We just returned from a fabulous week in Honolulu where the skies were blue, the ocean  even bluer, and it was 80 degrees every day.  Oahu is our favorite island, mostly because we aren’t sit-on-the-beach kind of people, so there is more to do in Honolulu than anywhere else.  That’s not to say we didn’t sit on the beach and play in the pool a lot because we did.  The kids took surfing lessons every day, and we built sandcastles and spent time in the pool.  (We also did math homework and read from the school reading list, but that’s a topic for another day.)

In addition to our usual visits to the Bishop Museum and the Honolulu Art Museum (formerly the Honolulu Academy of Arts), we paid a visit to Pearl Harbor.  Jim and I had been years ago, but this was the kids’ first visit.  The USS Arizona Memorial is moving enough to break your heart.  The tour of the aircraft carrier USS Missouri is amazing, both because of the sheer size of the ship and because of the role the ship played in history.  (Among other things, the deck of the Missouri is the place where the Japanese signed the surrender documents ending World War II.)  And the tour of the World War II submarine, the USS Bowfin, is not for the claustrophobic.

I was also fascinated at the number of Japanese tourists wending their way through the Pearl Harbor sites, as if they were visiting just another tourist spot.  But, perhaps, they were learning things they didn’t know, just as Americans do when visiting Hiroshima.  (It was still weird, however.)

We also ate our way through our vacation, dining at our favorite restaurant, Alan Wong’s, twice (more about the meals in a later blog post) and at our second favorite restaurant, Roy’s, twice as well.  This is in addition to the meals of ramen, sushi, and kimchee fried rice that we consumed.  (And let’s not forget the shave ice.)

If you’re interested in travel tips to Hawaii, you can mouse over the Travel section of my website and click on Hawaii for my Hawaii travel tome.