Home again, home again

to end our title with "lickity split" would be a lie. Our plane left Maui at 9:15 last night, and we finally arrived home at about 3 this afternoon. When you only sleep in bits and spurts throughout a night it really messes with your ability to distinguish days. Thankfully, internal clocks are fairly good at righting themselves.

In a nutshell: we had a wonderful time. The weather was the same every single day of our trip (in the 80s and sunny), we sunbathed and snorkeled, climbed to waterfalls, read good books, and ate lots and lots of great food.

It's difficult to know where to begin and how much information all the relatives actually WANT to read. So I thought I'd write about our trip in installments (kind of like Dickens, right?) adding pictures as we go and writing about what we hope you'll find interesting. This way, if I notice the responses to our posts starting to get....terse, perhaps (wow Christine, another great picture of Maui. Thanks for rubbing it in)... then we shall simply stop with grace before everyone starts throwing tomatoes.

Food is a subject near and dear to our hearts, so I thought I'd start with that. We had a wonderful guidebook (Maui Revealed) which recommended many fabulous restaurants. Our first night in Maui we were somewhat rushed (the season finale of Lost was on and we just HAD to watch it) so we got fish and chips to go from Mulligans Pub. While the people there were not the most..... (sober?).... amiable, the food was fantastic as you can see from Joel's enthused face.

Another favorite was Bubba Gump's, which served us the most fantastic shrimp appetizer I have ever eaten. And of course the atmosphere was delightful.

This fetching picture (we think we should be models) is taken at the Mexican restaurant Cilantro's, which we think would live up to Tio Benjamin's standards.

That's all for now. As we came back into town Joel remarked that although he truly enjoyed visiting the tropical sights of Maui, he is much more drawn to the evergreens and rolling hills of the Northwest, and I have to agree. As chilly as it was back in Moscow, the green hills interspersed with patches of soaring pine trees which stretched for miles were picturesque.