Day 12: Pearl Harbor day

Saturday we drove down to Pearl Harbor to tour the Arizona Memorial. We had to go pick up our tickets first, then wait for our entrance time, so in between we stopped by the famous "Swap", which is giant open air market place where you can buy all kinds of fun stuff. We stopped by one tent where they had hand-carved wooden totem pole figures and decided that would be a fun addition to our decor at home. The wood carver even carved out an inscription for us on the back.

Afterwards, we went back for our Arizona Memorial tour. They have you watch a short movie (which is very sobering and sad), and then take you on a little boat to the memorial, which is right over top of where the sunken USS Arizona ship still lies. The ship is like a graveyard--it is still full of dead sailors' bodies. It was a very somber experience to visit there.

I was worried that the effect might be overbearing, like my experience when I visited a concentration camp in Germany. Luckily, it wasn't like that--I could pause, reflect on the tragedy, and move on without being disturbed for weeks afterwards. So that was a good thing!

We also toured the USS Bowfin (a submarine) and the Battleship Missouri which are all there in the harbor. It was neat, but I found that all the men were much more enthralled with the submarine and battleship than I could ever be. Kevin and my brother took LOTS of pictures of the submarine especially, but since I'm writing this blog, I get to choose the ratio of beach scenery to heavy artillery around here!

Heidi's kids were pretty pooped by then, so they decided to head off home. My parents, Kevin, my little brother Matthew, and I opted for something much more exciting. My sister had seen a coupon in this tourist book we were looking at for Cirque de Soleil in Honolulu. My little brother got on his iPhone (lucky guy!) and found out when the performance was and where. My parents LOVE Cirque performances (they've seen them in Las Vegas), so it was easy to persuade them that we should go. The funny thing was, when we got there, we realized our coupons were for a discount at the Cirque store, not off of the admission tickets! But since we were there, we decided to go anyway. We *did* get a free bucket of popcorn from our coupon anyway...yes!

The show was amazing. Very amazing. They don't let you take pictures, though even if I could it's not like I would dare to distract the performers, like the tight rope walker who had no safetly line at all! So you'll just have to imagine to yourselves some seriously amazing acrobatic feats and death-defying acts.

After Cirque, we decided to go to Duke's for dinner. Duke's is a famous restaurant right on the Waikiki beach, which is name after Duke Kahanamoku, who is known for popularizing the sport of surfing. They have an amazing salad bar and really, really good fish. It made a perfect end to our busy day in Honolulu!