A rainy day in paradise

I know there is a way to write and post blog posts from an iPad, but I haven't figured it out yet, so I took pix and notes along the way and will write things up over the next few days as time permits.
We have spent part of December in Waikiki for the last 5 years, previously, we went over Christmas and New Year's, this time around, we went in early December.
We arrived on Saturday, stocked up on groceries, checked into our condo and just took it easy.
Sunday was wet, very wet, according to the TV news, there were thunderstorm warnings and flash flood warnings, and we saw a couple of trees down. We heard later in the week that several beaches were closed because of brown water run-off.

 The view from our condo. The small white building in the middle of the picture is one of the many, many ABC stores you can find all over Waikiki. I think there are at least 4 more within easy walking distance of our hotel. They are like 7-Elevens, carrying everything from groceries to touristy things.

Hawai'i isn't called the Rainbow State for nothing, although this isn't a great example of one.

Since it was too wet to walk around, we decided on a drive, a long drive, up the windward coast towards the North Shore. We passed by the Vans Triple Crown of Surfing, but there wasn't much going on. The waves weren't very big.
We stopped in Kaneohe to visit Aloha Yarns - I can highly recommend this store. Friendly people and a great selection of yarns.
Saw lots of signs along the North Shore with the same sentiment: keep the country country - no development, no planned city. Found out later that these all refer to a planned expansion of Turtle Bay.
Tried out a new shrimp truck - Giovanni's. More about that later.
We bypassed Hale-iwa because of the rain.
Drove South and stopped at the outlet mall, or, rather, tried to. It was too crowded and we just headed back to the hotel.
Since the rain cleared up later on, we wandered around the Hilton Hawai'ian Village, which is right next to our hotel. A huge complex of accommodations of various types with several restaurants, plenty of entertainment and quite a few shops, some lots fancier than others. Many of the salespeople are Japanese and it's quite obvious that they are more used to Japanese tourists than English speakers.