Hello!
Up this morning around 6, and down for breakfast about 7:30
am. The lobby was packed with people
seemingly checking out, so at least the breakfast room wasn’t totally
mobbed. The only problem was that it was
FREEZING in the breakfast room, but
it’s January, so I shouldn’t complain!
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| Beautiful hibiscus at Okinawa World! |
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| My first ever pearl! |
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| Breaking open oyster #2 |
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| There's the pearl! |
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| Taking it out! |
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| Our four new pearls! |
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| Our little gal who makes the jewelry! |
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| Two new necklaces! |
I honestly can’t remember if I wrote about the electrical
black-out at the hotel tonight, so please excuse me (definitely age-related!)
if I repeat myself! At any rate, once
each year, every hotel in Japan has to do a mandatory 4-hour electrical
inspection – meaning that all power
will be shut off from 1 – 5 am tonight (Thursday) at the DoubleTree Shuri. No
elevators (and we were on the 18th floor) no heat or a/c, just
emergency power lights. (Apparently if a
hotel does not do this annually, they lose their license to operate!) R
was very concerned, and I agreed with him, that if something were to go wrong
with the inspection, with us getting on an airplane (or several) tomorrow, we’d
be up a creek. So, a week or so ago, I
made a reservation at the “other” DoubleTree
in town, and that’s where we moved this afternoon. Not only is this hotel MUCH closer to the airport, they had their mandatory shut-down a
couple of weeks ago!
After breakfast, we decided that one of the most fun things
we have done this trip is to open oysters to look for pearls at Okinawa World, so we decided to go back
and open a few more! (I do like to plan early for Christmas…) A nice
and certainly easier drive from downtown Naha, than it was from Chatan, and
soon we found ourselves back in Okinawa
World! This time, though, as we just
wanted to go to one of the shops, we walked the route we had taken last week in
reverse, which was more than partly confusing.
However, we eventually found the right place, and our nice young lady
was there and happy to see us! This
time, I opened two oysters, and R
opened two more. One pearl was a bluish
tint, but the other three were very white.
We had them all made into necklaces, and soon we were on our way back to
the hotel.
Read, rested and finally checked out about 1:30 pm, sadly
leaving our lovely hotel and room, but knowing we would have electricity all
night where we were going! The Naha DoubleTree was happy to welcome us back,
and we were able to get in our room immediately – 1221, top floor, end room
facing the front - which was nice! So,
we dropped the luggage, and then took the car just the couple of blocks to where
we had picked it up, and dropped it off early. We figured it would be good to get rid of it
now, and we also saved paying for parking for tonight! In all, we filled up the tank once, for about
¥4900
($44) and then today it only needed ¥2900 ($26) to top it off – not bad for
almost two weeks of driving! Of course,
as R points out, when you’re
averaging something like 40 mph, it does help fuel efficiency!
We walked back to the hotel from Times Rental Car, and decided to take a ride on the monorail, as it
just happens to be right next door! Took
it from one end (airport) to the other (Shuri)
and enjoyed the ride very much! Always
so much to see! By this time, we were
getting peckish, so came back to the hotel to find a place to go for
dinner. One of the restaurants
recommended by the hotel is Jack’s Steak
House, which is literally right down the street from the hotel. The TripAdvisor
reviews looked good, so down we went.
Wow! What a
great
place!
Certainly wish we had known about
it sooner!
When you walk in, and they
have room available, they will give you a card with a number on it.
That’s the booth you need to sit at; very
simple!
If they don’t have room, you add
your name to the list and indicate how many people.
So…we walked in, and were given #22.
Found booth #22 and sat down.
A nice lady came up with a multi-language
menu with lots of pictures.
They have
regular things to order like spaghetti and tacos (!?) but if you want a steak,
you pick your type of steak (tenderloin for us), you pick the size, S, M, or L,
(L for
R and M for me) and then
indicate how you want it cooked:
Both
rare.
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| R's at Jack's Steak House |
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| Quite an atmosphere! |
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| Contemplating... |
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| Lots of signage! |
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| Love my little Coke can! |
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| Very Okinawan! |
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| Soup and salad! |
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| My steak -- still sizzling! |
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| R's steak dinner! |
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| Outside in front of restaurant! |
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| Lovely Shuri Castle at night! |
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| Such a lovely place! |
Also, rice or bread?
(Rice for
R
and bread for me!)
And that’s it!
It comes with an excellent soup – mushroom,
and a nice small salad with a mayonnaise dressing, and then literally before I
had even finished my soup, our steaks arrived!
They were sizzling hot on their cast iron plates!
R’s
definitely looked at bit too rare when they put it in front of him, but one
remedies that by turning it over – the cast iron is
SO hot that it continues to cook!
There were also a few French fries and some sautéed onions as well.
Well…to say that we each ate every bite of everything we
ordered – it was FABULOUS! Absolutely NO fat whatsoever! And with R’s
Orion draft beer and my Coke, it came
to all of ¥5,550! ($50.18) Now
that’s my kind of dinner! Jack’s Steak House may not look like
much, but it’s a fun, fabulous place to eat!
Back then to the hotel, and used our free drink coupons for
glasses of a very good white wine. From
there, we decided to hop back on the monorail, to see if we could see Shuri Castle lit up at night! R had
the telephoto lens, and he got some photos – we’ll see how they came out! And then, back to the hotel to prepare for
our move to the airport tomorrow! R doing the packing this time.
To say that R is a
fabulous packer is like saying the food is great at Jack’s Steak House! He is
truly amazing! Somehow, he got
everything little thing that we’d purchased packed up handily, with room left
over! So, it looks like my carry-on won’t
be quite as heavy as I thought it would be!
Wow!
So, posting now, and then to bed early as we have a long day
ahead of us!
Lots of love,
m
xxx
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