Happy New Year 2008!!!

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It is a new year!...Olya and I had a pretty interesting evening full of good food, drinks, fireworks, and crazy people. The evening's festivities started out with a 1.6 mile walk to PF Chang's Chinese Bistro. But the long walk was worth it! After dining on Salt'n'Pepper Calamari and Orange Peel Chicken and sipping on white tangerine tea, we tried a dessert dish of Banana Spring Rolls. We were in bistro heaven...lol. To top things off, Olya sampled their famous Asian Pear Mojito and I a glass of some local Longboard brew. With full bellies, the long walk back now seemed like a daunting task, so we called a cab.

After relaxing for a bit in our hotel room, we went and checked out the Yard House. This pub on the new Waikiki Beach Walk on the newly reconstructed Lewers Street has 120 brews on tap including some Belgian style ales and other beer from around the world. They keep all their kegs in a separate room and run the hoses up through the ceiling and to the bar. It’s kind of an interesting design. Anyhow, it was pretty packed with the party crowd, so I had a pint of Paulaner Salvator and Olya had a coffee with Bailey’s. She was not impressed with her drink and my beer was too warm and flat, so we decided to head to the beach where droves of people were headed.

It was only 11pm and tons of people were already on the beach. Some were playing around with firecrackers to provide the growing crowd a preshow before the real fireworks started. At midnight Waikiki Beach the fireworks started from a boat out in front of the hotels. This was actually one of four areas where fireworks were planned. We could see fireworks way down at the harbor too.

It was a good show that went for about 10 minutes and it got the beach crowd pumped up for the New Year. I will be putting up some video of the fireworks at a later date. Today the Hawaiian Warriors play the Georgia Bulldogs in the Sugar Bowl. Winning that game would be the icing on the cake for an awesome beginning for 2008. The people here are all abuzz about this game. Warrior fever is in the air!