After a succulent breakfast of pancakes, eggs, sausage patty, hash browns and an English muffin, I headed out on the street to get my bearings. Having arrived in the dark with a tired grumpy family, we had hit the sack asap last night.
There was a guy unloading a Coke truck so I asked him the obvious question,
"excuse me, can you tell me where the ocean is?" seems it was only a block to the north so away I went. There were already at least 50 people surfing at dawn on Waikiki beach. I went for a walk down the beach for an hour and eventually made my way back to the hotel. I grabbed a small chai latte for Krista and was back at the room for 7. Everyone was just started to get moving, so a quick shower and backpack pack and out the door we went.
Back to Burger King for the Ultimate Breakfast for the rest of the family.
We headed a block down and caught the city bus to Pearl Harbour. We met three girls from Melbourne who were on a US tour from Hawaii/LA/Vegas and home...
An hour later we arrived at Pearl Harbour. Extremely strong military presence with Navy/Marine personnel everywhere, many toting two handguns.
After checking our bags, we bought the package deal to see the USS Missouri ( famed battleship since WWII and even in desert storm ) as well as the sunken USS Arizona and the submarine USS Bowfin (ranked 15/175 in sinking other vessels during WWII.)
Surprisingly, half way through our day we bumped into Kristas mom, sister Amanda and cousin Nicola as they decided to do Pearl Harbour on this overcast day. They were off on a your and we never did see them again that day. They are staying a block away from us in Waikiki.
We headed over to the USS Arizona after watching the video footage of the tragic events of Dec 7/1941. The sunken ship with hundreds of entombed soldiers was very disturbing but nonetheless very interesting.
We toured the USS Bowfin submarine. Quite amazing that they could house 32 missiles and that it was ranked 15/215 vessels in numbers of ships/vessels sunk. Alas, submarines suffered the extremely high causalities of the war.
We did a bit of shopping and headed out to the street to catch the city bus back to Waikiki. After a 15 minute wait and 1 hour bus ride through rich hour, we made it back to our hotel.
We quickly changed into our swimsuits and hit the pool for a couple hours. We ordered food and drinks which came very quickly.
We went upstairs to change and decided to wander around the ships for a couple hours. We bought some souvenirs and I found a nice dress for Krista.
We ended up at a tattoo parlor kiosk where we all got Henna Tattoos! Nicholas was very excited with his flaming soccer ball. Jacob got a dragon. Krista got a turtle and I got a turtle band around one leg. Hopefully this will not inspire them to get a real one down the road...
We watched some street performers and had some shaved ice with blue raspberry and coconut. We got the kids into bed around 10 and we called it a night. Good day!!
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