A look at Hawaii - The first day

Ed and I are at Waikiki for a Pest Management conference. We are staying at the Ilikai Hotel, which was slated for demolition until the new Hawaii 50 series was proposed for television. It has been remodeled and I guess some scenes are to be filmed there. The Ilikai is a 25 story building that has three wings. You can see them in this pic. There are blue panels on the balconies. We are on the 24th floor.

Here is the view from our room. We can see the artificial lagoon that is part of the Hilton Hotel. We stayed at the Hilton Rainbow tower 23 years ago. The Hilton workers called a strike the day we left Idaho, so the morning of our first day, we were awakened with noisemakers and chanting. Since they were between our building and the Hilton, we heard all the noise. This went on for 5 days. The strike was settled yesterday.

Our first day, we walked to the historical section of down town Honolulu. We saw a lot of interesting trees and plants on the way. Many of the houseplants that we try hard to grow in Idaho, thrive here, and get to be huge specimens. I liked the trunk of this tree.

Many of the plants here are not natives, but thrive because they came from a similar climate, like So. America and Africa.

This is fruit on a huge tree that has flowers that bloom at night and are pollinated by bats. They are Sausage Trees.

This is a Boabab tree. Has similar features as the Sausage.

We walked to the Museum of Modern art. Wow! What a great show they had. Most of the paintings were large and abstract. They had sculpture in stone and metal, and ceramic. It was a treat to spend a couple hours there. My brain reached a level of stimulus overload.

This is a mausoleum. We went to the historic museum of the early missionaries. They brought their Westernized ideas about life, and built traditional houses meant to keep the cold weather out. The structures were not designed for good air flow. It must have bee difficult living in the hot stuffy buildings with layers of long dresses and petticoats! The fire hearth for the kitchen must have made the small kitchen unbearable!
I had blisters on my toes by the end of the first day! Every step became unpleasant! And of course we had more places to walk to, so I spent money on Bandaids and Blister pads!