Oahu - Pearl Harbor & Downtown Honolulu Memorial (USA)

For today we had planned to visit the Pearl Harbor Memorial and Downtown Honolulu. For this purpose, we went from our city hotel in Waikiki by local bus directly to the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. This route takes just over 1 hour.

Day

of our Trip around the World

Table of contents

Visit to Pearl Harbor Memorial

Admission to the Pearl Harbour Museum is fortunately free,which includes a visit to the USS Arizona Memorial and a boat trip there. Tickets are issued according to the first-come-first-served principle and then have a fixed time. That’s why it’s worth being there early. If you also want to visit the USS Missouri Battleship, the Bowfin submarine and the Pacific Aviation Museum (which we haven’t done), the total entrance fee for these sights is about ’40.

The free tour to the USS Arizona Memorial first includes a 23-minute film about the background to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and shows sequences from the day of the attack. Afterwards, a boat was taken to the USS Arizona Memorial, which was built over the sunken remains of the battleship Arizona. After the tour we looked at an exhibition that illustrates further details of the attack with image, sound, film and historical documents.

The entrance to Pearl Harbor

Old plane on the site

Old Missile of the US Navy

Pearl Harbor Historic Sites

Crossroads of the Pacific

The USS Bowfin Submarine

Boat ride to the monument

Commemorative plaque USS Arizona

The USS Arizona Memorial

The sunken USS Arizona

Crossroads of the Pacific

Downtown Honolulu

After about three hours in Pearl Harbor we took the bus back to Downtown Honolulu. The King Kamehameha statue (first king of Hawaii) was particularly interesting in front of the Hawaii State Supreme Court. This building is also known from the series “Hawaii 5O” 🙂 Directly opposite is the Iolani Palace, the former royal residence. A few streets away is Chinatown, which is rather small compared to other cities in the Us.

The King Kamehameha Statue

The Iolani Palace

The Iolani Barracks

Kawaiahao Church

Our rental car for O’ahu

After a short visit to the city centre we took the bus back to the airport and picked up our rental car at Avis (booked via billiger-mietwagen.de)for the next two days: a black Chevrolet Camaro convertible 🙂

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Our car rental for Oahu

A drive along the west coast of O’ahu

With bright sunshine and an open roof, we headed to the west coast of Oahu – past countless beach parks, green mountains and through small surfer sands.

Ka'ena Point State Park

The west coast of Oahu

The Starbucks Cup by Waikiki

We are collecting the Starbucks Mugs from the cities and islands we visit on our travels. Unfortunately, not every city that has a Starbucks store with an own mug. But if the city has an own mug we like to collect them as a souvenir. We only collect city mugs from the "Global Icon Series", which was released in 2008. You can see our complete collection here: Starbucks - Our collection of Mugs from the Global Icon Series

Waikiki has several Starbucks stores and also a really nice cup with a hula dancer, which is now very rare and correspondingly expensive.

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The Starbucks City Cup of Waikiki

All travelogues from Hawaii (2015)

Our world trip led us after almost 2 months from the American mainland to Hawaii. Situated in the middle of the Pacific Ocean, 3,600 kilometres away from the US mainland, the 50th state of the USA. For many, it is the epitome of the South Seas. During our two-week stay in Hawaii we visited four of the six main islands: Kauai, O'ahu, Maui and Big Island. Each of these islands has its own personality, nature and sights and offers different activities for all tastes: From the big city Honolulu with the famous Waikiki Beach, the fascinating Waimea Canyon and the breathtaking Napali Coast on Kauai, the famous Road to Hana on Maui to the most active volcano in the world on Big Island. The islands radiate a unique flair and have enchanted us very quickly with the famous Aloha charm.