{"id":3296,"date":"2025-11-26T21:27:30","date_gmt":"2025-11-26T21:27:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/travel123.johnmatienzo.com\/?p=3296"},"modified":"2025-11-27T01:17:06","modified_gmt":"2025-11-27T01:17:06","slug":"hawaii-oahu-2025-day-1-and-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/?p=3296","title":{"rendered":"Hawaii – Oahu 2025 Day 1 and 2"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

First day we left SFO at 6:30pm, and arrived at HNL at 10pm (40 minutes earlier than expected). Took a taxi to the hotel (next time would take an uber since it\u2019s cheaper and less pressure to pay cash). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Arrived at the hotel \/ resort (Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Resort, Ali\u2019i tower) at 10:30. Most of the shops in the resort were closed except the general store. So got some chips and High Noons, watches a bit of Pearl Habor and called it a night.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Next day woke up at 7:30am, and got coffee at a place called Lappert\u2019s Hawaii. They also had ice cream. Wouldn\u2019t probably go back for coffee since they don\u2019t have oat milk, or hazelnut. But may go back for ice cream.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Also tried a spam musubi croissant for breakfast. Without the seaweed on top it tasted pretty good.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

At 11am, arrived at Pearl Harbor Visitor Center. Put my name in the standby for the Arizona memorial, and got in at the 12:00pm slot. Visited the road to war museum while I waited near the visitor center.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The USS Arizona Memorial i think was worth it. The memorial is above the ship, and you could see parts of the ship penetrating the water line.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

After the memorial headed to the USS Missouri using a shuttle (it is on Ford Island). I took the 35 minute guided tour, which I think is worth it to explain the significance of the ship with respect to WWII (took a tour of the bow, surrender deck where the Japanese surrendered, and the kamikaze deck where a Japanese pilot was found dead, but buried out to sea). After the guided tour, the 2nd deck was interesting. Although no weaponry, it focused on how it was like to live on the ship. It had the cafeteria, quarters, chief mess. Also going up to the bridge after was a different experience as well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A history on the USS Missouri is that it was started to be built in Jan 1941 and finished 3 years later. It served in WWII, Cold War, and in the 80s. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards (after waiting 40 minutes for the shuttle) headed to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum. Because of time constraints, zipped by it fairly fast. Notable things I did look at was hanger 37 (start of the muses with Japanese Zero as the main showcase), the plane used in the Doolittle project, Hanger 79 (had planes like F-15a, and also mostly survived the attack.. and has a cool flag hanging in it) and the Ford Island control tower (looks like the movie).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Unfortunately was able to check out the USS Bowfin submarine (was 4 minutes late for the last entry).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

One clear message from today: Freedom isn\u2019t free.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Afterwards went to the hotel and caught a quick sunset at the beach at our hotel. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then we headed for dinner near the Downtown \/ Chinatown area. Restaurant was called Yohei Sushi. Details can be found here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/food.johnmatienzo.com\/2025\/11\/26\/yohei-sushi\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Then head for drinks at a Tiki Bar in Chinatown. I will say that Chinatown area at night is a bit sketchy. However bars in it are good. Details can be found here on the bar:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/food.johnmatienzo.com\/2025\/11\/26\/skull-and-crown\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last stop of the night was at a more whisky themed based bar, also in Chinatown, called EP Bar. Details here:<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/food.johnmatienzo.com\/2025\/11\/26\/ep-bar\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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First day we left SFO at 6:30pm, and arrived at HNL at 10pm (40 minutes earlier than expected). Took a taxi to the hotel (next time would take an uber since it\u2019s cheaper and less pressure to pay cash).  Arrived … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":3316,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1458],"tags":[1462,1468,334,921,1474,1470,1475,1459,1473,1461,1467,1469,447,1464,1466,15,1476,1460,1471,1465,1463,1472],"class_list":["post-3296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-hawaii-2025","tag-alii-tower","tag-arizona-memorial","tag-chinatown","tag-downtown","tag-ep-bar","tag-hanger-37","tag-hanger-39","tag-hawaii-2025","tag-hilton-hawaiian-village-waikiki-resort","tag-hnl","tag-iss-arizona","tag-japanese-zero","tag-latte","tag-pearl-harbor","tag-pearl-harbor-aviation-museum","tag-sfo","tag-skulls-and-crown","tag-spam-musubi","tag-tiki-bar","tag-uss-missouri","tag-waikiki","tag-yohei-sushi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3296"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3365,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3296\/revisions\/3365"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3316"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/travel.johnmatienzo.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}