Friday, March 4, 2011

Pearl Harbour, Honolulu

Flight: Air Pacific(Qantas)  Nadi, Fiji - Apia, Samoa - Honolulu, Hawaii  8.5 hours
Accomodation: Best Western The Plaza Airport, Honolulu

We flew all night, and crossed the International Date Line at precisely 11:58pm on Friday March 4.  So the time changed to 1:00am on the exact same day.  Poor Derek, within 2 minutes of turning 15, and has to wait an extra 24 hours for his birthday.  A quick stop in Apia in the middle of the night, then continued another 5 hours to the US of A.  We were the most tan Canadians arriving in Honolulu the next morning.

Impressions of being surrounded by familiar accents and idioms were instant.  Driving on the "right" side of the road, we had to stop and think which way to look for traffic again.   No one tried to run us over even though we weren't in the cross walk. We were really tired after the night flight, so were lucky to check in at 9am into a hotel close to the airport, for showers and a place to drop our bags.  And off we go again.

We have visited Hawaii many times in our lives - probably 10 to 15 at least.  We have never spent any time in Oahu preferring Maui or Kauai, so have never taken our kids to Pearl Harbour.  Rick has never been there, and my only visit was in 1979 when I was like 3 years old (or so, lol).  In the spirit of our educational adventrue, we grabbed a van and headed to the Arizona Memorial for our day's History lesson.

The exhibits at the site are very well done.  There are interactive and video displays, as well as photos and maps and working equipment that you can manipulate, like decoding and periscopes.  The boys liked the displays of torpedoes, and the short documentary was very explanitory.  It managed to keep our attention, even in the dark, quiet theatre when we were all so tired.  There was a short trip across the bay to the site of the sunken ship, but in the murky waters it was hard to imagine what was below.  Our hope is that the kids understood the significance of this attack on the outcome of WW2, both in the Pacific and European fronts.  They can compare the American perspective to what they have learned in school regarding the Canadian point of view.  And gain a new look at the same history.  First hand.

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