last day in paradise

how did the last day arrive so soon?

we woke up early, packed up our one carry-on bag (this took around 7 minutes, give or take), ate free breakfast one more time, and printed our boarding passes.  and then a really long day commenced.

(this is how quiet we were in the prius hybrid.)

we saved several dry activities for the last day so we would be comfortable on the plane.  as i had learned earlier in the week, dried saltwater is sticky and smelly after a few hours!  logan was really looking forward to visiting the uss arizona memorial at pearl harbor so we blocked out about 3 hours thursday morning to explore this world war II site.  all of our guidebooks and even locals said to expect a 2-3 hour wait.  as it turned out, parking the car took the longest at around 30 minutes!  this was pretty funny because we creeped around the parking lot while trying not to act like we're stalking people.  logan said we were super ninja because we were silently rolling along in a hybrid, quiet as a mouse sleeping on a cotton ball.  yes, we were almost invisible except that cars are about 20 times larger than humans.

(atomic bomb = so scary!)

i like visiting historic museums with logan because he somehow knows everything about everything, so tours are like having my own personal docent.  he told me all about world war II and explained the history of nuclear bombs.

we saw the sunken arizona and learned about the events of december 7, 1941.  one of the coolest things about the pearl harbor memorial is that there were a couple of survivors walking around!  we spoke with a very elderly fellow named allen who was on another ship close the the arizona when it was bombed.  it was amazing to actually speak to someone with firsthand experience - one day this will no longer be possible!

after pearl harbor, we cruised over to chinatown to take in the sights.  because of hawaii's polynesian and asian influence, the chinatown in honolulu is pretty authentic.  there were tons of lei shops, markets with kinda scary meat-looking things that i didn't want to investigate, and, yay!, bakeries!  the chinese bakeries were really neat because their idea of sweets is so different from american culture.  sweets in chinatown consisted of fruit cakes, almond cookies, fig pastries, and moon cakes.  okaaaayy, okay, it was kinda yucky.  i think part of my disappointment was that i was expecting pound cake with syrup filling, dipped in doughnut icing, with powdered sugar and chocolate on top.  i'm american, guilty :-/

(chinese wedding cake on the left, black sugar moon cake on the right.  i tried to love it, i really did.)

(THIS is what i wanted)

what i was really looking for were those delicious chinese sugar biscuits that you get at asian buffets.  the fried, doughy ones with sugar on top.  i was very sad because they were nowhere to be found in chinatown, which makes me think they are only make-believe asian.  gah!!  i thought i was super cultured because i love those things.

after chinatown, we started searching for some really good hawaii coffee. they kind they served at our hotel was douwe egberts and might just be the best coffee i've ever had!  farmers of hawaii produce incredibly aromatic coffee and they do so with utmost care.  any coffee you see that is labeled "100% kona" was grown, hand picked, and hand roasted in hawaii.  we finally found a kona coffee shop and my beverage was top notch.

(diamond head crater)

so here's the saddest part of our trip.  we saved the hike up oahu's diamond head crater for our last day.  this is the most iconic feature of the island of oahu, probably second only to waikiki beach itself.  the view from diamond head crater is breathtaking!  or so i hear.  yep, we drove up diamond head road on our way to the trail head, totally siked about finally doing one of the coolest hikes in the world, and it was closed.

uuuuuuuuuuuggggggggggggggghhhhhhhhhhh!!!!!

so sad.  we still drove all the way up to the parking lot to ask the attendant if all 3 of the giant yellow "hike closed" signs really meant it.  we were totally bummed, mostly because this hike is so famous, and just a little because, at this point, we had 8 hours to kill until our flight at 11 p.m.  what else could we do?  we went to a convenience store and bought ice creams and sat out on the beach.  this actually worked out very nicely in the end because we got to say farewell to waikiki beach under the best sunset i've ever seen.

we grabbed some dinner at california pizza kitchen then got outta dodge.  all good things come to an end, which is quite alright because you wouldn't appreciate the good things if they weren't fleeting.  this was officially the best week of my life!