Aloha! First impressions

Our flight to Honolulu was completely full and the crowds at the airport upon arrival confirmed that the tourists were back.  In the run-up to this trip, I was in the midst of planning at work for a government shutdown.  Or, as we had been saying at work, "a lapse in appropriated funding."  When I left the office late on Thursday, things looked all but certain that the government would shut down at midnight on Saturday.  I had finagled things at work to allow me to be away that week, even though technically I was required to be there.  Of more concern, however, was the operating status of national parks.  Until an actual shutdown occurs, the Office of Management of Budget does not specify exactly which parts of the government will be deemed essentially and remain open. During every shutdown aside from the longest (under Trump), all the National Parks closed completely.  We were scheduled to visit no less than four parks during our cruise and I was concerned (and frankly, selfishly, angry) that politics were threatening our potentially once-in-a-lifetime chance to see some of these places.  On the last day of our cruise, I booked us a tour that would pick us up from the ship and take us to Pearl Harbor, which we would visit before being transferred to the airport for our flight home. You need advance tickets to visit the USS Arizona Memorial, and they sell out months in advance.  Worrying that we would miss this iconic site, I found out that the Park Service releases a small number of next-day tickets every evening.  So, late on the night before our departure, I waited on the Park Service website until exactly 9:00pm, when I was able to secure two tickets for the latest window the next day (3:15pm).  This meant, however, that we would have to go directly to Pearl Harbor from the airport.  Compounding the scheduling challenge was the fact that we had already booked a luau for that same evening, in Honolulu.  It was going to be a race to see if we could squeeze everything in AND stay awake, which is another reason we were both so happy to have slept on the plane.

Upon Arrival in Honolulu.  The airport has lots of open-air concourses.

By 2:30pm we were in our rental car, leaving the airport.  Honolulu is notorious for its traffic, and if locals are to be believed, they have the worst traffic in America.  I don't know if I could go that far, but there is a tremendous amount of traffic trying to navigate a very limited number of roads...oh, yeah, and it was rush hour on a Friday afternoon.

Pearl Harbor is only a few miles from the airport, and we made it with just enough time to very quickly walk through the museum and then queue up for the boat launch, which would take us over to the Arizona Memorial.  When I visited in 2018, I took the same boat, but the memorial was being renovated at the time (it had become unstable) so we were not able to leave the launch and board the actual monument.   They have since completed the restoration work, and I was very much looking forward to seeing it.  The US Navy runs the boat launch and, unsurprisingly, they run a proverbially tight ship.  We got to spend about 30 minutes at the memorial, at the end of which a World War II veteran came aboard, in his wheelchair, to a raucous welcome from those of us there.  We learned that only one survivor of the Arizona is still alive. He is 104 and, like many of his fellow survivors, he has elected to have his ashes interred inside the hulk of the Arizona after his death.

View to the Arizona Memorial from the Visitors' Center

Arizona Memorial from the Navy Launch.  USS Missouri -- where WWII Peace Treaty with Japan was signed -- in background.

Original mooring for the Arizona on Battleship Row

Names of all the soldiers killed on the USS Arizona.  Names of survivors later interred after death appear on lower pedestals.

Flags were at half mast for Senator Diane Feinstein who had passed away earlier in the day.

Oil still leaks from the sunken hulk 80+ years on.

As I wrote earlier, we had also booked a luau this night, and in hindsight we were beginning to question what we had been thinking.  I know we were trying to maximize our time, but the time change was surely going to catch up with us.  Using Waze in our rental car, I calculated that we did not have time to drive to our hotel in Waikiki, check-in, and then make it back to the luau venue in time.  The distances were not far, but the traffic was very heavy, and we simply couldn't make it work, so we ended up heading directly to the luau.  I should mention, too, that we were still in our airplane clothes, meaning that we had on long pants, which was not ideal given that it was in the upper 80's in Honolulu.

We did a lot research on luaus while planning, and quickly learned they are held on different nights at different venues, so our options were limited.  For a Friday night, there is a luau held at the iconic Aloha Tower, which is a 100-year old lighthouse-like structure that marks the historic main shipping harbor for Honolulu.  It remained the tallest structure on Oahu island until the 1950's.  

The Aloha Tower

The luau was, needless to say, a tourist attraction, and we met lots of fellow travelers.  We were, however, the only ones we met who had literally just arrived, with most others on the tail ends of their respective vacations.  Lots of couples on their honeymoons, and a seemingly equal number celebrating anniversaries, such as ourselves.  Lots of international visitors, too, from every corner of the globe.  I was surprised (but honestly shouldn't have been) at the numbers of Australians.  I laugh in hindsight, too, as while in line to enter the outdoor luau venue, we saw a couple in matching Hawaiian garb celebrating their anniversary.  We both looked at each other and said, "let's not ever let ourselves be those people and wear those outfits."  Fast forward a week and you'll see that we in fact BECAME that couple and ended up with our own matching Hawaiian outfits.  I'll attribute it to the "magic of the islands."

The luau was fun, with lots of history about Hawaii and the other islands of Polynesia, with obligatory fire dancing and hula, of course.  By the time the sun set, however, the time difference was catching up and we left with about 20 minutes left in the show.