Day 6: 12/10/08

We woke up to a lot of rain on Wednesday morning, but I was hopeful that things would clear up because John and I had planned to go back down to Waikiki for a surf lesson later in the morning. We decided it would be better to rent a car of our own for the day, so John left with a group going out to the airport and I went out to breakfast with Rich, Teri, John M, and Ellen. Pam picked us up to take us to a local dive, which claims to have the best pancakes on the island. They make macadamia nut pancakes with the amazing mac nut syrup (really the best part). I actually tried the mac nut French toast, but took an order of the pancakes to go for John (and he said they were definitely good).

On the deck of our beach house, packed and ready to go. So sad.

I was not happy to pack and leave our beach house, but the time had come to say goodbye to everyone. We all had our own plans for day, and unfortunately it was our last day (most everyone else was staying until the weekend). We headed down to Waikiki in our rental car (and I swear we were going to break up due to my inability to navigate with the iphone and John not loving the rental car...but we survived). We did finally make it down to Waikiki and found a place to park and it seemed like things were going to work out. We had some time before the lesson, so we did a little more shopping…but then the wind picked up. By the time we were supposed to have the lesson, the wind was blowing way too hard so they canceled the lesson. We were both pretty disappointed, but we want to go back (hopefully sooner than later), and surfing will be at the top of our list of things to do first.

Waikiki Beach Park

We had planned also to go to Pearl Harbor, so we got back in the rental car and headed that way. Unfortunately, even at 2:30 in the afternoon there is a lot of traffic going in and out of Honolulu. We finally made it (with my semi-helpful navigation skills), only to find out that the last tour out to the U.S.S. Arizona Memorial started at 3:00 (it was like 3:18 at the time). Turns out that before each tour, you watch a 22-minute video at the visitor’s center first. So we missed the video, but we made it just in time to catch the last tour boat ride out to the memorial.

U.S.S. Arizona Memorial

Naval Ship that I thought was cool

It was a somber and powerful experience to be able to visit the memorial. We were there just 3 days after the 67th anniversary of the attacks, so that made it even more impactful. I was really glad that we were able to be there and read more about the events of that day. We also go to visit the U.S.S Bowfin (although we just missed getting to go on board), which is called the “Pearl Harbor Avenger” due to how many successful missions it had after the attacks.

Part of the original ship that is still visible

It was windy. Very windy.

After our visit to Pearl Harbor, we headed back toward Waikiki to find somewhere to eat for dinner. By this point, we were starving…but we still managed to drive around, mostly lost, for an hour or so before we finally went back to the same parking garage and ended up eating at the Outrigger Reef Hotel again, only at the Shore Bird Restaurant instead. It was a really fun place with an all-you-can-eat salad bar and a big grill where we got to cook our own dinner. They brought the raw stuff out to us and then we cooked it ourselves (I got to have my steak just how I like it!).

Cooking our food on the community grill

We had gotten a call from Delta Airlines a little earlier, letting us know our flight has been delayed about an hour. We decided rather than hanging out in the airport, we would stay on the beach as long as possible. We walked up and down the beach, with a spectacular view of the city. We didn’t want the trip to end, but we finally made our way to the airport. It had been a long day, without a real shower, but our tummies were full and we were exhausted. We finally boarded our plane around 12:15am. I was asleep before the plane even took off!