Honolulu, Hawai’i
Good Morning,
Up early this morning for a tour of Pearl Harbor and Honolulu. Mary ordered herself breakfast in the room, the Coffee Connection and my cappuccino and brioche were sufficient for me. The weather is nearly perfect, maybe just a little bit too much humidity. It looked like a rather large group for this tour. It was the same tour company we had on Kaua’i.
The tour began with about a forty minute ride to Pearl Harbor. The guy spent most of the time trying really hard to be funny, unfortunately he wasn’t. He did point out a few of the highlights of Honolulu on the was, but at the speed he was going it was difficult to see much of anything other than a building passing by.
When we arrive at Pearl Harbor he told the group we should make our way through security and then go stand in the standby line to take the launch to the Arizona Memorial. This really confused us. This isn’t a Regent type tour. Really? Standby line? He then announced that he was going to be in the bus taking a nap. That if we wanted to see the mighty mo, we probably will have to make our own way back to the ship as there isn’t sufficient time to do both. Again, a Regent tour?
We took the launch over to the Arizona Memorial. The memorial is now sixty years old, and is just a little dated but it is moving. There truly isn’t much to see at the Memorial, and they only allow each group fifteen minutes on the memorial. That coincidently is just how long it take the launch to pick up one group, drop that group at the Memorial. As soon as one group gets off another gets on, and they go get a group on shore. There are two launches.
On shore there are a number of different things and memorials to see. We walked around looking at them but honestly it was mostly a repeat of everything we have read and heard about the attack on Pearl Harbor. There was another tour you could take of a WWII era submarine, but there was a charge for that and Mary doesn’t do well in confined spaces. Besides that is another been there done that thing.
We met a couple other passengers from the ship on our tour. When we inquired what they knew about the departure time the said noon. What? Apparently someone nailed the driver down and he said we would depart at noon. It had just gone 10. And there wasn’t time for the mighty mo? We were due back at the ship at 1. That means we simply drive back to the ship at noon. Where are the Honolulu highlights?
We made our way to the bus parking area to let the driver know we were just going to take a taxi back to the ship. There were two shipmates there on the phone. Turns out they were trying to find our bus. It wasn’t there. Apparently, the driver had decided to go and get something to eat, or that is what they were told. They did confirm a noon departure. We asked them to let the driver know we were going back to the ship in a taxi so that the driver’s head count wouldn’t be off. Although at this point I am not sure the driver could count that high.
Back at the ship we had a snack in the Coffee Connection and then went for a nap. We are going to meet an attorney, who is a member of the AAEPA, for drinks at four at a near by bar. We both went down and stayed there until after it has gone 2. Not that we had done a great deal of walking or anything, but apparently tired. We also made reservations at Ruth Chris’ Steakhouse. Turns out it is at the land end of the pier we were parked at.
We took an Uber the couple blocks to the Aloha Tower complex and then walked out to the end of the pier to the Aloha Tower Bar where we met two fellow academy members for a drink. It is becoming a more common thing that Google Maps isn’t updated. The streets maybe ok, but the location of things, like the Aloha Tower Bar, aren’t even on the map. The map shows Patrick’s Roadhouse Five O at the same location as the bar. Turns our that during Covid, four or five years ago, Patrick’s closed. The Aloha Tower Bar took over the location about a year ago. So, please be careful when using online maps.
After having drinks, a fairly good Mai Thai by the way, we walked the kilometer or so back to Ruth Chris’ arriving just before it had gone 6, the time of our reservation. We each had a salad, then we split a porterhouse steak and a baked potato. It was a whole lot better than Prime 7 on the ship. The food on board is very good and there is more than you could ever eat. While the portions they serve are good, they are neither too much nor too little. They don’t see to use a lot of salt in the kitchen on board. Generally, the flavors are fairly mild. When trying to please 650 different palates you probably need to tend to moderation in just about every aspect of cooking.
After dinner we walked across the street and to Pier 2 where the Mariner was docked. It was a lovely evening. Once back on board, I put on my smoking jacket and headed to the lounge for my after dinner cigar. Tomorrow is another day. We had talked about staying up and watching the Elvis movie Blue Hawaii in the theater, but it didn’t start until 9:30, and our tour begins at 8:15. So,….
Buonanotte e ciao, Enrico
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