Hawaii 2017 - Day 6

Day 6 – Royal Hawaii

Another day, another breakfast. How will I cope without my pineapple juice, freshly made omelette, waffle with syrup and cream, and plate of fresh tropical fruit? Can’t say I’m missing the old corn flakes!

  

Today’s adventure was to catch the Red Line trolley to downtown Honolulu to see the sights. We had a great driver – Candice – who was fabulous and took us all over, giving informative explanations of the various buildings and sights. We hopped off at the State Capitol building and the Iolani Palace, the only royal palace in the US. We did an audio tour of the palace and learnt quite a bit about the Hawaiian royal family and that period of history where basically the Yanks took over and, of course later, made Hawaii first a territory and then a state. I still feel pretty ignorant about the history of Hawaii – I might have to do some googling!

    

When we got back on the trolley, we caught up with Candice again and she took us around some back streets where they have lots of murals on the buildings and then took us through the Ala Moana Beach Park which was also great. It’s where the locals go for a swim and a picnic. Oh, and we saw where the SS Minnow left the harbour for its 3 hour cruise! Didn't see Gilligan though... however, we did see Hawaii Five-O being filmed in the street - book 'em Danno!

    

We called in to the Ala Moana shops again – the biggest outdoor shopping complex in the world – and grabbed some more smoothies and lunch. Our main purpose was to go to Target as Gary had seen something advertised on TV and discovered it was available at Target … I recalled seeing Target on the complex map, so off we went. Unfortunately we discovered that Target is so new it hasn’t opened yet! Oh well…we must have been the only people leaving that shopping centre with no bags, no purchases ... yep, I think we're shopped out.

The trolley ride was packed on the way back – people everywhere – I was happy to get back to the room for a brief moment of relaxation before we headed over to the beach for an hour or so – very nice and refreshing – the pink ring got another workout. A quiet night in tonight and the DVD chosen was Jackie … hmmm, a bit strange. Does that Natalie Portman only do strange? But the funniest moment of the day was when I yelled at Gary to stop until I grabbed a camera - he had forgotten where he was and stepped out onto the balcony - I managed to get the shot for posterity!