Little Lolly's Small Adventures: Honolulu, Oahu. Tour: Monarchs & Missionaries: Hawaii's Royal History

Our bus for the day

Honolulu at last and it's good to see land again. The temperature has been about 30°C today, partly overcast and humid.

I was glad to be able to get off the ship and step onto terra firma again. I was assigned to the tour 'Monarchs & Missionaries: Hawaii's Royal History' with a small group of 11 guests. Small groups make tours a bit more personal and there is a bit more 'bonding' of guests than when they are in bigger groups. Our driver, Ken, was also our guide for the day; a happy chappy with a great sense of humour who made us feel welcome.

View from Pali Lookout

On the road, our route took us through Honolulu and out the other side, through lush rain-forests, to the Pali Lookout. The views from Pali Lookout were beautiful.

Nu'uanu Pali was the site of a battle which took place between Kamehameha, who wanted to unite all the Hawaiian islands, and Chief Kalankupule who was originally from Maui but conquered the island of Oahu. During the battle Chief Kalanikupule's men were either forced off the cliff (Pali) or jumped to their deaths. Kamehameha was victorious and an agreement was signed with Chief Kaumuali'i of Kaua'i who became Hawaiian islands first king.

The thee restored Mission Houses

King Kamehameha's statue

As we headed headed back towards Honolulu we passed through a tree tunnel, branches reaching up and over towards each other; shady and cool. Unfortunately we could not visit the Royal Mausoleum because of road works so we continued on to the Hawaiian Mission Houses Historic Site & Archives. There we learned the role of Christian Missionaries who in time shaped the Hawaiian culture; and we also visited three restored houses. We also visited the printing room and press. The Hawaiian language originally verbal but eventually someone had the hindsight to put the oral words into letters and words, and then the eventual translation of the bible began from English into the Hawaiian language. Printing of the bible was a long and tedious task in those days and the individual wooden template letters often wore out more quickly. The Hawaiian language consists of 13 letters rather than the 26 that we are used to. The paper was printed on and hung out to dry. The pages had to be put into the correct order and correlated into leaflets/tracts and stitched. The leaflets/tracts were then put together into sequence and glued together with a hard cover which was then pressed hard and allowed to dry.

Across the way was the Kawaiahao Church which we visited and then on to see King Kamehameha's statue.

Our final stop for the day was the Iolani Palace, the only royal palace in the USA and the official residence of the Hawaiian Kingdom's last 2 monarchs. It was a self-guided tour but with the use of hand held audio guides to tell you about the palace as you went from room to room. Before we entered the palace we had to put shoe covers on to protect the floors and carpets. Flipflops and shoe covers don't really go well together and the flipflop thong between my toes bit into the web a bit. The tour of the palace was very

The throne room a Iolani Palace

interesting yet sad as we learned about the monarchy's downfall and saw the room where Queen Lili'uokalani was held, the windows covered in paint or glazing so that she could not see out and her people could not see in. The palace was spacious inside with good air flow to keep the inside cool, more so in summer. In the basement part of the palace one could see the crown jewels, medals and swords on display. You could also see part of the kitchen too. There was more about Hawaiian history on boards too.

All too soon we had to get back to the ship. Ken, our driver/guide, was waiting for us outside the palace and took us on a slightly windy route back to the harbour so we could see a wee bit more of Honolulu.

All in all it was a nice day out but it was good to see Paul again. He had been hard at work so probably didn't miss me too much 😉

PHOTOGRAPHS

Pali Lookout