2011-Feb. 12: Wyndham Kauai Beach Villas, Lihue

This was the day we checked in for our first week at Kauai Beach Villas, so we didn't do much but hang out and wait for our room to be ready. We did check out the new pool area. They took down the concrete retaining wall and very nicely renovated the restrooms. Taking down the rataining wall opened up the area, but also lets more wind in. I guess it's nice, but certainly not as nice as the ones at the other Wyndhams. At least the new management at the Aqua hotel next door is allowing KBV guests to use their much nicer pools and jacuzzis again.

We were finally able to check in about 3pm. Then maintenance had to come by and fix a couple things. This was our first time on the ground level at KBV. I was concerned that our ocean view wouldn't be very good from the ground level, but we still had a pretty nice view. It was a 1 bedroom/2bath condo in building G (1 or 2, I forget which one is the 1 bedroom/2 bath and which is the 1 bedroom /1 bath). We were scheduled to be in this room for the whole 2 weeks, but I was able to pull a little Wyndham VIP magic and find a 2 bedroom lagoon view unit for the 2nd week for half the amount of points normally needed because it came available within 60 days of our check in date. So I cancelled the 2nd week in the 1 bedroom/2 bath oceanview unit and hoped for an upgrade. That worked out really well, as they ended up giving us my requested 3rd floor and upgrading us to an oceanview room for our 2nd week and we have enough points left over to vacation another week just about anywhere on the mainland with the points we saved. (Actually ended up using some of the points to send Angie and Josh to St. Thomas for vacation in Sept. and used the rest of the points to trade into Trading Places for 2 weeks in 2 bedroom condos + 2 bonus weeks.  Have one of those weeks booked in a 2 bedroom unit at Maui Hill for May 2012!)  Here is the livingroom/diningroom area of our ground floor 1 bedroom unit. It was nice being able to walk right out our sliding glass doors and almost be on the beach.

While we were waiting for our room, we also made it over to Lihue to the farmer's market. There wasn't much left by the time we got there--no apple bananas, no flowers, just some mango pie which I forced myself to buy and eat. It wasn't the prettiest of days and by the time we got all settled into our new room, it was getting late, so we didn't venture south in search for a sunset that probably wasn't going to happen.  Here's a picture of the Lihue farmers market and the thick cloud cover we had most of the day.

We stuck around Lihue until dinner time, then went to BullShed for dinner---one of our regular haunts since we discovered it a couple of years ago.

 A rather gloomy day, but not as gloomy as it is in St. Louis!