Awesome Vacation, Day 1

When our friends moved to Oahu, I think everyone they know probably said, "Hey, maybe we should come visit." I know we did. It was more like a wish than a plan. But after a few months we started to think about it more seriously. Then we got the plane tickets. It still didn't seem completely real until the airport shuttle picked us up last Tuesday morning at 5:10AM. By 7:45 we were sitting on a plane. The flight took about 5.5 hours, but it seemed like much less because I slept most of the way.

As a side note, I was impressed with the tasty breakfast burrito and chocolate cupcake we were served for our meal on the plane. Best airplane food I've ever had. I mean, I kind of want the recipe for that burrito.

Since I currently am lacking originality, I'm going to call our friends "daddy, mommy, and daughter". Mommy and daughter picked us up and greeted us with leies; then we went out to lunch at Big Kahuna Pizza. They had lots of cool pizzas on the menu; we settled on the Pake pizza (stirfry chicken with a sweet and sour sauce) with an order of garlic cheese balls.


Then we headed out to go see Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona Memorial. There was no line, so we got tickets right away. We looked around the USS Bowfin park right by the ticket office for a few minutes before heading over to the theater where they show you a movie before you ride a boat over to the memorial. The movie told the story of December 7, 1941, which I evidently didn't know very well. Then, while we were all still in a bit of shock from viewing the footage of the attack, we got on the boat and went over to the memorial. The white building stands over the sunk USS Arizona. Parts of the battleship rise above the waters, and the oil leaking drop by drop to the surface is sometimes called the tears of the Arizona. At the near end of the memorial is a room of flags, the middle is open to either side so we could view the USS Arizona in the water, and the far end is a room with the names of those who died on the sunken ship. They have added the names of those who made it off of the ship and have died since.


Next we went to the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific, also known as the Punchbowl Cemetery. The cemetery is the entire caldera of a volcano. It felt peaceful and separate. We walked along the path lined by gigantic Chinese Banyan trees, visited the memorial pathway, and walked on up to the lookout point on one edge of the caldera where we could see out over Honolulu. I love the statue at the top of the stairs, where it says:

THE SOLEMN PRIDE
THAT MUST BE YOURS
TO HAVE LAID
SO COSTLY A SACRIFICE
UPON THE ALTAR
OF FREEDOM

And if you look very carefully at the left side of the base of the tree, you can find me. Those trees are so enormous that they kind of mask the great size of the cemetery.


Mommy friend drove us home along the Pali and Kamehameha highways, where we stopped twice: once to look at the Pali Lookout and once for some groceries. Dan was carrying our friends' daughter for the walk to the Pali Lookout. They were practically instant friends (some of you may know how amazing this is for Dan). From the lookout you could see the mountains and the ocean to the east. The mountain pictures below weren't actually taken from the Pali Lookout, but they are some of the mountains we saw on Oahu. Gorgeous, steep and clothed in green. We arrived at their house, dropped off our stuff, had some dinner, and went for an evening walk along the beach. In the dark - but we had to get a picture anyway.