This package was (standby) air fare and three nights in a Waikiki Beach hotel. We fleshed this out into an 8-day stay: one additional night in Honolulu upon arrival at an airport hotel, then three nights on the north shore, one night on the SE coast (called the windward coast), then ending with the three nights in Waikiki.
We booked a Nov 14 departure and at the time seat availability looked good, but it tightened as the time approached. On Thursday, the 12th, the word was 20 available seats, but 21 standbys listed. Looked for other options. Friday, THE 13TH, had much greater availability (because of trextadecophobia? I didn't look up spelling, but this should be close enough), so we moved our departure up a day. Added one more night at airport hotel, one more day with rental car, and we were set.
We flew on USAirways, ABQ-PHX-HNL, an alien experience, on FRIDAY THE 13TH, no less, for us Southwest Airlines partisans. Had to pay for checked baggage, had to pay for snacks and meals. But, hey, if people don't want to fly on FRIDAY THE 13TH, we're glad to have their seats. In fact, on the 6.5 hr. flight from PHX to HNL we had an aisle and a window seat, nobody in the middle seat! We gaily chatted the time away. You might notice that we walk around with our elbows tucked tightly against our sides from flying middle seats so often.
(Which reminds me: The previous week we flew on Thursday to Cleveland (Baldwin-Wallace U)to see granddaughter Kaci in a play, then to Nashville to help Mandi and Paul put on a garage sale -- they're moving to Denver - yippee! The play was "Wild Party," (which it certainly was. Very dramatic music and Kaci was great in one of the lead roles.)
At any rate, we got to Honolulu in late afternoon and, with help from the GPS in Susie's cell phone, found the hotel -- about two blocks from the rental car pick-up site. Had dinner at the Dixie Grill in Pearl City, a popular hangout for Navy personnel and their families that I found in guidebook, led there by GPS, and retired early to try to reset our internal clocks.
With our bonus day, we decided to see Pearl Harbor on Saturday, rather than wait until we returned to Honolulu at the end of our stay. Got there and picked up our tickets for the USS Arizona Memorial tour. We had about a two-hr. wait for that tour, so in the interim I did the USS Bowfin tour. The Bowfin is a submarine whose construction was authorized immediately after the Pearl Harbor attack and launched exactly one year later: Dec. 7, 1942. She became known as the Pearl Harbor Avenger. During the war the Bowfin destroyed 39 Japanese merchant ships and four Japanese navy ships.
Here's a picture of the Bowfin torpedo room. You carry headphones that provide good explanations of what you're seeing and reminiscences from crew members. It's rather cramped -- moreso than Tuzigoot. I wonder if they could put slideouts on submarines. I got behind a guy who constantly snapped pictures -- five pictures of a bunk room for cryin out loud!
That's me in the white shirt. Dive! Dive! Dive!
I have a personal connection to Pearl Harbor. Immediately after the attack my Dad, then a HS principal (I believe -- don't have my Dad's history available here) in NW Oklahoma, enlisted. I was born nine and a half months later, in a Navy hospital -- one of the first war babies. Thanks, Mom and Dad.
The USS Arizona tour is introduced by an excellent film about the attack. Lots of dramatic movie footage taken that day by local and Japanese cameras, including film just as the Arizona is hit. 1,177 sailors died as the ship quickly sank. Some 900 bodies are entombed inside her sunken hull. There were about 2400 deaths that Day of Infamy.
A boat takes you from the Visitor Center to the Arizona Memorial, which sits astride the sunken hull. You can see the ship outlines below and smokestacks protrude. A wall of the Memorial lists the fatalities.
There's an oil slick visible here from fuel still leaking from the Arizona's tanks.
In the last few months I've been to the World Trade Center and Pearl Harbor. May there be no more such days of infamy.
Also at Pearl Harbor is the USS Missouri -- the battleship upon which the Japanese surrender was signed. The Missouri was in dry dock for maintenance, so was closed to tours. Part of the same tour is the USS Oklahoma memorial. The Oklahoma was another battleship sunk that day in Pearl Harbor. I wanted to pay tribute there, but had to settle for buying a shirt.
Before we left home I had about decided to buy a 'netbook' computer, considerably smaller and lighter than the conventional laptop computer we have. Costco had a good deal on a basic netbook and I would probably (statistics means never having to say you're certain) have bought one there on Friday, but our sudden departure prevented that. Susie said maybe there's a Costco in Honolu, so I did look up a Honolulu Costco on the internet and printed a Mapquest map that indicated it was fairly close to our hotel.
After being at Pearl Harbor I was feeling the need to blog, so we went looking for Costco. Susie programmed the address into her phone and away we went in search of Costco. There was a big difference, though, between where Mapquest and Verizon said Costco was located. Verizon said across town on the east side of Honolulu. The airport is on the west side. Initially, I trusted Mapquest -- silly me. This meant I was dissing Susie's phone -- not wise. When Verizon said go eight miles east on H1, I said this can't be right and took the first exit I came across.Turned out to be H3, a freeway that runs for 10 miles or more NE, with no exits, through some dramatic mountains, then a tunnel, until it emerges somewhere NE of Honolulu. Gorgeous drive, by the way. At this point I gave up and meekly followed Verizon's instructions to what I was reasonably sure would be somewhere other than Costco, at which point I would say, OK, let's go by the Mapquest map. Well, son of a gun, Verizon took us right into Costco on the far east side of Honolulu. And two days later, here I sit looking out at the ocean from our beachfront cottage on the North Shore of Oahu, blogging away.
I had found a Methodist Church (on my new toy computer) in Pearl City, so Sunday morning, en route to the North Shore, we stopped there. The church is shared by a Tongan Methodist congregation but one Sunday a month, they have a joint service -- luckily the one we happened upon. The Tongan choir did the special music -- 11 very strong and harmonious voices, in their native language -- really a thrill and very moving. A guest speaker from the National Alliance for Mental Illness-- the local chapter meets in the church and he was thanking the church for their support -- spoke eloquently about his son, who had been diagnosed as schizophrenic, and the effect that situation had had on his life. Changed his life and enabled him to see how God's love can work.
Then, wouldn't you know, they had a potluck lunch and a nice church lady invited us to stay. Sure, we said. The guidebooks say try to get away from the touristy places and eat where the locals do, so how better to do that than a church potluck. There was quite a mix of Tongan and Hawaiian and Methodist fare. Most unusual was some blackened little fish, smelt, someone thought, cooked whole. You eat them kind of like a french fry, except the head and backbone. Well, I ate one. It was OK. Susie declined. Another delicacy was purple sweet potatoes and she went for that.
We had a good visit with the minister. He had been at this church four years. His wife is a Presbyterian minister and she had been assigned a large church in Honolulu and he found this smaller Methodist church to pastor. They moved from the Denver area.
As we left, Susie said, Well you did it again. Found an out of the way spot that provided a nice experience, she meant, as opposed to: Got us lost again.
We headed on up to the North Shore. We'll be in touch.
Cheers,
Susie and Rob
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