TRAVELS (and more) WITH CECILIA BRAINARD: Travel - 15-day Cruise Princess Cruise to Hawaii

I am incredibly behind with my blogging, so I've gone ahead and posted some pictures taken during our 15-day Princess Cruise to Hawaii. I'll try to fill in later on, in the meantime, enjoy the pictures.
Ports of Call: Los Angeles, Big Island (Hilo), Oahu (Honolulu), Kauai (Kawiliwili Harbor), Big Island (Kona), Ensenada

HILO

First stop was Hilo, Hawaii, where this beautiful rainbow greeted us.

In Hilo, we visited the Kilauea Volcano National Park. The steaming active volcano impressed me. I have seen other volcanoes but none were steaming like this onr. There is another volcano in Hilo, the Moana Loa, which we did not visit.

Our tour guide said property is relatively inexpensive on the Big Island of Hawaii because of these two active volcanos.

HONOLULU

Our next stop was Honolulu in Oahu, where we visited the Arizona Memorial.

My husband really wanted to visit the USS Arizona Memorial in Honolulu. Years ago, we had been unable to visit this World War Two Memorial site because of a government shutdown. This 2023 visit we were looking at another government shutdown and my husband fretted. Princess did not offer a tour to the USS Arizona and he had to go online and book and arrange transportation. Fortunately this time a government shutdown was averted and we were able to visit the USS Arizona.
It was important for my husband to visit the Arizona because his father (General Robert Brainard) had a friend, a young man from Pasadena, die in the Arizona. His remains like many others are in the sunken ship.

To refresh your memory, from Wikipedia: "The USS Arizona Memorial, at Pearl Harbor in Honolulu, Hawaii, marks the resting place of 1,102 of the 1,177 sailors and Marines killed on USS Arizona during the attack on Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, and commemorates the events of that day. The attack on Pearl Harbor led to the United States' involvement in World War II."
And so the tour agency we hired picked us up and brought us to the Memorial. It was a mournful visit because basically we were visiting a cemetery. We took a ferry and got to the platform built over the sunken ship. There was a hall with the names of the dead. We tried to find the name of my father-in-law's friend (Robinson), and we prayed.

Outside the hall we looked down at the sea, at the outline of the sunken ship, rusted now, but still there, a sullen reminder.
It was very moving. The USS Arizona Memorial still has that heavy feeling that I had picked up in the war memorials in Nanking and Singapore -- places where the dead may still be restless. It's great sadness or anger or something I can't exactly define, strange feelings that linger in places where violence occurred.
Really I have more to say about World War Two. Even after writing the novel, When the Rainbow Goddess Wept, I have more thoughts and feelings about this awful war that I had experienced only second-hand (from personal stories I overheard and from books), but which seem very personal to me.
War is simply terrible and its effects linger for generations.

Also in Honolulu, we met my poet friend Elmer Omar Pizo who brought us to the Pali Road Lookout.

(The following is from TripAdvisor)The Nuuanu Pali State Wayside is a lookout above the Pali Highway tunnels where you’re treated to a panoramic view of Oahu's Windward side with sweeping views of Kaneohe, Kaneohe Bay and Kailua. It’s also well known for strong tradewinds, forming a natural wind tunnel of sorts. It was here in 1795 that Kamehameha The Great conquered the island of Oahu in one of the bloodiest battles in Hawaiian history. Led by Kalanikupule, the defenders of Oahu were driven back up into the valley where they were trapped above the cliff. More than 400 of Kalanikupule's soldiers were driven off the edge of the cliff to their deaths 1,000 feet below.

Later, we had dinner in the Port.

That evening on the ship, we watched the performance of a local Hula folkloric group, young women whom I saw outside near the pier.

KAUIA

Our next stop was Kauai where the wild chickens amused us. These feral chickens thrive in other islands too. They are descendants of chickens brought to the islands in centuries past. I found them charming although locals find them annoying and consider them pests. People don't eat them because their flesh is tough (go, chickens!). I asked if people eat their eggs and our guide said no, there's no telling how long the eggs have been sitting out there.

We stopped by Kauia's South Shore where we watched the Spouting Horn blowhole. It didn't spout too much for us.

Later, we visited the Waimea Canyon State Park and the Wailua River State Park,

KONA

The next stop was in the Big Island again, in Kona, where we visited the sacred site, a place of refuge, the Pu'uhonua o Honaunau. We also visited the Painted church.