Last night’s entry didn’t post either so this is my last attempt.
Yesterday we went to Pearl Harbour. We did a tour of the grounds and the USS Arizona memorial. It is hard to believe the ship is only 8 feet under the water and pasts of it are visible. It is awful to think that over 900 men are entombed with the wreck. The memorial site is very well done.
After lunch at the hotel we walked into Waikiki via the waterfront. It was mostly boardwalks with plenty of shady places to stop and admire the view. We found the Beachwalk Plaza and saw 2 men setting up with guitars. We sat on a bench and waited to see what was happening. The men sang traditional Hawaiian songs and were accompanied at times by ladies/girls dancing the hula. It was great to see all the dances. The girls move very gently with lots of hand movements. Some Japanese ladies performed a few of the dances. The guy introducing everything said that hula was very popular in Japan and it was a great way to unite the 2 cultures. There is so many Japanese tourists in Hawaii. They even have their own bus and trolley services. It seems ironic because it was the Japanese who destroyed the US navy fleet & killed over 2000 people.
I love to see these cultural events and we watched the whole 90 minutes.
Today we had to pick up our car but first we went down to the beach and booked ourselves on tonight’s sunset cruise. There are a couple of catamarans that go out from the beach a couple of times a day. The last one is the sunset cruise at 5.30pm.
Once we had the car, we drive ourselves to the Aloha Stadium. On Wednesday’s and weekends they have the flea markets. There were lots of stalls with the same stuff - mainly Hawaiian shirts, dresses or trinkets but we went around the whole stadium and came away with a couple more shirts each.
We left the markets and headed back into Honolulu. We went to an antique Hawaiian shirt shop where prices ranged from $1 to $10k. The sign said they have over 15000 shirts & after looking through all the racks, I believe it! There were some very cool shirts but not the one I was looking for. A man on the plane was wearing a shirt covered in cockatoos with pink combs. It was a brilliant shirt but I haven’t found one yet.
This afternoon we drive up to Diamond Head. We went into the park but didn’t have enough water or time to trek to the top. As we went back down, we stopped at the lookout which gave us a fantastic view across the island. The ocean was a beautiful dark blue and there were clouds covering the mountain peaks. Gorgeous!
We had to be on the beach to board the catamaran at 5pm so we had just enough time for a cocktail and something to eat. Luckily there was a free table under the magnificent banyan tree at the beach bar at the Moana Surfrider hotel. The boat was only a few steps away on the beach.
The cruise was fantastic. We headed out past the surfers to the open ocean. It was a bit windy so there were some waves but nothing too bad. The guys onboard served us cocktails and we had 1.5hrs out looking for turtles, whales & dolphins before turning our attention to the sunset. We didn’t see any wildlife but the sunset was beautiful. No bad for $35!!!