After 10 sea days we pulled into Honolulu.  I watched as we sailed past Diamond Head just after sunrise. 

Being our re-entry port into the U.S. the ship had to clear US Customs.  The day before we had to go to Guest Servcies to get a time to clear customs.  Since we had expected this to be a sea day (we sped up to get a person who had taken ill to a hospital more quickly) we had scheduled a teleconference for 9:30 that morning, thinking we would be at sea.  So, we were happy to take the last customs slot at 11:30. 

As planned, inspection began at 8:30.   But numbers were being called a lot more quickly than we expected.   Karlijn, the Cruise Director, said customs had put on an extra shift.

At 9:25 they called the groups just before ours.   Suzi suggested we go down so we would be the first of our group off so we could get on again and make most of the teleconference, so we headed toward the gangway along with everyone else between groups 10 and 20.   They had expected to be called later and were not ready to go down until when their numbers were called.   Our number was not called.  We had the wrong ticket to get off and it looked like our number would not be up for quite a while.  We swapped with a couple with #16 and went to the front of the line.  

Once you clear you can either get right back on and wait until Customs has a “zero count” before you get off again or you can go into town and not get back on until a zero count.  We cleared and went back to our teleconference.  We could see that not many others had gotten off the ship while we were clearing customs.  They had to wait while the crew readjusted the gangways to accommodate the tide. 

We got back to catch the end of the conference.  At 10:45 they still had not called group 25 We could have stayed on and not missed anything. 

After the teleconference we took a nap and were awakened by a blast from the PA system calling out passengers by name, “PLEASE clear customs NOW.  Customs wants to go home.”  They still needed that zero count.  We got the word that we could go ashore at about 12:30.

We didn’t have much on the agenda for the day.  I wanted to get a new “aloha shirt” and perhaps we would visit a museum.  We got into a cab and gave the driver the address of the “Aloha Big and Tall” men’s store. The driver looked dubious and asked, “You’ll want me to wait for you to take you back to the ship, right?” 

We said “No, we’ll go on from there.”

He said, “We’ll see, bro.” 

The Aloha Big and Tall was in a strip mall, but none of the shops had glass in the windows.  They had plywood boards covered with Bud Light ads. There were some iron bars as well.  Our shop had ads for aloha shirts.  Right place.    The driver said “I’ll wait bro.”

The shop had a neon sign that read “open” but only the first two letters were lit and they flickered.  We tried to open the door. It was looked.  There was a little sign by the handle “For in, knock knock.”  We knock knocked and a diminutive lady peaked out, unlocked the door and said, “quick quick.”  We were in and she locked the door behind us.

This store was packed with racks, no free floor space.  She was using every available bit of space for goods.  I went to the rack of aloha shirts.  Let’s just say they have a different definition of big and tall than I do.  For them tall would be someone who could stand in a Japanese bus and the top of their pompadour would just brush the roof   Whenever I stood up in a Japanese bus, I banged my head and I’m only 6’2”.   Japanese buses are small and so is this store’s definition of big and tall.   The lady said, “no no, you too big you go here” and she gave me the name and address of another aloha shirt store.        

I gave the driver the address and he looked dubious again, “you sure bro?”   The store was not far away but was in an industrial zone   The shop was surrounded by shops selling things like plumbing supplies.   But it had a great collection of shirts   I went to the 3X rack and found one that I liked, tried it on, too small.  That happens so I want to 4X.  Too big.  The guy running the store said “Yeah, different manufacturers define X differently.”  I bought the 4X, it was 100% cotton so I figured it would shrink into me, if not I like roomy shirts.

After getting the shirt we told the taxi driver to take us to the Iolani Palace.  This time he seemed ok with leaving us there.  It’s walking distance to the ship.

The palace was the home of Hawaii’s last royals, after that the capital building for the Republic of Hawaii, the territory of Hawaii and the first state capital.  When a new capital building was erected in what had been the gardens behind the palace, work started on restoring the palace to its royal glory.

I found it strange and sad.  Looking at the displays of uniforms, medals for orders of chivalry and swords I felt like I had stepped into the wardrobe and props room for a Gilbert and Sullivan company.  It all seemed at odds with the story of a Polynesian Monarchy, like a parody of royalty, a European style–self-imposed.  And the uniforms looked damned hot to wear in a tropical climate.

At the palace we learned the story of the uniting of the islands under Kamehameha, those that succeeded him, and their striving to imitate European courts to gain, I guess, some credibility with those courts.  We also learned of the decimation of the Hawaiian population by disease.  When Captain Cook landed there were between seven hundred thousand and a million Hawaiians.  A century later there were only 70,000.  The population was supplemented by American whalers and then American capitalists, who brought in Japanese, Chinese, Filipino, and Portuguese workers to grow and process sugar and then pineapples.  The monarchy tried to rule over this cultural mix. First there was the “bayonet constitution” imposed by the American growers limiting the power of the king, then the coup, overthrowing the monarchy and setting up the republic (which was condemned by President Cleveland) and finally annexation (under McKinley.)  The palace museum is a strange mix of mourning the loss of independence and a kind of pride in being a state.

After the visit to the palace, we walked back to the ship.  We passed the Aliiolani Hale or Supreme Court and Kawaiahao Church and several state office buildings that look like state office buildings but with nicer flowers.

When we got close to the port is where the Boy Scouts come in.  Google has no idea how to direct us to the ship.  It kept sending us into chain link fences blocking access.  It took us much longer to get back to the ship than Google predicted.  There’s the, now we would call it a meme, of a Boy Scout doing his daily good deed by helping a little old lady cross the street.  If Hawaiian Boy Scouts are looking for a good deed, they could stand outside the cruise terminal and scout out a path for bewildered elderly tourists to find their way back into the ship’s air-conditioning.