Today we woke up to a beautiful blue sky. We talked about going to the beach, but decided to head out and do some exploring first. We wanted to hike up one of the old volcanoes, Diamond Head, as we could see it from our hotel. However, when we got to the lobby of our hotel, we noticed a sign that said the volcano site was currently closed as they were improving the trails. We were disappointed, but decided we were still going to head out today and get some exercise.
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| We had a great view of Waikiki from our hotel room! Erin is standing in front of the beach. |
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| Unfortunately, we were unable to hike up the famous Diamond Head crater. |
When we took the bus from the airport to our hotel yesterday, we had passed a few areas that looked as though they might be worth checking out. So, we used google maps to help us navigate further west (or "ewa" if you are Hawaiian), back towards Honolulu. Our first stop along the way was a Kmart. It is difficult to fully explain how exciting a Kmart is if you haven't seen one (or anything similar) in quite some time. We spent about 30 minutes perusing the Kmart and James even enjoyed some of the Little Caesar's pizza they were selling inside the store.
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| Kmart never looked better to us! |
After our stop to shop, we came into Chinatown. There are a great deal of Asian Americans living on the island (from Japan, Philippines, and China), so we weren't surprised to a relatively large shopping area dedicated to these cultures. We wandered through Chinatown and even stopped in one or two of the shops to look around.
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| Like most major cities, Oahu has its own Chinatown. |
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| This was a store in Chinatown - the picture only gives you a glimpse of how cluttered it actually was! |
Our next stop took us to Iolani Palace in downtown Honolulu. We learned that the palace was once the home of King Kamehameha, but is now a museum open to the public.
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| A picture of the Iolani Barracks, which actually used to house the royal guards. |
Right across the street from the palace is another government building, the supreme court, also known as Aliiolani Hale. We began by examining the statue of King Kamehameha that is outside the courthouse and reading the inscription about the King below the statue. The inscription described the
Law of the Splintered Paddle, which the King wrote. The law states, "Let every elderly person, woman and child lie by the roadside in safety".
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| This statue of King Kamehameha stands outside the Hawaii State Supreme Court. |
We went into the courthouse and learned a bit more about the first king of Hawaii. We were able to wander throughout the courthouse, peering into the dark Supreme Court, and looking inside some of the smaller courtrooms.
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| James tries to look the part of a Hawaiian judge...he's not very convincing, is he? |
After exploring some of the historical sites in Hawaii, we decided it was time to take a break. We headed into the Ala Moana Center, which is one of the largerst open air shopping centers we have ever seen. We didn't realize how big the mall was until we tried to get out and got a bit turned around.
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| Inside the shopping mall there were small pools filled with large koi fish. |
We didn't buy anything while shopping, but we did enjoy wandering through some of the stores, namely the Lego store and Sephora. We continued to walk back towards our hotel, ultimately passing it as we decided we still wanted to check out Diamond Head, even if we couldn't walk up it. So, we headed through Waikiki beach and the highly commercialized hotel area surrounding the beach, stopping to take a few pictures along the way. We got about as close as we could to the volcano before hitting a gate that wouldn't allow us to go any further.
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| The famous Diamond Head crater. It definitely would have been a fun hike. |
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| The soccer fields where we live definitely aren't that scenic. |
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| Tabitha poses in front of Diamond Head in Oahu. |
It began to get dark, so we decided to walk back to our hotel along the beach. We took of our shoes and rolled up our pants so we could walk in the sand along the beach. It was amazingly beautiful as we were able to catch the sun setting over the Pacific ocean.
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| A very relaxing sunset over Waikiki beach in Oahu. |
We eventually made it back to our hotel in the dark, but not before stopping at Subway for some dinner. We had once again exhausted ourselves and were ready to call it a night.
