Tourist

So I've done a lot in the past few days.

Make sure you read the signs before you eat buffet breakfast at a nice hotel. Ours was extremely and painfully overpriced. Needless to say, we walked out with our arms full of fruit and bread.
Thursday morning (after our breakfast lesson) I was able to go to Kane'ohe to an Orthopaedic Surgeon's office to observe his morning patients. I learned a lot, and he asked a lot of questions of course.
After the observation, we picked up Amira and headed to Pearl Harbor. We made it there in perfect timing, we got our free tickets and were able to watch the movie before we headed out. It was very somber to think about how many lives were taken on that day, December 7, 1941. There are some pictures posted of this, but not many. And it's difficult to capture in photos or in descriptions the entire experience. At the end of the Arizona Memorial, there is a huge wall list that displays all of the names of the shipmates lost during the attack. Nice gift shop and memorial museum.
After we finished the ferry ride back from the Arizona Memorial, we noticed there was a submarine memorial and museum as well. Gary and I ventured down into the submarine (pictures included).
After Pearl Harbor, we headed to "Punchbowl", which is a national cemetery. There are thousands of graves, many noted with just the date because some bodies were unrecognizable and there was not DNA technology at the time to determine which body belonged to which name. As you climbed the stairs to the memorial, there were walls of marble with all of the names of lost souls. Again, breathtaking and upsetting at the same time.
After dropping Amira off at University of Hawaii for a meeting, we drove up to the Arboretum to wander through the gardens, but they were closed. So we headed to the Old Spaghetti Factory for dinner (it was okay, the setting and view was awesome).

Friday was a half day at work, love those half days! They came and picked me up and on the way back to Waikiki we stopped on the Pali Overlook. It was SO WINDY. Like Boone windy x 4. I had to concentrate on standing straight. I took a video of the wind, but I'm not sure you can even hear me talking. Pictures came out pretty good though. There are two big stories behind the Pali overlook.
-Apparently, if you committed a crime on O'ahu you were sentenced to death by being thrown from the Pali Cliff. According to legend, the winds were sometimes strong enough to blow the person back up onto the cliff after being thrown overboard. If this happened, the criminal was said to be "freed by the gods" and the slate was wiped clean.
-King Kamehameha wanted to rule the entire Hawai'ian islands. In his quest of O'ahu, his army stormed up the mountains battling the local O'ahu army. As they made their way up the mountain, they created the path of what is now partially the Pali Highway. As they made it to the cliff, King Kamehameha's army pushed the O'ahu army back with such force that local soldiers fell to their deaths on the sharp cliffs below. After this incident, O'ahu surrendered and King Kamehameha was further in his quest to rule the island chain.

Friday Evening we wanted to eat dinner at Hard Rock, and we decided we could make it there without the GPS. We drove around Waikiki, Honolulu and Diamond Head for an hour, and almost made it (we found out later), but we eventually had to go back to the hotel room because we were so turned around and lost. It is not an easy place to drive.

Saturday morning = Gary's Birthday!
We woke up and went to Iolani Palace, the only palace in the United States. Unfortunately, we were not able to take pictures inside; it was very beautiful. We did a self guided audio tour (like the one for the submarine) that took us through each room of the palace, explaining everything in the room and the history of the people who lived there. It was a very interesting story. It was built in the late 1800's, and had indoor toilets as well as ELECTRICITY! It was the first palace to have electricity; before Buckingham Palace and the White House! It was a little depressing to hear about how Americans came in and destroyed the palace, turned it into a state building, and de-valued the interior. Since 1969, restoration has been taking place to restore the palace to it's natural beauty. It's shocking to think that Americans take what they want without preserving the history and beauty of a foreign paradise.
Official Website: http://www.iolanipalace.org/
Iolani Palace took up much of our morning, as we wanted to see every nook and cranny there was to offer. Afterwards, we ate lunch at TGIFridays and had the strangest waiter. He kept talking to us, and kept talking to us. Apparently he was from PA and worked in Myrtle Beach, and you'd think that he had never met anyone in Hawai'i from the south. I just wanted him to go away and let us eat; some servers are there too little, and he was there too much... leaning all over the table, putting his hand on our backs, etc.
After lunch we were going to head to the Foster Botanical Garden, but they were closed. So we headed to the time share Mom and Gary have. IT IS VERY NICE!!! I took pictures of the sunset... probably way too many (you know me and pictures).

miss you all :)