USS Arizona Memorial

After the normal morning work and coffee routine, we finally got
moving and headed out to see Alana, Jana, and Dad. The plan: to go to
Pearl Harbor and visit the USS Arizona memorial. We got there a bit
before noon, waiting in line for about five minutes, and got free
tickets to the 12:30pm visit to the memorial. It was really great
that everything there was free: parking, and the Arizona memorial and
museum. If you had the time and the money, you could pay extra to
visit a restored destroyer and a submarine, but we didn’t think we had
the time. I would like to go back and do that some day though – it
looked really interesting. I got Risa a Japanese guided tour and we hit
the museum up for the introductory movie and boat ride over. The
memorial is really nice, although it is a bit hard to tell what you
are looking at. There is a diagram in the museum that makes it really
clear, but we didn’t see that until we got back. I’m really glad that
we did it – it is a really interesting piece of living history.

I wonder how Risa felt, we talked about it a bit, but not in too much
depth. It was very strange for me when I visited Hiroshima, but I
definitely think it was worth it and am glad that I did it. I hope
that Risa feels that same way.

Hotel Viewing

After the USS Arizona, we headed back to Alana’s hotel and then took
care of some business: I played tech support to Dad, and also made
reservations for dinner the next night. We also ate the PB&J
sandwiches that Alana had prepared in the morning. They were Risa’s
first PB&J sandwiches, and Alana was bit disappointed that she had to
have somewhat stale sandwiches for her first ones, but it all worked
out in the end.

A few hours later our friends Ron and Michelle arrived. They had just
flown in, and were staying at the same hotel. Since Ron is the
architectural superstar, he had some hotels on his hitlist that he
wanted to see. We commenced with a hotel lobby viewing party. We
ended up at the Moana Surfrider, a hotel that is right on the beach
and has a real history attached to it. We got some light snacks and
drinks, then split out.

Risa was interested in getting a bit more to eat so we stopped by at The
Big Kahuna (some sort of bar / restaurant) and got a drink and some
onion rings there on the walk back. It wasn’t nearly as interesting
as the sports bar (Legend’s) that we had visited before, but it did
have a kind of commercialized Tiki-bar atmosphere. I really should
find a Tiki-bar while I’m here, since I like the Tiki-bar TV podcast,
despite not really “getting it”.

Then back home and some sleep.