Hawaii- part 3

We flew over to Oahu in the evening. We had never been to that island before and really wanted to check out the memorials and just see another island. Oahu definitely had a different feel than the other islands. We felt the other islands had a welcoming, beachy, 'aloha' feel, but this island did not. It felt like a regular big city, and even as we walked the downtown area after dark, we both had a feeling like "are we in a third world country??".

Our condo was not really as advertised on flipkey. In Maui our condo greeted us with a fresh pineapple and loaf of banana bread, this one was in desperate need of updating, but also had signs everywhere telling us not to sit on anything and to be careful with their old garage-sale furniture. It was not very welcoming at all, and put us in a sour mood, but we did have an oceanfront balcony and the view was beautiful.

The next morning we went to the USS Arizona memorial. We had a bit of a mishap as our GPS guided us on the bridge to the area and we were stopped by a soldier guard who said civilians weren't allowed to cross and we had to go to the visitor's center. It wasn't a problem, we just had a laugh, but we were surprised the tickets hadn't mentioned anything about where to go!

We arrived to the visitor's center, there was a really well made video about the events of Pearl Harbor and then you take a boat out to the memorial site.

We spent the rest of the day driving around the area on a twisty road called Tantalus drive which took us up to a lookout point.

Little guy was also hungry and tired.

After that we were pretty hungry and drove back into Honolulu to find some dinner. It was a bad combination of being hangry, lack of public parking, and going to restaurants on the GPS that didn't exist anymore. We parked somewhere and walked several blocks, carrying the heavy carseat (big mistake) to get to a restaurant where no one ever came to take our order and the meter was running out on our car several blocks away so we just left. On the way back to the car Doug spotted a vegetarian restaurant, so we ordered there, we ran back to feed the meter and we actually had a tasty dinner. I felt pretty bad because I was a total grump and could not shake out of it. That's no fun to be around! Then kind hearted Doug wanted to get burgers for a few of the homeless people we had seen on the street and I grumped about that too. But we bought them and it felt good to pass them out, and of course I once again felt so blessed to be married to such a kind man.

The memorial had been our only plan for Oahu, so when we went back to our condo that night we made a list of ideas for the rest of our 2 days. To be continued...