Thursday
Thursday was a very relaxing day. We decided to take a day trip to the island of Oahu. Honolulu and Perl Harbor are located here...not to mention Waikiki.
The first thing we noticed on our flight there was how many more people live there and how much more developed that island is. It's downtown looked more like L.A. The residential area had tons of houses on the ridges of the volcano and even more in the valleys of them. We can't understand how they could get some many houses packed in such a small space.
The main reasons for the trip were to visit the Arizona Memorial at Perl Harbor. You might have forgotten that over 1100 sailors lost their lives on the battleship Arizona during the Perl Harbor attack. The front ammo magazine blew up and the ship sank in less than 15 minutes. The ship is still there underwater and the memorial goes across the body of it like a bridge. It was really a nice way to pay respect for those who died.
Interestingly, there is a floating pontoon bridge that connects to Ford Island. That is the island where the battleships were parked during the attack. A section of the bridge floats. when large vessels (aircraft carriers) come in to the harbor, the floating section sinks down, then retracts to let the ship enter. We could only take pix of that from far away. When going across the bridge, we weren't allowed to even raise a camera.
Around lunch time we were in Waikiki. This rockin' town is very developed. There is an awesome beach there right on a main road downtown. It was great to see the beach so close to the businesses and restaurants. Naturally, the place was jammed with people. There were many surfers and boogie-borders out there in the crystal clear water. We had some lunch and shopped around for a while then headed of the to USS Missouri.
The Battleship Missouri is a historic battleship. It served in WWII, the Korean war, was retired, then unretired to serve in the Gulf War, and is now retired again. The greatest thing about this battleship is that the document to end WWII was signed on board it in Tokyo Bay.
We got a full tour of the ship along with many pix.
