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Today was the standard First Day in Honolulu — we spent half the day at Pearl Harbor.

We got an early start, hitting the Surf Room at the Royal Hawaiian for breakfast buffet at just about seven. We had a table right by the beach, and while we ate, we watched the sun rise over Diamond Head and spill across downtown Honolulu and Waikiki Beach.

From there, we took a cab over to Pearl and got in line. And what a line it was! The line to get tickets for the Arizona Memorial opens at 8 AM, and by the time we got there at 8:05, it stretched from the entrance of the Visitor’s Center, down to the street, around the garden, into the garden, and folded back on itself, running all the way back to the bus parking lot. Luckily, it moved fairly quickly, and we got through the line in about an hour. We were Group 10, with an expected tour start time of 10:15, so we had awhile to wander around.

We walked across the parking lot to the museum where the Bowfin is on display. The Bowfin is a WWII-era submarine, known as the “Pearl Harbor Avenger,” since it was launched on December 7, 1942, one year after the Pearl Harbor attack. Very little has been removed from the interior of the sub, so you really get a good chance to experience the conditions of the time. Obviously, it’s cleaner and shinier than it may have been during actual combat duty. It’s very lovingly maintained. Both of us agreed that today’s ships, like the Nebraska, are luxury liners in comparison to the Bowfin.

We crushed a penny for gieves and then headed back to wait for our tour. The tour now goes through a mandatory documentary film about the attacks, which was assembled from an impressive amount of archival materials from both the American and Japanese military. I’m pretty sure this was new since my last visit. For a required, “watch this because you can’t be bothered to pay attention to your guide” type of film, I was blown away by it — it’s both balanced and emotionally intense, and very moving.

After seeing the film, we were shuttled out by boat to the Arizona Memorial, a glorious white sculpture on the water that serves as a marker and a monument for the lives that were lost that day. The wall of names of those that died, and the small block bearing the names of survivors who have since died and been interred within the Arizona, are overwhelmingly emotional, and their sacrifice can still be heard echoing throughout history.

Once we returned to shore, we caught a cab back to the hotel. We wandered around the Waikiki area, and got lunch at Keo’s. We ducked in, starving, in hopes of getting something decent and a chance to get out of the rain. Once seated, we discovered that we had just stumbled upon one of the best Thai restaurants in the world. Liz had a pineapple curry with shrimp, and I found myself unable to resist the Evil Jungle Prince with chicken. (With a name like that, how can it be anything but wonderful?) We made sure to get reservations for tomorrow night, so that Liz’s mom would have something delightful to clean her palate after being on the plane all day.

We walked down to the Hyatt, a couple blocks east of our hotel, and picked up our rental car so that we would be ready for tomorrow. It’s a red-orange convertible Mustang, and though it drives like an old cow, it will at least be fun to take the top down and go for a drive.

From there, it was back to the hotel to hang at the Mai Tai Bar. This is the birthplace of the world-famous drink of the same name. I behaved myself and only had the one Mai Tai, but Liz needed just a little more, so she ordered a Tropical Itch, a fruity girl drink that’s served with a wood back-scratcher. (No, I’m not kidding.) The drinks were great, and felt good in the shade by the beach.

My parents came over from their hotel, and we got mai tais for them as well, while Liz went “next door” to the Outrigger to get our name on the list at Duke’s. We lucked out and only had about a 60-minute wait — when we got over there to be seated, people were being told that a table was “at least two hours” away from them. We all had excellent dinners, and my parents — bless them! — were even daring enough to have fish for dinner. Liz has been to work on me for awhile, so me having fish in Hawaii is perfectly natural and to be expected, but my folks are card-carrying land-lubbers when it comes to cuisine. So they impressed me.

We were all starting to get pretty tired by the time we were done with dinner, so it was back to our respective hotels to crash for awhile.

More later.

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