A Friday night on Waikiki Beach. What could be more fun? Fortunately (or unfortunately, depending on one's perspective), I am pretty tired tonight, perhaps too tired (and, yes, rum might have also played a role) to do the day justice, but I'm going to give it my best shot.
I slept poorly, and blamed my cold, but G said he slept poorly too and he said the ship had been bouncy last night. Whatever the reason, when I opened an eye around 6:30am, it was pitch dark and rainy outside. Not an inspiring start to the day, and it was all the excuse I needed to go back to sleep. By 7:30am, the rain had slowed and the sun had risen but the view outside our porthole was the foggy side of a yellow warehouse-type building.
We dilly dallied to the point where we missed breakfast in the Club Restaurant and instead went to the Panorama Buffet. G's great experiment today was brewing his own 100% Kona coffee; he had purchased the grounds yesterday at the WalMart in Hilo. He proclaimed it the best coffee he's had in months, but I suspect the Carnation liquid French Vanilla creamer he also purchased might have helped.
We were docked not at the Aloha Tower but in the slightly better located Pier 2, and, as we ate breakfast, we watched several fighter jets taking off and military helicopters flying overhead. Yep, we're definitely back in the US!!
G was extremely excited to be back in Honolulu. Twice after 9/11, he had military duty here, and, in fact, one of his very last assignments was at Tripler Army Hospital, a huge pink-hued building on the side of the hill overlooking Honolulu. A fellow passenger was insisting that that was the pink Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach, and G tried to convince her otherwise but she was quite adamant. ;-).
We left the ship and walked the short distance to Ala Moana Blvd. to catch The Bus ($2.50pp), Honolulu's award winning public bus, to the Ala Moana Mall. I have my own fond memories of the Ala Moana Mall, and am feeling energetic enough to go into that here (blame the blog reader who emailed me telling me she loved my stories).
It was December 1982 and I was very newly engaged and chose that moment to go to Hawaii with a girlfriend. Actually, we didn't have a lot of choice in our timing. In one of the first airline frequent flyer awards ever, she and I (both corporate auditors right out of college who were 80% travel) had racked up enough flights on Northwest Airlines to win an award flight to anywhere they flew in the US, expiring in December. Of course we chose Hawaii; it was the peak of the popularity of Magnum, PI and it was most exotic of the available destinations. Here was my totally free routing: Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis. Change planes. Minneapolis, Spokane, Seattle. 8 hour layover (I rented a hotel at the airport by the hour...don't tell my mom!). There I met my friend who was working in Oregon and we flew (first class, mind you) to Honolulu. I don't recall much of that flight beyond copious amounts of champagne and the bright sun that nearly blinded me when they opened the door of the 747 once we landed.
All of this for...48 hours in Honolulu. Really. I was young and foolish and only cared about getting a tan for Christmas to help show off my new engagement ring. But here's the Ala Moana Mall tie in: once the sun set the first night, Gail and I drove to that mall and, who did we spot going into the Godiva store as we were walking out? Donny Osmond and his wife.
That's it. That's all I got. My one brush with celebrity. 36 hours later I was back home in snowy Ohio and it was all a dream. But here's the point: Hawaii, and specifically Honolulu is special to both G and me.
Once at the mall (which is huge, BTW), we wove our way back through Nordstroms to the other side of the tracks...the Sams Club above the WalMart. We really wanted to buy a new, fourth suitcase to help haul home some of the stuff we've accumulated over the past three months. Our fourth suitcase at home is showing its age; it made sense to pick up a new one since we'll be able to check four suitcases free of charge flying home on Southwest. Our other three suitcases were Samsonite Spinners from Sams Club, and they have been real winners. Alas, they were not in stock at the Honolulu Sams Club; nor did they have anything of reasonable quality at WalMart. But we didn't have too much time to worry about it...my phone rang and we suddenly had to be somewhere else.
While we were still in Papeete, I had contacted a rental company in Honolulu about visiting condos located in the Ilikai Marina building on the marina at the west end of Waikiki Beach. We have stayed in this area during prior visits and knew we like it (near the Hilton Hawaiian Village), but it's hard to get a feel for a place from photos on the Internet. We were met and shown two units that are contenders for a future extended stay.
The Rainbow Tower at the Hilton Hawaiian Village and the view of Waikiki Beach toward Diamond Head.
I had forgotten how wide Waikiki Beach is in front of the Hilton and the Hale Koa Resort, the military resort next to Fort DeRussey Park on the beach.
We walked to the Ilikai Marina building from the Ala Moana Mall, with G leading the way. It was a maze of concrete skyscrapers and sidewalks to me, but he was more familiar with the route. After we visited the Ilikai Marina, we started walking down the beautiful sidewalk that lines the beach in that area, until we got to the Hale Koa. The Hale Koa is operated by the US military for military personnel and retirees, and it's always been a favorite place to have a meal and a drink and people watch along the beach. And by then it was after 2pm and we were getting hungry and weary and that is where we spent the rest of the day. The MaiTais were deadly (military price $7.20; $9 for everyone else...that's certainly payback for a military career ;-)) and we had a blast as entertainers and passengers from the Pacific Princess walked by and we invited them to join us. Jere Ring spent some time with us and we solved the world's issues (much easier over rum) and at 4:30pm a guitarist started to play and the day cooled off and we had Mongolian BBQ for late lunch/ early dinner and watched the sunset right from our table. Our goal was to stay until the every-Friday-night fireworks show at the Hilton Hawaiian Village next door at 7:45pm, and I was good and tipsy by then.
At some point, I had an Hawaiaan shave ice. We so fell in love with these after our first visit (together) to the Hawaiian islands in 1995 that we bought a shave ice machine for home.
At some point, we were joined by two couples who, I didn't at first notice (it was dark...there was rum) were wearing Seahawks shirts. The past twelve months have mellowed me, I guess, 'cause we had the best time singing along to music trivia being conducted by the guitarist and generally having a blast.
At 7:45pm, the event we'd been waiting for began- Friday night fireworks!
Afterward, we walked back to the Ala Moana Mall and took The Bus back to the ship. We re-boarded the ship at 9pm, 11 hours, several drinks and even more miles after we'd left this morning. After a quick clean up, we decided we were more hungry than tired and had a light dinner at the Panorama Buffet. We sail at 11pm, and the lights of Honolulu as seen from the ship are beautiful.
It was one of the best days of the entire winter. :-)