Back at sea after a day ashore in Honolulu yesterday. What a beautiful place! The first photo above is from our cabin balcony - it's basically overlooking an industrial area and it still looks nice!
First thing we did was a bus tour - we went over the USS Missouri and then to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona memorial. Both really interesting and in the case of the memorial, really moving as well.
One thing that I didn't really expect - I've been looking at maps of Pearl Harbor and reading about the attack for years, but actually being there gives a perspective that no amount of photographs or movies can give you.
When we were in Phoenix, we saw an anchor that was recovered from the USS Arizona; here at Pearl Harbor we saw the other one on display - picture is above. Didn't really sink in until the man beside us said that he'd seen the other one and then we realised that we had too.
There are a couple of other things that we didn't get to see because of the usual lack of time - there's a submarine (the Bowfin) that you can go onto, and also some displays of military aircraft. They're also in the middle of building a brand new visitor's centre, due to open on 7 December this year.
On the trip back the bus driver / tour guide showed us a bunch of other places, all of which you could clearly spend a stack of time looking at.
Once we got back, Paul and I went for a walk. The first place we stopped at was a chemist shop in a little mall which seemed to be having some sort of a disturbance - there were policemen and cameras everywhere and I was more than a bit disconcerted. Turns out, they were filming on location for the new Hawaii 5-O movie!
Then, Paul managed to find the 'real' Hawaiian shirts that were on his shopping list. We were at a shopping centre in the Aloha Tower which is clearly designed for tourists, and clearly really suffering from the economic downturn - there were very few people there and almost every shop we walked into we were almost mugged by shop-keepers wanting us to buy things.
After that, Paul went back to the ship and I continued walking along to Ala Moana beach - but I was looking for shops, not the beach! I spent some time window-shopping, bought some real Hawaiian honey - which we'll have to eat on board of course - and then made my way back to the ship and crashed.
One other minor surprise - something that I had unconsciously noticed all day but that didn't really sink in until last night - although Hawaii is part of the USA, American accents (at least where we were) were almost unheard - the vast majority of accents (apart from the Aussie and Kiwi accents of most of our fellow cruisers) are Hawaiian.
All things considered, Hawaii has now moved from my list of 'places I didn't really want to go to' (apart from Pearl Harbor which I had always wanted to see) to my list of 'places I want to come back to'. I didn't even get to see Waikiki Beach at sunset and that alone is meant to be worth the trip. This is turning into a really expensive holiday!
Woke up this morning feeling quite unwell - no actual physical symptoms apart from almost complete exhaustion even though I'd slept for about 8 hours - I even had to cancel my PT session I had booked for today! The lady at the spa said that the air pressure often gets to people; I think it might be a combination of that plus a bit too much sun and a bit of dehydration yesterday plus caffeine withdrawal - I didn't have a single coffee or diet coke yesterday. We've now just had lunch and I'm actually sitting up in the cabin for the first time today, so hopefully I'm getting over whatever it was.
We're now in the middle of day one of 5 days at sea before we get to Tahiti.
I'm going to do a computer course tomorrow - they claim to be teaching Excel, and any help I can get with Excel will be a good thing!
No comments:
Post a Comment