Home » vacation

Category Archives: vacation

Guarding Against Another Pearl Harbor Attack

Posted on by

Torpedoed Battleship at Pearl Harbor

On our last full day in Hawaii, Martine and I split up. I took a bus to Pearl Harbor and visited both the National Memorial and the Aviation Museum on Ford Island. Martine, on the other hand, revisited old haunts from previous trips before she ever met me.

Actually, the real reason Martine didn’t want to visit Pearl Harbor on this trip was their somewhat draconian policy on what you can take into the park. Especially in light of this week’s Hamas attacks on Israel, there is some point in protecting one of our most sacred war memorials from terrorists. The rule that offended Martine the most was this one forbidding:

Bags, packages, or containers that offer concealment, such as purses, handbags, backpacks, fanny packs, camera bags, diaper bags, luggage, etc. that exceed the measurements of 1.5” X 2.25” X 5.5,” are not allowed at the monument. The Pacific Fleet Submarine Museum operates a baggage storage facility near the entrance to the visitor center. There is a fee per bag for all sizes, including luggage. Visitors may use the same bag storage and parking stall for visits to all Pearl Harbor Historic Sites. Security measures are strictly enforced at all visitor destinations on Pearl Harbor.

Martine did not want to put her purse plus the other things she habitually carries into a locker for which she would have to pay. For the complete list of things you can’t take into the park, check out the mandated safety policy for visits.

It was worth seeing Pearl Harbor again. I was aware of the park’s safety policy, so I took only a small portable bag containing my insulin and necessary medications.

One thing I did not bother to see again was the Arizona Memorial, which floats atop the sunken battleship Arizona. I’ve seen it before, and I wanted to spend time at the Aviation Museum on Ford Island, which neither Martine nor I had previously visited.

Pearl is a long bus ride from Waikiki, but for me it was worth it.

“A Collection of Rare Tropical Plants”

Posted on by

Orchids at the Foster Botanical Garden

During last year’s visit to Honolulu, Martine did not want to visit the Foster Botanical Garden, which consists of 14 acres (6 hectares) of tropical plants on the north edge of Honolulu’s Chinatown. She wound up enjoying it so much that we decided to visit it again.

It was a hot, humid day; so I wound up looking for benches in the shade of large trees. Plus I consumed two bottles of water. It was the same last year. Fortunately the gardens were so drop-dead beautiful that I still enjoyed the visit.

I found it interesting that perhaps a majority of the flora that grow in the Hawaiian Islands were introduced, either by the earliest settlers from the Marquesas Islands and Polynesia, or the white settlers. Included in the “invasive” species are pineapples and sugar, which are major exports for which Hawaii is known. When you think about it, Hawaii is basically volcanic rock, something like a tropical version of Iceland.

It is because of the many introduced plants that there are so many botanical gardens in the state. I hope to visit more of them on future visits.

Queen Emma’s Summer Palace

Posted on by

Queen Emma’s Summer Palace on the Pali Highway

I had originally planned to see it on last year’s trip to Hawaii, but I didn’t know how to get there using public transportation at that time. This year, I did additional research and found it involved a single bus transfer near the Iolani Palace. It turned out to be easy, as it was on the main line from downtown Honolulu over the mountains to Kailua.

After Martine’s ombrophobia (fear of rain) as exhibited during our visit to the Lyon Arboretum on the first full day of our trip, I made sure that she brought rain gear with her. At the Arboretum, it rained lightly on and off about thirty times during our visit; and I expected the same at Queen Emma’s Summer Palace, as it was also high in the hills. (Fortunately, we did not encounter any rainfall.)

In fact, that was its reason for existing. Honolulu is hot and humid most of the time, so King Kamehameha IV and his wife, Queen Emma would spend time at her hill “palace” (it was actually more of a house) because it was cooler there. We ourselves found the temperature to be considerably cooler than the coastal lowlands.

Unfortunately, King Kamehameha IV did not reign long before he joined his ancestors. Nor did the heir, Prince Albert Edward. As a widow, Queen Emma continued to live at the Summer Palace while her brother-in-law ruled as Kamehameha V.

The grounds are run by the Daughters of Hawai’i, who offer informative tours of the building.

Two Museums on Waikiki

Posted on by

This Museum Is on the Grounds of Fort DeRussy

Unknown to most tourists in O’ahu, there are two interesting museums on Waikiki itself. The first is on the Ewa (Western) side on the grounds of Fort DeRussy. The building used to be part of Hawaii’s coastal defenses and was once called Battery Randolph. Today, the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii (admission free) covers the military history of Hawaii from the days of Kamehameha I with his war clubs studded with sharks’ teeth to the Viet Nam war.

Particularly interesting is the exhibit dedicated to the bombing of Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941. The museum was closed during most of the Covid 19 epidemic but has recently re-opened. And when you have finished with the exhibits, you can wander among the shore defense cannon on the roof.

The story is that they were going to demolish Battery Randolph but found it would be too expensive as the walls were so thick. The upshot: An interesting little museum worth an hour or two of your time.

Within a few hundred yards of the museum is one of my favorite Waikiki eateries: The Shake Shack, right on Fort DeRussy Beach.

The other Waikiki museum I last visited some twenty years ago: It was a little museum dedicated to Father Damien de Veuster, a Catholic saint who dedicated his life to helping the lepers on Molokai. They are in process of expanding the museum greatly. When I saw it, it occupied a couple of rooms adjacent to Saint Augustine Catholic Church on the Diamond Head Side of Waikiki. At the time, it was free of admission costs, though I do not know the current status. Here’s where you can find more info: The Damien and Marianne of Moloka’i Education Center, costing some $6 million to build.

These are two sights you can visit without having to take one of those expensive, super-crowded tourist trolleys.

Taking Hawai’i Seriously

Posted on by

Martine at the Grace Pauahi Bishop Museum in Honolulu

For most visitors, Hawaii is a playground symbolized by the hedonistic hordes of Waikiki. If you want to take a serious look not only at Hawaii, but also Polynesia as a whole, the place to go is the Grace Pauahi Bishop Museum on the Ewa (i.e., West of Waikiki and Diamond Head) side of Honolulu.

It’s in a big old 19th century stone building, originally used by the Kamehameha Schools for native Hawaiian children (also founded by Grace Pauahi Bishop, who, incidentally, was the last legal heir of the Kamehameha dynasty that had ruled the Kingdom of Hawai’i for most of the 19th century).

The Bishop Museum is not on the route of the trolleys that run up and down Waikiki heading for the big tourist attractions of the city. That’s because it’s for serious tourists only, who really want to know about the cultures of Hawaii and Polynesia. And it’s not just a museum: It is also a scholarly research institution that sponsors and publishes studies. It has been designated by the state government as the Hawaiʻi State Museum of Natural and Cultural History.

Just because the building looks old and stuffy doesn’t imply that that the place is in any sense boring. If you spend two or three hours there, you will learn something about the islands, their ecology, history, and anthropology. There is even a planetarium on the premises.

The #2 Honolulu bus goes from Waikiki to within two blocks of the entrance at Bernice Street and Kapalama Avenue.

Sonnet 129

Posted on by

The Waikiki Malia Hotel in Waikiki

It was our second night in Honolulu. We had a room on the 12th floor of the Waikiki Malia Hotel’s Malia Tower. The next room away from the elevator was occupied by a couple of young women who were entertaining young male guests. Because the two rooms were connectable by a locked door, we could hear pretty much everything that was said.

Martine and i were pretty tired by 10 pm, because that was the same as 1 am Los Angeles time. Still we were entertained by the goings-on next door. All four were obviously on on liquor and possibly worse, and the girls were doing a major snow job on the guys. After three quarters of an hour, all four left to go out; but before long one of the couples returned to have very noisy sex.

After about ten minutes, the sounds from the other room were of conflict. The guy was complaining that his driver’s license was missing. After the act, there appeared to be no love lost between the two. As I lay in bed, I could easily have predicted this. After the guy left in a huff, everything went quiet; and we dropped off to sleep.

I was reminded of Shakespeare’s famous Sonnet #129 on the subject of lust:

Th’ expense of spirit in a waste of shame
Is lust in action; and, till action, lust
Is perjured, murd’rous, bloody, full of blame,
Savage, extreme, rude, cruel, not to trust;
Enjoyed no sooner but despisèd straight;
Past reason hunted, and no sooner had,
Past reason hated as a swallowed bait
On purpose laid to make the taker mad,
Mad in pursuit and in possession so;
Had, having, and in quest to have, extreme;
A bliss in proof and proved a very woe;
Before, a joy proposed; behind, a dream.
    All this the world well knows, yet none knows well
    To sun the heaven that leads men to this hell.

Our Favorite Honolulu Eatery

Posted on by

The Liliha Bakery at Waikiki’s International Marketplace

Generally speaking, Martine and i do not agree when it comes to food. She likes rich pastries and American food with meat, potatoes, and vegetables all neatly separated on the plate. I, on the other hand, go in for ethnic dining experiences, with or without meat.

One rare point of agreement was the Liliha Bakery chain in Honolulu. Most mornings (the weekends were always too crowded), we would walk the three blocks from our hotel to the International Marketplace and eat breakfast at the Liliha Bakery on the mall’s third level.

It is a uniquely Hawaiian experience. Martine was drawn mainly by the extensive selection of yummy baked goods, while I liked the Hawaiian touches to their meals. For instance, you wouldn’t catch me drinking iced tea on the mainland if it had been flavored with raspberry or passion fruit; but Liliha’s Plantation Iced Tea with pineapple or guava is delicious and uniquely thirst-quenching.

There are five locations of the bakery/restaurant around the Honolulu area, with the original one located at Kuakini and Liliha Streets about three blocks north of the H1 freeway. Curiously, the bakery is most famous for their coco puffs, which don’t do anything for me. But just about everything else of theirs that I’ve had in our last two trips to Hawaii were strictly top notch.

Rain Rain Go Away

Posted on by

Trees at the Lyon Arboretum Near Honolulu

Our first full day in Hawaii was not a big hit with Martine. I wanted to go to the Lyon Arboretum, a large botanical garden in the mountains above Manoa run by the University of Hawaii. We could have taken a bus to a street about 0.8 miles downhill from the arboretum, but Martine did not like walking uphill that far. So we took a taxi from the Ala Moana Shopping Center.

On the way to the Arboretum, it started to drizzle; and Martine started to feel anxiety over not having her umbrella or raincoat with her. When we got to our destination, I arranged for the taxi to pick us up at 2 PM. It continued to rain on and off, so Martine did not want to walk about in the rain. So she sat down inside while I walked around.

The Arboretum is high enough in the mountains that it not only rains every day, but it rains on and off constantly. While Martine was sitting down by the gift shop, I walked around until just before the cab was due. It was beautiful. Though I had no protection against the rain, it was warm and gentle and intermittent enough not to wet me through. In the end, I wound up taking one of the trails to its end and returned to Martine, who was stewing in her chair.

To make matters worse, the cab never came. I gave the driver a generous tip; but for some unexplained reason, he shined us off. And that despite his calling me on my cell phone to say that he was coming! The park closed at 3 PM, so at that point we started walking downhill toward the #5 bus layover stop, still intending to take the cab should it arrive. Alas, it never did.

Unexpected things can happen on a trip. I believe one has to be flexible. I had researched where the bus stop was, and we eventually made it in about an hour (including several rest stops). The bus came in time and took us back to Ala Moana, where we ate dinner before returning by the #20 to Waikiki.

It’s a pity that Martine couldn’t enjoy the Arboretum. I did, even at the cost of a nasty blister on my right foot from the steep downhill grade. Such is life.

Not Quite a Dead Language

Posted on by

Wherever You Go in Hawaii, You Are Reminded of the Native Language

The State of Hawaii has two official languages: English and Hawaiian (ʻŌlelo Hawaiʻi). There is also a third unofficial language, namely Pidgin English, but that is a subject for another day.

Although the ratio of purebred Hawaiians to persons of White or Asian ancestry has been in decline ever since the 19th century, the language has been adopted by many residents of the islands, irrespective of their ancestry, as a means of differentiating them from the invading mainlanders.

In our hotel room was a large sign that read E komo mai. Fortunately, it means “Welcome,” and not “Yankee Go Home!” It is astonishing how many place names are in Hawaiian, wholly or in part. (“Hawaii Kai ” includes the first syllable of the last name of mogul Henry J. Kaiser.) It can be confusing, since so many of them begin with the latter K, such as Kalihi, Kalmuki, Kaka’ako, and Kahala.

There are a number of words from the Hawaiian language that are now part of everyday English:

  • Aloha: Means Hello (and Good-Bye)
  • Haole: Foreigner or outsider
  • Hula
  • Kahuna: priest, wizard, or sachem—found in many beach movies of the 1960s
  • Lanai: A veranda or patio
  • Ukulele
  • Taboo, comes from the Hawaiian kapu. Hawaiian does not have the letters t or b
  • Wahine: girl

Two words visitors will frequently encounter, particularly on menus and signs, are keiki (children) and kama’aina (persons born or raised in Hawaii, sometimes expanded to persons residing in Hawaii).

It takes a while to get used to, but but I regard it as part of the adventure of visiting such a culturally diverse state as Hawaii.

Back from O’ahu

Posted on by

The Lyon Arboretum in Honolulu’s Manoa Valley

Martine and I returned from Hawaii late on Tuesday, somewhat the worse for wear. We both had a low-level cold during the entire week of our vacation. In my case, it ratcheted up into a full-blown cold when I woke up yesterday morning.

Still, it didn’t prevent u8s from enjoying ourselves in Hawaii. We went everywhere by bus (except to Lyon Arboretum) since we both still had our HOLO cards for TheBus [sic]. Unlike most tourists, who spend of $1,000 or more for a rental car and hotel parking, our total transport expenses were $40.00 for a one month senior citizen pass for TheBus.

Honolulu is an endlessly fascinating city—which most tourists don’t realize, mainly because their main focus is on Waikiki. Some 83% of all hotel rooms in the Honolulu area are on the two-mile-long peninsula of Waikiki, on the Diamond Head side of the city. Most tourists who don’t have rental cars take expensive and overcrowded shuttles to a handful of tourist sites. Martine and I were on the more comfortable and air-conditioned public buses which most tourists didn’t know how to take.

More’s the pity, because there’s a lot to see downtown, in Chinatown, and on the western (Ewa) side of the city. And I don’t just mean Pearl Harbor.

It’s a pity that most Honolulu tourists end up ghetto-ized in Waikiki, and maybe just taking an exploratory jaunt to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. I guess most vacationers would rather not overthink their pleasures. Me, I overthink everything. For me, the preparation just extends the fun beyond the time I am in the islands.