brynn had heard from a friend that Giovanni's shrimp truck was amazing. By some small feat, one of the truck's we saw right here were Giovanni's. We got off the bus, walked over to it, and ordered.

There are only 3 things on the menu essentially, and all of them are shrimp plates. We decided to split a shrimp scampi plate, which came with 2 scoops of rice and gravy for $13. We even had a coupon for a free soda with the purchase of the plate.

This is with about 8 or 9 shrimp left out of the 12 we started with. They were gigantic shrimp (yes, definitely an oxymoron there), and were DELICIOUS. I had never been out to eat at one of the shrimp trucks that line the North Shore, and I will definitely be back there again.

After we left Haleiwa later on in the afternoon, we still had not been to the beach. As we rode the bus, we saw Waimea Bay again, but didn't like the amount of people that were there. We understood it was a holiday weekend, but we've both kind of come to the conclusion that we're not necessarily huge crowd people. As a result, we kept riding until we found a beach park called Kokololio Beach Park. Off to the side, they were setting up for a 4th of July celebration, but the beach was much quieter than any of the others we had passed to this point. I'm sure at least part of that was related to the fact that we did not arrive at this beach until around 3:00 in the afternoon, but it was still very pleasant.

We ended up staying for about an hour or so, and then catching the bus back to town. It was a long day, as we left Honolulu around 9:45 and didn't get back until almost 7 pm, but it was a very fun day as well.