Aussie Costco

Pomai from The Tasty Island asked some months ago on the Costco Awesomeness post –

My question to you Aussies is, does your Costco carry Vegemite in bulk size (like in a bucket)? Never tried Vegemite before, yet more than eager!

On my most recent trip to Costco Auburn, having forgotten to take this photograph on a couple of previous trips, I was finally able to get the answer. Yes. Yes, they do. 🙂

Vegemite is an acquired taste. I personally am not a fan. Bizarre as it seems when I generally love all things salty. To be quite honest until I went to write this post I had no idea what is actually in Vegemite. The other half is a fan, so I have a jar right here. The ingredients are – Yeast Extract from yeast grown on Barley, salt, mineral salt, malt extract from barley, colour, flavours, Niacin, Thiamine, Riboflavin, Folate.

What a bizarre food. Seriously.

I would love to bring one of these buckets across to Hawaii for you, Pomai as I am a huge fan of your blog and have been for some years now, however I am thinking if you want to try it probably best to get a small jar to begin with. I do not know anyone who could eat the amount of Vegemite found in that bucket!

I will of course bring Tim Tams which are my favourite Aussie food, in a couple of different flavours. Dark chocolate is my current flavour addiction. Fingers crossed we can organise a meet up of some kind.

While on the subject of Costco, you might be interested in this post from Pomai – Costco Food Court – Eat This, Not That.

Star City Breakfast Buffet

Star City is obviously not in Hawaii. It is in Sydney. 🙂 We were staying at the Astral Tower – click here for my Tripadvisor review of that hotel. If you book in for the buffet breakfast at check-in, it costs you $20 rather than $34.90. $20 is not too bad for a breakfast, in my opinion. Especially if it is a breakfast where you have a lot of options and you can pick what you want to eat.

Breakfast plate belonging to The Other Half – scrambled eggs, bacon, hash browns, ham and cheese croissant. He did manage another plate very similar to this one minus the croissant and hash browns. He wanted pancakes but the machine was not working.

My breakfast plate. – mushroom & cheese omelette made by the egg chef, bacon. See how perfectly the bacon is cooked, I like mine with crispy fat like that. 🙂 In total, I managed this plate, a mango yoghurt, some watermelon, 2x coffee, 1 apple juice, 1 pineapple juice. Clearly I drank too much which is not a good idea when you are buffet-ing. When we got back to the room I had to lie down for about half an hour, to let all of this digest.

Juice bar – all different kinds – orange, watermelon, pineapple, apple, cranberry, there must be one I am missing though. Might be orange and mango or tropical. There was also soy milk and possibly other kinds of milk.

Pastries bar – croissants, muffins, danish, chocolate croissants, gluten free almond bread,

Yoghurt bar – mango, berry, passionfruit – I had a mango one, it was quite decent, very tart not too sweet.

Quinoa Bircher Muesli

Fruits – banana, green apple, orange, red apple

Cut up fruits – Kiwi, watermelon, fruit salad. I tried the watermelon and it was amazing, so juicy, super cold because it is kept on ice.

Cheese section – I can’t imagine eating cheese like this at breakfast however it is there if you want it.

Meats section – smoked salmon, ham, salami, trimmings included capers and red onions

Breakfast pizza & quiche

Breakfast stir fry, boiled eggs, fried rice

Waffles, sauteed mushrooms, baked beans

Chicken sausages & bacon (bacon was amazing by the way, perfectly cooked in my opinion)

Hash browns, tomatoes, scrambled eggs

Fried eggs, ham and cheese croissants

Fruit compotes – including rhubarb

Cereal bar with add ons like dried fruit and nuts

Tea bar

Coffee Bar

I’m posting this here for the following reasons –

– To give you (and me) an idea of the kinds of posts I will like to do re eating in Hawaii, when I visit there in November.

– To get used to taking photos while out and about especially of food. There are a couple of photos which did not make the cut – eg this one –

– To let you know why I am seriously thinking of cancelling the Orchids buffet we have planned – I have suspected this all along but now it is official – I am not a breakfast or brunch person, my stomach cannot handle too much food too early in the day. To pay $60+ is just excessive when I am not going to eat a lot. I think we might be better off sticking with cheaper breakfast options.

– This is my travel blog, and sometimes you are going to find info on travels I have done which are not Hawaii related.

– I know we have a lot of Aussie readers and this post might be of interest to them. Plus future travellers to Hawaii might find the blog via the Urbanspoon link.

– There are a lot of Star City buffet reviews on the web but not many are for breakfast.

– To hook up with Urbanspoon all ready to go for the Hawaii posts – here is my profile.

– To hook up with Twitter for Hawaii.

I’ll possibly be doing some tweeting, instagramming and urbanspoon reviews while travelling. Detailed posts like this with a lot of photos will probably have to wait until we get home.

I hope you enjoyed this post, wherever in the world you happen to be. 🙂

While in Sydney, I bought a new phone. I have been an Apple iPhone person for a while now however my tablet is Android and I have begun to get used to it. My new tablet I am planning to buy will be a Samsung, so I might as well make the switch over phone wise now.

I hate change. More than anything I hate to change operating systems. I have struggled to get used to this Mac since my windows based laptop was stolen when our house was broken into during my last Hawaii trip. That was in November 2011 – nearly two years now and I still strongly dislike this thing.

The switch has been a lot easier than I expected, though. There are some things I really love about this new phone, too. That is a post for another day. 🙂

These pics you see above are the last taken with my iPhone, though I may decide to take the iPhone to Hawaii and leave the new phone at home. I definitely am leaving the sim card at home, either way.

Itinerary Changes

We now have less than 3 months to Hawaii..

With that in mind, we are starting to tighten up the itinerary a bit, adding in some things, taking out some things, making some decisions on what we want to do.

Given that my other half celebrates his birthday while we are there, the one thing he most wanted to do was this – Dillingham Public Star Party. He loves astronomy.

This means we have to hire a car on Saturday November the 2nd in order to get out there. So we figured if we pick the car up about noon, we’ll head off to Costco for the Saturday Afternoon Insanity of Costco because while we have a car, we can bring stuff like snacks and other shopping back to the condo.

I know it will be busy but we will be in Hawaii, so we will suck it up.

One place we are saying no to now is Hanuama Bay. We just think it will turn into an agony of frustration for us. Too busy, too many people who just watched a video telling them not to touch the coral doing what they were just told not to do.. and do you say something and risk what happens as a result of that, or do you keep your mouth shut and then get angry at yourself for not speaking up..

It is all a bit too much angst for a relaxing holiday. We are looking into other options but may end up spending part of this day at the Ala Moana Beach Park instead. Looks like a great place to spend the day, no?

Ala Moana Beach Park

We have added in the twilight tour at the Honolulu Zoo which was on special on living social. Being a former zoo tour guide myself I am a great fan of zoo tours.

The next big part of planning is to start narrowing down where we plan to eat. This sounds like it should be an easy thing but seriously it is not. There are so many great options. And one of those people travelling is the world’s pickiest eater – yes, my other half.

I have read so much about so many places to eat, I think we could probably improvise this and not have a plan, just go with the flow. On the other hand, it helps with the budgeting to know where you’ll go and what you might have there – not to mention it helps with the picky eater because you can show him the menu and he can choose what he would eat.

The other big step we’ll take shortly is to do a practice pack – it could even be a for real pack because we are only taking enough clothes for 4 days and they are summer clothes, it is winter here just now. I’ll post some pictures of that when I get a chance. 🙂