Sun, 01/26/25 Honolulu

 Day 22 - Sunday, January 26, 2025 – Honolulu, Hawaii

We gained an hour last night again. So, this morning we played the ever familiar but “What time is it really?” game. We end up turning the TV on and seeing what time the ship TV says it is. We are now five hours from Eastern Time. We are only thinking about going to bed, whereas some of you have been in bed for four hours already.

I have to give Mary all the credit for today. To this point, I had done all of the work on the excursions. I even tried to get some leads in Hawaii, but I kept drawing dead. Mary came up with the idea of us renting a van, like ours, with a ramp. We would rent it for the day and drive around Honolulu. She then took it a step further and found an app that works on your phone that gives you a guided tour of various itineraries. She found one for Honolulu that at a six to eight hour driving trip through southeastern Oahu. She rented the van. She did all the research on this app called Shaka Guide. After thinking it through, I thought it was a great idea. The van was similar to ours. They are American roads. It was a Sunday so traffic would be light. Oahu is not that big so we could not get that lost😊.

We had an amazing welcome to Hawaii sign. We typically keep the shades closed on the balcony. After we are both up, Mary opens them up. You can see it in the pictures below, but the most amazing rainbow was just outside. In some pictures, it looks like a double rainbow. The pictures don't really do it justice I don't think. In reality, it seemed bigger and brighter. Nonetheless, I thought it was a great way to start the day in Hawaii.

We had breakfast in the room. Actually, I had a scone with butter. I think Mary had two hash browns. We got off the ship. We were through the terminal and to the area where the tour buses sat by about 8:45. A couple of minutes after 9:00, Jordan, the van owner, pulled up. We did our introductions. Jordan gave Mary a rundown on the van. It was a manual ramp. Other than that, it was very similar to ours. They rolled me into it. They strapped me down. The three of us drove out of the cruise terminal. About half a mile outside, Jordan got out to catch an Uber back home. Mary and I were on our way.

Our first stop was Walgreens. There were a couple of things we forgot in our last visit to Walgreens. We also stocked up on a few things that we think we might need in the future. After Kauai tomorrow, most of the stores and brands we were familiar with won't be seen again until we get home in May. We're trying to be a little proactive. We'll see if we are smart or not.

The way the tour guide app works is it looks at your GPS and determines where you are. This particular itinerary used Waikiki beach as its starting point. Using Google Maps, we made our way from Walgreens to Waikiki beach. It was kind of cool because once we hit Waikiki beach, the tour guide app took over. For the next 5 hours or so, it led us through southeastern Oahu in a pretty big circle. There were 100 talking points along the way. We drove around 5 craters. We visited probably 10 beaches. We traveled through a rainforest. The tour guide discussed how the islands were created. He talked a lot about the culture and the people that have populated the islands. He talked about Hawaiian food. He threw in various historical facts here and there. Hopefully you can tell from the pictures that we had awesome views throughout. We took our fair share of pictures. The tour took us back to where we started at Waikiki beach.

We were getting hungry and we were debating if we should go back to the ship and eat or try to find something on shore. We had to put gas in the car too. The agreement was we would return the car with a full tank. Mary found a gas station right away. She managed to buy me eight more 12 ounce Monsters. One of the Monsters was a blue Hawaii version. Of course I had to try it right away. I never had a Monster with pineapple in it. I'm on the fence as to whether I like it or not. I'm always up to trying something new.

We still had not found a place for T-shirts, refrigerator magnets, etcetera. We looked for a couple of places before one lady suggested going to Walmart. I don't know much about Walmart, but I would be surprised if they have a souvenir section. Walmart was only two miles away so we agreed to try it. Guess what? The Walmart in Honolulu has a souvenir section. Part of me wonders what is this world coming to? Mary bought T-shirts, refrigerator magnet, postcards and, somehow, pretzels jumped in her basket.

Now we were still left with the decision of eating or not. If we wanted to eat should we eat on shore or on the ship. It was decided that we would eat something on shore. We drove up and down a couple of streets near where the ship was. I saw a little cluster of restaurants and we headed toward it. We stopped at a place called Moku Kitchen. It's menu was pretty wide. More importantly, it had about 25 different beers on tap. I went straight to the IPA section and found one made in Hawaii. It was called Rooftop and it was pretty good. I could have had two, but then I would have been table dancing because I had not eaten anything except for my scone eight hours earlier. Mary settled for a cheeseburger and fries. On the menu were fish tacos and a separate entry called line caught fish tacos. I would love to have purchase both and see what the difference is, but being a sucker for advertising, I went with the more expensive line caught version. That's more of a joke than anything. They were some of the best fish tacos I've had in a long time, if ever. This place it would be perfect to sit around on a Sunday afternoon and watch the football game with a plate of good food and a cup of good beer with the table filled with good friends. Thankfully, I can do that at home or in Wisconsin or in Chicago. I don't need to come all the way to Honolulu. We paid the bill and went back to the van.

Mary agreed that we would go to Jordan's house to pick him up so he could drive us back to the cruise terminal. He only lived about 15 minutes from where we were. The downside was it started to rain. It was not drizzle this was pretty serious downpour with limited visibility kind of rain. Jordan lived up the side of a mountain, kind of. He says it often rains on the side of the mountain only to have it be dry down below. That is pretty much what happened. By the time we got back down to the cruise terminal there was no rain.

We got to the cruise terminal. We said our goodbyes. Jordan went his way and we went to ours. We went through the security checks and made our way back onto the ship. We were back in our room before 6:00 PM. I would say it was a very successful visit to Honolulu. Actually, I would say it was a very successful visit to the southeast corner of Oahu, including Honolulu.

Since we've been back, I've worked on these logs. I did some research on Cape Town. I updated the Del Webb Spruce Creek poker clubs statistics. It's almost time for bedtime.

Kauai tomorrow. It follows pretty much the same plan as Honolulu. We rented a van. Mary found the app based tour guide just like the one we did today. Tomorrow we'll have to be a little shorter because the ship leaves at 5:00.