January 7, 2007

The view out our window of the city waking up is magnificent. The sky turned a bit pink andd the city sounds filled the air. Our room has two double beds and one bathroom. Four girls and we are spread out everywhere. We went down for our breakfast; we have vouchers for two to eat at the buffet so the other two ordered alicart. The buffet has a table of eggs, bacon, sausage, ham and fried rice. The other tables are fruit and pastries. Kathy went to get our rent-a-car. Maria did not feel well so went to bed. The rest of us walked around the hotel finding the pool, fitness center and restaurants. It was the shops, especially the jewlery shop, that caught our attention. After lettin Maria rest a few hours we picked up our car, Chrysler Seabreeze, and headed out into the busy city traffic with Kathy at the wheel and three navagators. Maria was good with maps and we made it to the Iolani Palace. This is one of Hawaii's gifts from its past, the official residence of the monarchs who ruled Hawaii as an independent kingdom in the nineteeth century. We met Justin, made our reservations for the tour, not til 2pam, and walked across to the capitol building. Here we saw the statue of the queen Iolani. The building was closed, but the stucture was a very unique open air structure with the house and senate chambers in large round rooms. Back into the car and Justin showed us his campus, the mall street he hangs out on, the computer lab he worked in and the coffee shop he likes to go to. Justin took all the pictures off his mom's camera and we went to a flower shop to buy leis for his graduation. We lunched at KFC, Carmine got her cell phone fixed (she had it programed to only operate from home), and then we went back to the Palace for our tour. The residence of King Kalakaua and his queen, Kapikolani, and of his successor, his sister, Queen LiliKuokalani,is of the American Florentine style. The grand tour brought us through the room on the main, upper and basement floors. The state dining room and debated Blue room are elegant. The Throne room was the scene of royal audiences and balls. The living quarters were simple. Most furnishing had been sold off and they still recieve gifts of items found all over the world. The basement once housed kitchens and rooms for household staff. Today it houses displays of Hawaiian artifacts. The feathered cloaks and royal banners were a sight to see. The feather cloaks have yellow feathers plucked from a small bird that has only three or four yellow feathers. The bird was then released. So the yellow was a very precious one and only kings and their court had them. We heard the story of Queen LiliKuokalani's imprisonment in an upstairs bedroom following the overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy. The tour was informative, but the best was knowing we had just walked through the halls of royalty.
We made a pitstop at Justin's house. The open garage way lead to the door. Inside we entered the livingroom- kitchen space. There were three doors to the right, one was Justin's room. It is small and cozy with his mattress on the floor, crates holding his belongings, a closet for clothes. We met his landlord, got a sip of water and were off again.
We took a little trip out to Pali Lookout. It was pouring down rain, but we walked out to the edge and saw the remains of the old highway. This is the most dangerous road on the island. We saw a triple waterfall on the distant fog capped hills.
Hilo Hattie is a big shopping mall with Hawaiian shirts, dresses and lots of souvinier stuff. We shopped till we dropped...lots of money.
We took Justin food shopping. Without a car to get around it is sometimes a challenge to carry his groceries on his bike handles. He picked up big items like a jumbo size of laundry detergent along with staples like romaine noodles. Groceries went back to his place and we dropped him off back at his campus. We continued back to drop off the rental car. Kathy managed to scare her sisters half to death making a turn right into on coming traffic. Seeing her error, she did a u-turn right into more traffic that was all nice enough to weight for her and getting back onto the main street. This all happened in just a few moment, but to the sister not in control of the seering wheel it was like, well, their life past before their eyes!

From the hotel we walked down a few blocks to the burger shop for dinner. This place had every kind of hamburger you could name and some we couldn't. On our walk back we did a little shopping then headed for bed.