Honolulu is the most remote city of its size on the planet and is the westernmost major US city. The name Honolulu means “sheltered harbor,” and its old name is Kou. It is second only to Auckland as the most populous city in Polynesia.
We hung around the downtown area today, as we brought Jan’s mom here to Oahu for her 90th birthday 8 years ago. At that time, we saw all of Oahu’s famous tourist sites: Diamond Head, Iolani Palace, the North Shore, Polynesian Cultural Center (along with a luau), and the Dole Plantation. So today was for walking, a little shopping, and taking photos for this website! By the way, we just figured out how to reinstall our “Subscribe” button. If you are enjoying our travels, simply go to the Contact page and enter your email at the bottom to subscribe and follow us. Whenever we publish a new post, you will receive an email informing you of the fact.
The first several photos were taken at Ala Moana Park. Volleyball and sunbathing were in full swing! It was a gorgeous day, 80 degrees, puffy clouds….hard to look at the East Coast snow photos! We loved the red ginger growing wild, along with plumeria and palm trees everywhere. The building architecture gets wilder and wilder as you move west, and Honolulu is no different. We enjoyed looking at all the office and residential buildings. The last two photos were taken at Ala Moana Shopping Center, a huge outdoor mall with every retail store brand you can think of. We thought our readers in snowy locations would get a kick out of the Christmas tree surrounded by palm trees, on a sunny day, with everyone in shorts! But our favorite scene of the day, which elicited a big laugh from us, is shown in the very last photo. There was a little hill built of artificial turf for children to play on. This brother and sister unfolded maps of the mall…just big enough for them to sit on….and slid down the artificial turf hill, bursting into laughter when they got to the bottom. It brought memories of grabbing cafeteria trays to use for sledding in the snow growing up, and delighted us so much.
