The Tourists

We recently went to Hawaii for our son's wedding, that was a very happy occasion and the main reason for going.  But since we were going to be there anyway, we decided to play tourist and see some of the sights that Hawaii had to offer while we were there.  That proved to be a big task, there is a lot to see in Hawaii.  But we felt we wanted to give it a good go and see what we could.  We spent some time, among other things, talking with the rest of our family who was going, and tried to come up with a list of stuff we wanted to get to for sure.  There was also several other things that we wanted to see if we could.  And we recognized that there would be things we'd learn of once we got there that we would also want to get to.  So, squeezed in around the days for the wedding, we included several other days to do some sightseeing.  

The one place we really wanted to go was the Polynesian Cultural Center.  That was top on our "must see" places.  The center featured five of the islands in Polynesia: Hawaii, Tonga, Fiji, Samoa, and Aotearoa.

Each island had buildings showing native lifestyle, as well as presentations on traditions and culture from the islands.  The grounds all throughout the center were decorated typical of the islands.

The presentations highlighted traditions and the culture of each island.

But one of the high points was the Mission Quilt Shop, featuring quilting done by islanders, or early missionaries among the islanders.  The real fun part was they had a quilt they were working on all set up so that anyone that wanted could do as many stitches in the quilt as they wanted.  Brombeere, of course, had to spend some time putting in a few stitches.

That made her happy.  They told us that particular quilt had been on the frame for over a year and a half, with people stopping to add stitches all that time.

They closely supervised, at least at first, to make sure you knew what you were doing.  But after a few minutes, Brombeere got to stitch as long as she wanted, unsupervised; they trusted her

We were there all afternoon and evening, our tickets included a dinner buffet with all kinds of food from the islands.

We both came away having eaten too much, stuffed to the gills.  But it was so good, how could we resist?  The final part of the visit was the live play called "The Breath of Life". A very well done, highly entertaining play about life in the islands.  

Alas, no photography was allowed during the play so we have only a picture of the stage before the show started.  But it was very well done. In the end, we decided it would be worth it to go back, if we ever get to Hawaii again, because we only saw about half of the exhibits and presentations.  It was a very good time.

One of the other places pretty high on our list was to visit Pearl Harbor, the site of the bombing that brought the United States into World War II.  

It's considered a national cemetery, since it's the final resting place of so many sailors.  We began by watching a movie about the bombing, using mostly actual footage shot the day of the bombing.  Pretty sobering to imagine the destruction, loss of life, and heroics of that day.

It was a reverent site.  A place that has long held an interest for me.  My father was in high school when the bombing took place but it wasn't long after he graduated that he enlisted and entered the military service, in the Army.  We walked around the grounds and took the ferry out to where the USS Arizona sank and still lies at the bottom of the harbor.  It's still an active military harbor so there were plenty of other ships as well.  The ferry out to the Arizona Memorial was operated by the Navy, crewed by active duty sailors.

One of the other things on the list was to do some snorkeling and the place we were able to get in to do that was the Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve, a protected site on the south end of the island where people are allowed to come in limited numbers (even in non-covid times), in order to protect the natural beauty of the bay.

And the bay, a little cove, was a beautiful place.  It looked like it was a crater that millennia ago had broken open to the sea.  So there were waves, but not really big ones like we saw elsewhere coming in from the open ocean.  This was a nice sandy beach far away from the opening, where you could see big waves crashing against the rocks, out at the mouth of the bay.

So the adventurous ones donned the snorkeling gear we'd rented and hit the water while the little kids played in the waves on the beach.  That's not to say that the older kids didn't take turns with the snorkel gear, they did.  But they tended to stay pretty close to the shore where there wasn't a whole lot to see.  We did, however, see a curious seal that ventured into the cove to check out the humans.  He swam along the shoreline a ways before heading back out to sea, far too fast for me to get a picture.  The tide was coming in so gradually the water was getting closer to where we were sitting. 

I had gotten a water-proof camera specifically for this part of the trip.  Nothing fancy but it did capture a little bit of what was under the water.  Lots of coral and a wide variety of fish.  It was hard to tell what you were getting in the picture because it was hard to see the viewfinder through the mask and water.  But we still ended up with some nice pictures.

Pretty much every day we hit some beach or another, to let the kids play in the sand and surf.  The day after we arrived in Hawaii we watched the sun set at Waikiki Beach, near where we were staying.

Our next excursion to the beach was two days later when we went back to a different part of Waikiki Beach, a little closer to the hotel.   Moosebeere and his family had gone the day before but that was the afternoon we went to the Polynesian Cultural Center so we missed that trip.  This trip was in the morning.  This portion of the beach had a little breakwater, making an area of smaller waves - a nice area for the kids to play in.  Out beyond the breakwater, you could see people surfing on the bigger waves out farther.

The next day was the day we went to Hanauma Bay.  While the adults spent time out snorkeling out farther from the beach, Brombeere spent most of her time watching the kids as they played at the water's edge.  It was a good time, everyone enjoyed the sand and water long enough that a couple of people got a little sunburned, even though we were trying to be careful and keep the suntan lotion on everyone.

Waikiki is on the west side of the island.  Hanauma Bay is on the south end of the island.  The next day was the beach party the happy couple had planned so that everyone who was on the island but unable to attend the wedding ceremony could meet and greet together.  It was billed as a beach party where the newly weds planned to hang out as people came and went, after having a chance to wish the happy couple well.  This beach was at Hunananiho Beach, on the east side of the island.

The waves were a bit bigger than on the west side of the island.  The water was not particularly deep but the waves werer just bigger, making it look deeper.  Big waves are a lot of fun.

And the happy couple was there and came out into the water for a while, as well.

Everybody liked the waves on this beach but it soon became apparent that this was a popular place for jelly fish as well.  In fact, the later the day got the more jelly fish showed up.  This was their feeding time.  Seeing them washed ashore wasn't so big a deal but meeting one out in the water was an uncomfortable experience, even painful if the contact was serious.  Several people came away with welts from being stung by jelly fish.  Heidelbeere had one get caught in a bracelet she was wearing, that was painful.  Needless to say, even though the waves were a lot of fun, nobody was excited to go back to that beach.

The next day was the last day for some of those that had come so we kept pretty close to the hotel, and went back to Waikiki Beach, to yet another section of the Waikiki Beach.  The kids were just as happy, Heidlebeere's oldest even collected some sand and water in a small bottle so she could take some of Hawaii back home with her.  That was a fun idea.

Here and there, as we traveled to the various places we went, we would stop at places that caught our eye.  Hawaii is a beautiful place with lots of wonderful things to see so we wanted to make sure not to just drive past everything we saw.  For example, from Hunananiho Beach, if you looked south, you could see the Makapu'u Lighthouse.

Any lighthouse is worth a look-see.  As we left the beach, headed south, we got to where we could get a better look at the lighthouse.

Alas, the trail to the hike to the lighthouse, while a good, paved trail, was a bit long for me so this was as close as we got.  But it was still a cool sight.

A little farther around the south end of Oahu island is the Halona Blowhole lookout.  Much of the shore along the south end of the island is volcanic rock, with only a sandy beach here and there.  But all that lava rock makes for some rugged shoreline, and in this particular spot the lava has made a hole just in from the short where, when the waves hit the shore just right, water shoots up through a little hole in the rock, hence, it's called a blowhole.

In the lower left of this collage, you can see water shooting up through the blowhole.  But the waves crashing against the rocky shore are dramatic and cool looking in any case.

On our several trips from Honolulu, on the west side of the island, over to the east side of the island, we'd pass the Nu'uanu Pali lookout, a scenic lookout point where you can see out over the west side of the island.

So we decided to stop and take a look.  It's amazing to think that on this island out in the ocean there is a point that is 1,168 feet above sea level.  The view was pretty nice.

Another scenic lookout the newlyweds showed us was Tantalus Lookout in Pu'u Ualaka'a State Park. 

The elevation at this lookout is 2,014 feet above sea-level and it looks out over the west side of the island.  In the upper right corner of the collage, you can see Diamond Head, off to the south of Honolulu.  Quite the view.  And the drive up to the lookout was through some pretty dense jungle.  A real pretty drive.

Another place we made it to was the Ho'omaluhia Botanical Gardens.

These botanical gardens are on the east side of the island, a bit inland from the coast.  As botanical gardens go, it's unique for me in that it's outdoors.  Every other botanical garden I've ever visited before has been indoors.  This one, oddly enough, supports all these tropical plants outdoors.

There were some really beautiful plants and trees growing there.  It would have been easy to spend a lot more time there but they weren't open very late in the afternoon.  It was actually more like a big park, than what I think of as a botanical garden.  But it was a really fun place to visit.

Something else we stopped to see, out of curiosity really, was what is commonly called "the Punchbowl".  As we had been driving around Honolulu during all the days we were in the area, we kept seeing the signs referring to this punchbowl and were wondering what this was.  On one of our last days on the island we had stopped to get lunch at a place called The Itchy Butt (the owner let his five year old niece pick the name of his restaurant chain).

But this fine dinning establishment didn't have any dinning area so we needed a place to go eat. I noticed on the map that we were not far from the Punchbowl so we decided to go there to eat and to see just what the punchbowl was.

It turned out to be the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.  Located in a crater above Honolulu, it is another military cemetery.  I hadn't been aware that there was more than one, I had only ever heard of Arlington Cemetery near Washington DC. Anyway, it was a beautiful, quiet, peaceful place to eat lunch.

We also went to the big swap meet at Aloha Stadium in Honolulu a couple of times.

That's actually where we bought most of the souvenirs we brought home.  We also saw lots of other stuff there we'd have liked to get but getting them home would have been an issue, we only had so much space in our luggage.  Ah, well.

One other thing that impressed us was the cityscape.  Honolulu, its skyline and view from a distance, is a really pretty city.  Maybe because it's set against the tropical mountains with ever changing, frequently raining clouds in the sky above it.  At any rate, it's really pretty.

These were just our view from the hotel we stayed at.  We were on the "city side" of the hotel, on the sixth floor.  The other side (which cost a little bit more) was the "ocean side" but since we weren't right on the ocean I'm not sure it would have been all that much better.  Our view, as it was, was nice enough that we kept being drawn back to it.

And everywhere we looked there were birds, many of which we had never seen before.

We weren't able to get photos of every kind of bird we saw, but we got a lot.  They were everywhere. Some were pretty tame, some were outright brazen. And then there were chickens all over the island.  

And, of course, we had to get some Hawaiian shaved ice.

This was not your everyday corner stand sno-cone stuff.  This was really good Hawaiian shaved ice.  That's something I'd definitely get again if we ever make it back.

And then, how could we spend any time in Hawaii without seeing a gecko in our hotel room.  It's the tropics, after all.

But, alas, as is always the case, all fun times must come to an end, and all too soon it was time to leave Hawaii. 

We had booked a flight on the "red-eye" back to the mainland, that meant we'd be flying all night to get home.  Actually, we left Hawaii at 8:30 in the evening and traveled until nearly 5:00 (local time) the next evening before we finally got home.

Our wedding trip was all just happy memories and the little travel souvenirs one picks up while on vacation.

Plus we added four more magnets to the growing collection on our fridge.  It was a good time, I'm glad we went.  And since the newly weds are still living in Hawaii, we might even make it back some day.  There is, after all, still lots to see there.