Fourth of July didn't seem like Fourth of July here.

Half of our party went to the timeshare thingie at the Hilton. It's some kind of "vacation timeshare" program where you get a week per year at any Hilton hotel you want (and as you'll see later on in this trip, the Hilton here is NIIIIIIIIICE). Aunt Susan and Uncle Brad got one, as did Mom. Don't ask me where she's getting the money for this, but god knows I'll certainly uh, take advantage of any excuse to go back to Hawaii.

I went off to the King's Shops (oh, to be staying at places with stores across the way) with Alicia and Cassie, who went shopping for insanely expensive bikinis. I eventually hauled off to buy cheap jewelry instead. Go me.

We went back to the nearby beach again, but the water was too rough to do much swimming. I pretty much never actually just lie around on a beach, but this time we all pretty much had to. Luckily for me, I didn't get burned doing it the way most other people did.

We wandered back to the King's Shops later for the 4th of July festivities going on that afternoon. It was pretty festive, with big crowds, lei-making (I didn't get to do it, sniffle), music playing, what have you. We got shaved ice and adopted ducks for the local duck race, mainly because they had some very nifty merchandise.

I didn't get to see the race up close because we were going to a luau that night and most of the rest of them wanted to go home and shower, but I watched it (er, attempted to, really) from across the pond. It was, alas, not very exciting when the water wasn't moving.

That night, we went to a luau over at the Sheraton. (Alas, nobody's actually given me the cute group photo from that night, so I cannot post it here.) It wasn't the best luau ever, but I can say it had an interesting selection of food and an open bar. We ended up sitting with two New York theater actors (she's in Chorus Line, he's in Phantom) and that was some very interesting conversation there. Nice people. Ironically, some girl in Chorus Line turned out to have gone to high school with Alicia. (Later on, I thought I spotted the husband briefly on Kauai driving by.)

The stage show (what I'm there for) had some pretty good male dancers, and a really great fire dancer, but so-so females. There was also a "how to wear a sarong" fashion show, at one point featuring some very-tied-tight male booty. Heh.

At one point, I looked up at the sky there and thought, "This looks so pretty, Disney must have made it." Then I remembered that this wasn't Pirates of the Caribbean, this was actually real. Awesome.

After the luau, there were two fireworks shows: one set off right off in front of where the duck races were and one on the other side of the condos.

The shows were only 10 minutes long apiece (shorter than I'm used to), but it was funny to be able to look up and see 2 at once from where I was at. I was using the "fireworks" setting on my camera to attempt to get as many shots as I could. They came out pretty interesting- bizarre strings in the air, mostly.

(For more fireworks shots, start here.)

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