A final Hawai'ian photo dump

One of the (few) decorated boats at the marina at Christmas time.

Sunset, from the terrace at the Hula Grill.

And another one of Macky's, just because it's our favorite shrimp truck.

And another one of the concrete jungle. If I had to live there permanently, I don't think I'd like it one bit, but for vacation, it's just fine.

The Ala Wai Canal at night, with the moon dipping down behind the clouds. This is what divides Honolulu from Waikiki. It started as a drainage ditch because of lot of what now holds sky scrapers used to be swamp. More info here.

 Rainbow at Aloha Stadium, home of not only the Aloha Bowl but also a very fun flea market, the Aloha Swap Meet. Three days a week, go early, it gets hot.

And the last rainbow, obviously taken from our condo.

And this is Hawai'i, too

Occupy Honolulu, obviously from a couple of years ago. The tent city was dissolved several months later. This was across from the Honolulu Museum of Art. There is quite a large homeless population on Oahu. There used to be a large homeless camp along the road to Ka'ena Point (I wrote about it here), by a beautiful beach. That one, too, has been dissolved. Doesn't mean there aren't homeless camps around any longer. We saw quite a few of them all over Honolulu and there are always people sleeping in bus stops, on bridges and even on sidewalks.

This poster was in the fancy, upscale mall in Waikiki. Notice it's mostly in Japanese?
Whenever we walk around Waikiki, window shopping, there are people on the streets handing out papers inviting tourists to visit one of these shooting ranges. Strangely, nobody has ever invited me .......... and nobody has ever handed one of those papers to L, either. The Japanese tourists, on the other hand, are bombarded with them.

Byodo-In Temple in the Valley of the Temples. Info here. It's at the end of a large cemetery overlooking the water on the North Shore. Beautiful location.
And that's it for the Hawai'ian posts. I have finally worked my way through all the pictures on my phone and it feels so good to be caught up, on this, at least.

Flowers

This is turning into a bit of a photo dump after all. Flower pictures taken in the gardens at Queen Emma's Summer Palace a couple of years ago.

Bird of paradise.

Ginger.

Hibiscus.

Orchis.

And this is Hawai'i

 Queen Emma's Summer Palace. We visit every year and learn something new every year. Every docent talks about different aspects of the royal family's life. Yes, Hawai'i used to be a monarchy. It started with King Kamehameha I and ended on 17 January 1893. Not a pretty story.
Here's a link to it.
I thought I had pictures of the Iolani Palace where we learned a lot about the history of Hawai'i, but, it seems, I didn't take any pictures. If I remember correctly, it rained every time we visited there.
No photography is allowed inside Queen Emma's Summer Palace - but here's a link that tells just a little about it. And here is just a little more. Unfortunately, neither site is as informative as the docents we have had. And google has quite a few images, inside and out.
It's kind of a magical place, calm and relaxing and so interesting. This year, we learned that Prince Albert, the only son of Queen Emma and King Kamehameha IV, who died at only 4 years old, died of a burst appendix. We had heard previously that he suffered from "brain fever," but a doctor recently went over the notes taken at the time and came to the conclusion that it was actually a burst appendix and in those days (until about 1920 or later) that was pretty much a death sentence.
We tried to visit Pearl Harbor but that didn't quite work out. It was so windy that day that the boats that take visitors out to the island and the ships etc. stayed put and even though there is a bridge going out to the island, that one is not for the general public. So, here are just a few pictures from across the water:

Sorry about the poor picture quality. We did spend quite a bit of time visiting museums, watching movies, walking around and even talking to survivors. We also bought a book about Pearl Harbor that the survivors graciously signed for us.

This is Hawai'i

Lots of pictures, few words ...................

Beaches, and the year I took these I could have told you which beach it was. It's either Sunset, Waimea or Pipeline.

Big waves on the North Shore. The lifeguard kept chasing children away who had gotten too close to the water.

This is part of Waikiki Beach. Everybody was waiting for the sun to completely disappear below the horizon.

Cruise ships, huge ones. Always docked near the Aloha Tower.

The view from our condo a couple of years ago. Looking into the Hilton Hawai'ian Village with Diamond Head in the background.

Sky scrapers, lots of them in Honolulu, this picture taken near the Aloha Tower. Some of the locals call it the "concrete jungle" as opposed to the green side of the island, the windward side or the North Shore.

Looking down on Ala Moana Boulevard in the evening. Busy!

And tattoos, lots of them. This sign was across the street from our hotel, a day or two after the Honolulu Marathon (that'll be another post).

Shopping

I could shop for England or any other country for that matter and Waikiki and the Ala Moana Mall are really a shopper's paradise. I'm not going to list all the stores you can find there, let me just say that it's all the big names, sort of like Rodeo Drive except much bigger. And since it's as far from Tokyo to Honolulu as it is from California, the Japanese come in droves. A good exchange rate helps, too.
This place, unfortunately, is closed by now.

The famous International Market Place, full of fun touristy things, is being torn down to make way for another upscale department store. Bloomingdale's or Neiman Marcus or Saks. A real pity.

This used to be a big Sears store. It, too, has been torn down to make way for yet another upscale department store.

Tourists, mostly from Japan, waiting to get into the ugg store. It was full inside and the employees were only letting in a certain number of customers at a time. And there was an equally long line at the other entrance to the store, on the inside of the small mall.

Sunsets

I was going to just do a huge photo dump, take everything off my camera and put it into one post, but decided against it. Wayyyyy too many pictures. So, I'm sorting them, sort of, by theme. Or geographical theme, or maybe the order they are on the camera. Haven't quite figured it out just yet.
Since I also have pictures from 2 and 3 years ago that I haven't used yet, it could be  a while.
So, first sunsets .............

The triangular things pointing up on the bottom left are gas lights that are manually lit every evening.

All taken at Waikiki Beach. The last two are pictures of the place where L rents a board when he goes surfing and this time around he went surfing quite a bit. Had to do with the fact that my feet decided to give out.

This huge tree is just off the beach. And it doesn't have multiple trunks, those are roots. I have no idea what the tree is called. Maybe somebody can help there?

This is the statue of Duke Kahonamoku - wikipedia entry here.