Day 08 - Downunder 2016 - Mon - 10/03/16 - Honolulu

If we had tried to pack any more into today, i don't think we could have! With the ship's arrival at 7am, we were up a little after 6 and went up to the Lido for breakfast. Since we had been out of Internet contact for 5 days, we caught up on email and Facebook while eating breakfast. We disembarked the ship around 8 and attempted to locate our shore excursion which I had purchased through Trip Advisor which would take us to the Arizona Memorial, Pacific Aviation Museum, and a city tour before bringing us back to the ship.

I called the tour agency (Royal Hawaiian Limousine) and we were picked up about 8:45am using a 14 passenger Sprinter van. It was about a 30 minute drive out to the Arizona Memorial grounds. Those with purses or backpacks had to check them. Once that was done, we had to walk single file past a security guard. There was no scanner, wand or anything else. It was a totally common sense approach to security that I've not seen anywhere else. And it worked!

We were given our assigned visitation time ticket and then watched a 15 minute historical movie about December 7, 1941 before boarding a Navy launch out to the Memorial where we had 15-20 minutes to pay our respects and take pictures before reboarding the launch back to shore. The mighty Missouri battleship is now moored as a museum facing the Arizona.

Back on shore we got our National Parks Passports stamped and purchased a few souvenirs and caught a shuttle to the Pacific Aviation Museum where we had a quick 2 hours including a very brief lunch. A couple highlights for me were seeing a restored P-40 and a total unrestored B-17 that was salvaged from the New Guinea jungle.

Promptly at 1:30pm we began our city tour. I wished would have had at least an hour more to be able have seen the Arizona museum. The city tour was a whirlwind drive through town but gave us an orientation that was helpful. Back at the ship we hopped on the shuttle to the downtown WalMart (some shopping occurred there) which was located a few minutes walk from the Ala Moana shopping center where we met our friends for a casual dinner. We then walked back to the Wal Mart where I purchased a couple gallons of distilled water for my CPAP machine. We caught the next to the last shuttle back to the ship and arrived in time to catch the 8:30pm Polynesian Dancing Show.

We departed the terminal at 10pm and sailed out of the Honolulu harbor as I wrote this while waiting for the 10:30pm Mexican buffet! It seems my dinner meal of abalone and poi wasn't enough! And yes the poi was good. I had two helpings.