For lunch, we went to the familiar Safeway in Kihei. We bought bread and sushi and drove down the nearby road to the beach. Having lunch in the car while enjoying the view of Kihei beach was a popular activity. A few cars were already there when we arrived and more came after us!
The final must-see for us was the aquarium. People who didn't snorkel or scuba dive, like us, could still enjoy the large variety of marine life found in Hawaii at the Maui Ocean Center. We had a great time watching the smaller ones that live in the coral to the big ones like this:
It featured a transparent tunnel that we watched sharks and stingrays swimming around and above us.
The original dinner plan was the famous Japanese restaurant Sansei in Kihei but we saw a big crowd outside at 4:30pm. The restaurant won't even open for another half hour! It's not worthwhile to risk missing the flight for this so we went to another restaurant we really wanted to try, Flatbread, in Paia (my 5th time there,) known for its organic pizza ingredients. And it turned out to be a great choice, not just for the tasty pizza.
Here was the story: my son absolutely didn't like pizza. We usually order garlic bread for him when we have pizza. Flatbread didn't make garlic bread but the waiter offered us bread stick, which is basically a plain pizza without tomato sauce. It tasted good and my son liked it. The best part? It's free!
And the orders arrived quickly so we had plenty of time making it to the airport. And the plane was there ready to fly us back home. However, the flight was still sitting there when the departure time had passed! We were told there was a problem related to navigation. The airline found a solution 45 minutes later and it took another 30 min to implement (reloading the navigation database. Maybe they should use a faster flash drive next time) We arrived in SF at 6am. The end.
