Honolulu, day 1

 

We turned the tv on at about 5:30 am, Saturday, and left it on the ship camera so we could see the sun come up and also see when we came in sight of the lights of Hawaii.  Couldn’t see much until 6:30 when we could see some lights in the distance.  Beautiful sunny morning as we approached Honolulu.  Turning to the news, imagine our surprise when the first thing we heard was that Hawaii was under a tsunami alert.  Welcome to the watery world of islands.  Quite a different warning that all our Midwest friends are experiencing today with a foot or more of snow.  Turned out to be nothing here, but it was an interesting way to wake up.  We arrived at Honolulu on time and were cleared to go ashore by about 8:30. We were supposed to take our cruise cards, government picture ID, and our individual QR codes which were sent to us after we filled out special forms online which are required by the state because of Covid.  The form was a way for us to request an exemption from quarantine restrictions based on our covid tests and our fully vaccinated status.

We walked to what was supposed to be the arts district but did not find what we were expecting.  We did find Chinatown, but it really didn’t do much for us.  I suppose having lived for two years in China and having a ship with all the food you could desire a short walk away takes away the general appeal of Chinatowns in big cities.  We walked back to the ship, rested, then took off for Waikiki Beach, a two-mile stretch of white sand along the shockingly blue water.  Waikiki means sprouting waters in Hawaiian, nodding toward the rivers and springs that once were here.  We have a tour scheduled for tomorrow.  They sent us a text asking if we could be at a hotel near the beach at our pick-up time of 7:00 am.  We checked to make sure we could get off the boat early (24-hour access while in an overnight port) and being unsure how easy it might be to get a ride at 6:30 on a Sunday morning we decided to walk the route to the hotel.  Turns out it will take an hour.  The outstanding feature of the walk? A number of chickens and particularly roosters running free along the major four-land roadway.  We also passed a number of homeless making their home on the street.  Such a paradise for many, but so sad to see the forgotten ones.  We found our rendezvous site and then went looking for art galleries.  We asked several people about the gallery that we were looking for.  No luck.  Even the doorman at one of the hotels for the past 15 years said he’d never heard of it.  We looked some more and finally gave up.

Aha.  A way to add more than 8 pictures to a single port.  An experiment to see how it works.  Thank you, Nicole for the hint (suggestion).  You are a significant part of this blog/trip even if it remains behind the scenes.

Below is a picture that seems to be a Honolulu exclusive.  Where else would you find a phone for a cab with a lei decoration?  The other pics are of some of the older architecture we found in our search for the arts district.