Pearl Harbor and More

Forgive the absence of any posts of late. The last three weeks have been filled mostly with days spent cruising the high seas with no land in sight. Since my last entry, the ship has made seven calls to ports in North and Central America, and also spent a day (January 18) transiting the Panama Canal, so I did not feel the need to write any entries about spending time on the beach or walking around, which I did in Curacao and in Puerto Vallarta. On January 13, I met up with my mother and grandmother in Fort Lauderdale, went shopping, and ate Chinese food. On January 21, the ship docked in Puerto Quetzal, Guatemala and I was able to get off for a little over an hour and spent time walking around the shops in the port and sitting on the grass. in Cabo San Lucas on January 25, I ended up getting off just long enough to eat the best fajitas I'd ever tasted, and on January 27, I met up with some friends and went flying on the trapeze at the Santa Monica Pier.

That pretty much summarizes the last three weeks aboard Queen Victoria, but yesterday, the ship docked in Honolulu, and that warrants a full entry.

February 1, 2009
Honolulu, Hawaii

For perhaps the first time since joining Queen Victoria last September, I was awake for a morning sail-in. I went up to the guest gym (located above the bridge) way before the sun came up and was able to watch the sun rise over Honolulu and the island of Oahu from the treadmill. It was one of the most beautiful sail-ins I am sure I could ever witness, (though I am sure Sydney will rival it), and it was a great start to what would be a great day.

I took a shower, ate breakfast, and headed off to go on a tour that would take me first to Pearl Harbor and then on a brief city tour of Honolulu. I always knew that Pearl Harbor was something that I was going to have to see in my life, and yet, I did not prepare myself mentally for the visit.

We arrived at the visitor's center for the USS Arizona memorial shortly after 9:00am, and though I anticipated a waiting time for over an hour, it was about thirty minutes before I had to be in a theatre to watch a short film that covered not only the attacks on December 7, 1941, but also events starting from as early as the a decade prior. As I left the theatre to board the motor launch that would take me out to the USS Arizona Memorial, everything more or less hit me at once. I realized where I was, and I realized what I was about to go and see, and I realized what had happened where I was standing nearly seventy years ago.

The boat ride out to the memorial was short, and I was silent for most of it. The memorial itself is unique in that it is situated in the middle of the harbor immediately above the sunken Arizona, where over 900 sailors are still entombed. Parts of the battleship peak above the surface and much of the hull is visible despite being under water.

I was dead silent at the memorial; I walked around, took some pictures, and did my very best to take everything in. Visiting this memorial took more of a toll on my emotions than anything else I had seen to date, and I doubt I could visit the memorial again. I paid my respects and reboarded a motor launch to take me back to the visitors' center before my tour group left to see some Honolulu city sights.

From Pearl harbor, we headed to a beautiful lookout point called the Loni Lookout; it is situated 1,200 feet above sea level and the exposures were ridiculous from there. From there, we made our way through to the "Punchbowl National Cemetary" which is one of five American national cemetaryies that are not located inside the Continental United States, and it was also beautiful. From there, we headed downtown and passed the Iolani palace: the only royal palace to be located on American soil, and then headed back to the ship.

I had some time to walk around the pier area and do some shopping after getting back to the ship, but I had a great morning in the lovely state of Hawaii, and look forward to going back at some point to explore the rest of it.