Kauai and Waikiki

I've been coming to visit the Hawaiian Islands for almost 20 years and realized the only time I had been to Honolulu or the island of Oahu was to change planes. Michael and I decided to go to Honolulu and see what Waikiki was all about as well as check out other tourists spots.

We flew to Honolulu late Wednesday afternoon and checked into our hotel. An older, established one two blocks from the beach at Waikiki. We immediately walked down to the beach and scouted the area for restaurants. We had dinner at d.k.'s at the Marriott sitting on a balcony overlooking the ocean right at sunset. I didn't take my camera so I have no photos.

After dinner we strolled along the prominade listening to street muscians, seeing mimes and other entertainers. The weather was balmy but I couldn't help feeling like I could have been in Santa Monica and not Waikiki.

The next morning as I was showering Michael went out, found a Starbucks (duh?) and returned with coffee and pasties. We then mapped out how to get to Pearl Harbor and we went on our way to take the tours. First of the USS Missouri, then the Aviation museum and final the Arizona Memorial. We were told this could take 5 hours and I was hesitant that I'd want to take that much time to see all that but once we were there we could have even spent longer. The USS Missouri was fascinating, even if it was sobering to watch the videos and relive that history.

We drive back into Honolulu to have a late lunch in Chinatown. We weren't really impressed with Chinatown but we did have a nice lunch at Indigo's. Then we walked over to tour the Iolani palace. The woodwork was incredible and we were surprised to see indoor plumbing .... flush toilets, showers, bathtubs made of copper ....... very advanced as this was built in 1882. They had plumbing before the USA White House did. These were not "Hawaiians in grass skirts with boobs hanging down to their waist like National Geographic depicted them" the docent told us.

We decided we were "museumed out" so we skipped the art museum and drove to Sand Island and walked the beach and sat out on the seawall until we had to go to the airport and fly back to Kauai.

I had taken my camera to Pearl Harbor and then we were only allowed to photo certain things and those weren't really things to photo so I didn't carry my camera around with me anymore. Good thing because we couldn't photo the Palace, no cameras allowed. It was sort of nice to travel without computers, cameras, any kind of electonics, didn't even take my cell phone. Remember how that use to feel? right.