Tsaiberspace

We left Waikiki to see downtown Honolulu and Iolani Palace. Our route took us past the old judiciary building and one of the statues of King Kamehameha I. Downtown we saw some very colorful street markets, and had some limited-edition McDonald’s mango peach pies.

Shortly before our trip, the Hawaiian Kingdom Government had blocked access to Iolani Palace to all but those with Hawaiian bloodlines. By the time we arrived, the group had been relegated to a small area of the grounds, but were physically preventing people from viewing their proceedings (my brothers had curiously wandered over to see what was going on, and were physically shooed away by some big dudes). I was purchasing tickets for our group and missed this experience.

The audio tour of Iolani Palace itself is very thorough (almost a little too thorough) and very educational. The audio recording for each room has a full description of its significance, but also contains a good amount of historical context as well. Audio tours are one of the things Patrika and I do at museums on vacations, but even for me, I found myself wishing the audio snippets would hurry up so we could move on to the next station.