Like I wrote yesterday, I would post a new message with some pictures of a botanical garden and such… so here it is

The Saturday after my birthday, Michelle and I went to the Aloha Swap Meet, some sort of flea market near the Aloha Stadium. This is a market, which is held every weekend around the whole football stadium, with some pretty good deals. Think, for example about 8 t-shirts for only $20. Here are a few pictures of that market:

It wasn’t that busy anymore when we were there, mostly because it was already 1 PM when we arrived, and most people go earlier. Well, I can’t blame them, the want to have get it over with before the hottest part of the day, plus there’s a lot of booths that close at around 2 PM.

Here’s a picture of the stadium:

After we walked around the stadium, and felt pretty warm, we went towards the Dole Plantation, where they, besides pineapples, also have a botanical garden, and the world’s biggest maze.

It took us about 30 minutes to get through the maze (you need to find a few locations in the maze), not really too slow (you receive a small map, mostly because of the size, so you can make some speed), but the record is currently 8 minutes (this has to be someone who knew the way out of his head and ran quite fast haha). It took us a bit longer in 2007, mostly because we didn’t use the map the whole time back then haha. The total size of the maze is 3.15 acres (about 12,7 km2) and the total path length is 2.46 mile (almost 4 kilometers). Here are some photo’s, taken in the maze:

Like I also commented in the last of the above pictures (just click on them, so you can see it, haha) is that there is an open spot in the middle of the maze, which looks like a pineapple from the sky (you can also look here, to view this from the sky).

They have some signs outside the maze, and that’s especially fun to see because Hawaii has the most remote islands in the world. The Netherlands was not named, but when we have to take London, Munich and Paris into consideration, then it should be about 7,500 miles (about 12,000 kilometers).. quite some distance…

But ok, we also went to the Plantation Garden, like said, where you can find a lot of native plants, which also grow out in the open (some even grow in our garden haha), but now all of them together, so that’s makes it easier to find them Here’s some photo’s:

You can also find some creatures there, just look at the following photo’s (and look especially close to the last two, as it might be a bit hard to find because of the colors):

Fun, isn’t it? I know my mom would say something like ‘ew’ haha, oh well, not everyone is fond of them, but they’re harmless and look quite cute on these pictures.

And here another three, last, pictures of the Dole Plantation. The first is of the many pineapples they have, the second one is the view when you drive away from the Plantation, and the third is the main building of the Dole Plantation, which has a store and a foodcourt inside, where you can eat almost everything with pineapple:

We went further towards the North Shore after we left, so we could eat some Garlic Shrimp again at Giovanni’s Shrimp Shack. I tried, while Michelle was driving, to make some more photo’s, but it didn’t exactly work out to do it from a travelling car, at too little light. Two of them are nice to show, though:

It is the 4th of July this Saturday, or Independence Day, and it kind of depends what we will do, but if there’s fireworks, then I might try to take some photos, it’s supposed to be really beautiful.

And when you liked these photo’s, I might have some more nice photo’s for you soon as I want to go to Waimea Bay Park, where they have a waterfall and quite some nature. It kind of depends when we will go haha, but we will go for sure, promised