Mike: A very good day.
We got up early again, had no immediate plans but wanted to either hike up Diamond Head or spend the day doing city things, like museums, the Palace, have a look at the original missionary settlement, etc. We still have about 8 days camping so decided to do the city things. But most of all,
. . . watch the sun go down
Hear the sea roll in
But I’ll be thinking of you
And how it might have been
no kidding. Those are the lyrics of Back to the Island by Leon Russell. A song we both love, perhaps for its irony, but love nonetheless.
Back to the Island for those who want to experience the original.
We finally made use of our rental car, a KIA Soul. About as far from my ideal car as one could get. But I actually like it. Small to fit the narrow driving lanes and tiny parking spaces in Honolulu. Passed on the Mustang convert, not at all because of price, but because a convertible top is like gravity to a miserable human with a sharp instrument. And it would all be on my insurance as I checked and upgraded our insurance policy to cover such. Much cheaper than the rental car insurance and better coverage.
We started with a fairly easy drive downtown to the Iolani Palace area. (This is where several generations of the Hawaiian Royal Family lived.) Found a Bank parking garage only a block away after circling the block a couple of times to get the one-way right. Friday so the Royal Hawaiian Band gave a free concert just outside the Palace on a grassy area under one of those amazing huge shade trees.
Our tour guide was quite patriotic to Hawaii and we all stood silently as the band played the Hawaiian state song… or national anthem as some seem to think. She is a short blond woman of maybe 55 years and clearly into the history of colonial oppression of the stone-age people the Brits and others found here in 1778. Many deaths from European diseases for which they had no immunity.
Same as happened in North America and one wonders if today is any different but from the reverse direction?
Susan: this tour guide was quite interesting to me. A short, blond, blue-eyed American lady but she was bigly into Hawaiian native culture. She’d gone native, for sure. Lots of talk about respecting the floors, the memories, the ground we walked on. She almost got teary-eyed when they played the ‘national” anthem.
She wasn’t the only one. One of our companions on this tour was another American lady, originally from Montana, who’d moved to Hawaii years ago after all her children were grown.
She lives on Hawaii the Big Island and had come over to be a tourist on Oahu. She actually did cry a bit when she talked about how Waikiki Beach highrises have taken over. She said, where did Hawaii go? I asked if there were people here who want to separate from the States and she said, yes, WE want our country back. It’s a bit like Quebec, I think. A passionate desperation to hang onto a culture. Can’t say I blame them, but wonder if that ever works.
Tall Tom, our tour guide from yesterday, also mentioned this resurgence of native sovereignty. It’s preventing some infrastructure projects the same as we are experiencing in Canada.
Mike: The Palace is beyond amazing. Beautiful design, incredible wood throughout, paintings and artifacts from the King’s around the world trips and adoption of European and American culture and art.
Susan: the building in similar in some respects to Monticello, Thomas Jefferson’s home in Virginia in terms of its design. They are about the same vintage and both designers had to consider how to cope with hot, humid climates in the days before air conditioning. So they both have long open hallways that act like wind tunnels running under the houses where the kitchens and store rooms are. The windows are really as big as doors and can slide up so you basically have an open air house. Nice, nice houses!
In the basement now is a little mini-museum of artifacts. There is this present-day longing for “authentic” Hawaiian culture, but back when this palace was built, the Royal Family wanted to be just like European royalty. Which was Queen Victoria, so they adopted Victorian fashion and social institutions like Freemasonry and Protestant Christianity. There is one room that contains what is essentially the crown jewels, and a bunch of honorific insignias like the kind of thing you see Queen Elizabeth wearing in official portraits when she’s decked out in jewels. The Hawaiian king created four of them specific to his reign and then he and the European royalty all had a good time presenting them to each other.
I asked the tour guide where they got the money to build a palace and buy a bunch of jewelry. Just like the British, the royal family owned all the land, and, as the sugar cane industry started essentially the day after Captain Cook landed, they actually were quite wealthy.
And we found out why there was/is such a big population of Japanese people here: they imported workers from Japan for the sugarcane and pineapple plantations. There is actually a lot of interesting Japanese history here, which maybe helps explain the many Japanese tourists.
Mike: Went to some other buildings (early settlement of Christian missionaries, church built of blocks of coral, territorial office from days before statehood) nearby but sore feet drove us “Back to the Island.”
Quick nap and out to the beach to have drink and watch the “sun go down.” Found a nice beach bar at the Moana Surfrider, the original and oldest hotel on the beach. Nice view of the sunset, sailboats, and all the Hawaii things. Couple of Japanese wedding parties with the bridesmaids and groomsmen decked out in Hawaiian dresses and shirts. Maybe it’s a thing in Japan?
A nice touch to our last day in the luxury of Waikiki and Honolulu.
Back to our AIRBnB for dinner of Whole Food surf and turf. Fabulous!
The crowds are back again on the evening sidewalks. Crowded streets thick with people having a fine time shopping and doing whatever it is to fill the sidewalks and streets with –mostly Asian people- having a fine time and mostly in their finery. Rather fun as it is something quite different from our usual lives.
Tomorrow we pack up and leave. Not sure what the wifi situation will be, so if we don’t post anything, it’s probably because there isn’t any.
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