One Year Ago - Part 4

Our first full day.
The three of us at the sign at the entrance to the USS Arizona.

The main building that includes the museum, gift shop, the anchor from the Arizona, a huge oil painting of the ship, the inner courtyard with a nice waterway (all money thrown in goes to support the place), a snack shop, and the theater. Tickets are free and we had an hour and a half wait to go to the memorial. The outside walkway near the water has maps and lots of things to read to keep you busy while you wait. You cannot take any bags whatsoever so I put my wallet and extra batteries in my skirt pocket. On the right side of the picture you can see a sidewalk and our guide told us that in the higher tourist times, it is lined with people the whole way out and around the block.

The floating memorial that sits astride the USS Arizona. You can see the boat approaching it to drop off the next round of visitors. One group gets dropped off while the visitors on there get picked up. That way your group gets only about 8-15 minutes on there. You go to the theater first when your ticket number is called and watch a short film about Pearl Harbor and the happenings of Dec. 7, 1941. After that, you get on the boat and go the memorial. It was very quiet on board. They still bury those who request to be buried in the ship with their fallen comrades.

The base of the gun turret.

Chapel of Remembrance - list of names of the people from the Arizona.

Flag on board, looking through the top of the memorial.

Oil that still leaks from the Arizona.

Leaving the memorial.

Imagining the horror of that day.

National Cemetery of the Pacific or "The Punchbowl". Lots of burials from Pearl Harbor Day.

The memorial at the "front" of the cemetery.

The Capitol Building in Honolulu.

Iolani Palace

Statue of King Kamehameha I and it is covered with real gold.

The Three Wahines, we got this taken the first morning at our orientation breakfast.

Tons of Fun Burger at the Cheesecake Factory. My cousin enjoyed it! And of course we had cheesecake, mine was Chocolate Pistachio. Delicious!

Second sunset, if you look closely at the people in the distance, you can see a wall that stretched out into the water. It made for a good seat to watch the sunset.

Most of the sunsets that we got to see were orange in color, a few were pink/purple.

Me in the water at Waikiki after watching the sun go down. Usually the sunset happened around 6:30 and after that we would walk along the edge of the water to massage our tired feet. We spent most of the day (on one of our free days) in the water when we were on Kauai, a lot quieter place than Waikiki.