Honolulu #4...

Thursday, May 7th - Saturday, May 9th (Happy birthday, Patience!)

Thursday we decided to visit the Honolulu Aquarium, which is the 3rd oldest aquarium in the US. There were great exhibits, and we saw varieties of fish that we had never seen before, as well as learned a lot about reefs and sharks. While it's not on the calibre of the Monterey Bay Aquarium, we really enjoyed wandering through it.



Some of the jelly fish on display - they were amazing, the way they move through the water. The moon jellies were amazing, too, but those pictures didn't turn out very well.

These fish are called frog fish - we had never seen them before - they will sit, motionless, for hours, but Lee was lucky enough to be there when the hours were apparently up, as one of them moved slowly around the tank. In the bottom picture, the fish is facing the tank, and you can see the eye (outlined in white). Not the most attractive fish we've ever seen - can you imagine pulling your line in and finding THAT??

We also saw Nautilus swimming in their darkened tank - amazing!!

After the aquarium, we headed home for showers and then wandered down to the Halekulani for some Hawaiian music. You can see that the setting was beautiful! We each had a beer and basked in the warm air and beautiful music.

As the music was wrapping up, the full moon popped up over the palm trees, with Diamond Head in the background.

Walking back to our room, we got a picture of Duke - you can see that he'd been given lots of leis. We took several pictures for tourists, too.

On Friday, we headed out about 1 and walked down to the Ala Moana shopping center - Lee's idea! It was about an hours walk away. We managed to spend about 3 hours there, but did minimal shopping - I'm still looking for shoes to wear with my dress to the Luau on Tuesday! We left the shopping center, and walked back to Waikiki. We went to the barefoot bar at the Outrigger, and listened to music there. There were two fellows - one on the base and one playing the slack key guitar. They were quite good! We headed home about 7:30, and fixed dinner.

Saturday morning we were down on Kalakaua Avenue early, for ring-side seats for the 17th annual Filipino parade. While waiting for the parade to start, Lee got some beach shots - this one showing the beach, umbrellas, nice clean sand, and in the background, the pink Royal Hawaiian hotel.

The beautiful Pacific ocean

Here comes the parade!

There were many floats, as well as different areas of the Philipines represented

Girls doing a traditional Philipine dance.

More groups

And more

Again, the beautiful pink Royal Hawaiian, tucked in amont the high-rise buildings.

After the parade, we decided to take a walk around the back side of Diamond Head. This fountain shows off Diamond Head behind it. It was quite a long walk, through some beautiful residential areas ( we really need to win the lottery!), and finally, out to Diamond Head State Beach, and the Diamond Head lighthouse!

We did some beach combing, and we found some great sea glass, as well as a neat seashell.

Here's a shot of a banyan tree. If you are not familiar with banyans, they can grow to cover city blocks, and they do this by putting down roots from their branches as they grow. They are amazing, and you can see that this one has put down roots on the other side of the sidewalk. There are many huge banyans in and around Waikiki, but the biggest banyan in existence today is in India.

Saturday afternoon we visited the Tiki room for more Hawaiian music. We then headed back down Kalakaua, and got there just in time to catch the nightly hula performance. They opened the show with the blowing of the conch shell. Apparently Polynesians believe that the night is the beginning of the new day, and greeting the coming day with the conch shell is traditional. The person shown here is one of the best at this, and also teaches young people that art.

Here's one of his students. He did a great job!

There were also hula dancers, starting with very young, anxious, adorable girls, and moving up through high school. There was a group of young boys playing the ukulele and singing, too, and they were very good, as well. It was a great show (free) and the first time that we had seen it from beginning to end. A great way to end the day!

And now it's Sunday! Happy Mother's day to all of you mothers out there! We hope that you have a fabulous day! Today is a beach day, so we're going to get this posted, and get out there!!