US trip part I, Hawaii
There is no direct flight from Beijing to Hawaii, we had to transfer at Narita airport in Tokyo. I prefer such a transfer during the long flight.
The total flight lasts about 9 hours, but plus the change between the time zones, by the time we touched the land at Hawaii, we found ourselves to be several hours ahead of the time when we flew from Beijing, that is, when we boarded the plane at Beijing the time was like 11:00 am of 26th of March, but when arrived in Hawaii, the time was still 07:00 am in the same day, but it made me feel the long flight seems to be unreal.
Away from the ‘golden’ sky in Beijing, plus I didn’t sleep much in the past 36 hours, the blue sky gave me a big refreshment. Out of the plane, first thing to do was going to the toilet to change on summer cloth, as I prepared everything underneath my winter cloth, so pretty easy for me.
First we went to the to the Visitor Center of Pearl Harbor, while waiting for our ferry to the memorial of Arizona, I shoot some pictures below. There is a 45 minutes documentary movie show, and some restaurants and souvenir shops, some old exhibition buildings were replaced by new ones, I can hear the noise from their construction site. By the way, you can on board a submarine if you pay $12 or something, there is a museum opened, but not free I guess.
The water in the harbor is very deep, before boarding, a gentleman requested that everyone not allowed to move around on the ferry, and to be quiet while his speaking, and then he asked if there is anyone wheel-seated, there was no reply, and then anyone need special aid with walking, no reply, then he asked anyone with a skateboard? there was just laughing.
Hawaii, as an all-year-round tourist attraction place, mild but not humid temperature, sun, blue sky, beach? you couldn’t ask for more. Everything looked like in transparent, the streets are just gorgeous, but the most appealing to me is the clouds.
Battleship Missouri on the left of the picture, it was on this ship, the Japanese surrendered to the Allied Force in 1945. By the way, tour groups from Japan constitutes a large percentage in Hawaii, the war was over.
I took this photo from a window of the Arizona Memorial, the memorial is just crossing over where the Arizona is laying.
This is the body of Arizona, or remaining part of the super-structure of the ship.
The memorial is a semi-opened building floating on the water, from the window on top, I took this one, U.S. flag with a chopper coming in the background.
In the afternoon, we went to our hotel for checking in, a rest was badly needed, I had a snap about 20 minutes on bed while waiting for a call from a friend, the weather was warm outside, but stay in the hotel room, even without air-conditioning, it was a little cool. I took a shower afterward, and decided to keep wake-up at day time, force me to adjust to the local time just in one night. After the shower, I was out again, it is common to see guys with surfing stuff walking on the street, and it is not embarrassing if you see ladies in bikini in Starbucks or restaurant.
Our hotel is by the shopping street of Waikiki, just 5 minutes walk away from the beach, the best location I should say, but unfortunately they didn’t provide free Wifi both in the room or in the lobby. On the 2nd day I found a Starbucks very close by, but now they even don’t provide free Wifi as well, I had to buy a $5 card, said to be good for a 2-hour daily net-surfing in the next two months, eh. The photo above was just shoot on the balcony of my hotel room, look at the sky!
I remembered that on the way to our hotel, we passed by an Apple Store, so I walked back to search for it, and I was looking forward to buy a iPhone at cheap price, $99 for a 8G, but need a two-year contract with AT&T, otherwise, $499, no go for me!
After a sound sleep last night, my jet lag was over, actually I didn’t expect such a quick switch, but I made it. Our 2nd day, started from here, look at the water, someone were snorkeling. I shoot some panorama pictures around here in the morning, you can find 2 of them at here and here, they both got GPS data. By the way, for the 2nd panorama picture, I was standing in the strong and almost cold mountain peak for about 10 minutes, and the result was good, several round of shoots, I got more than 6 set of panorama pictures, all in Raw files in size about 300MB totally.
After lunch, some of us were heading for their submarine tour, I just rested myself on the beach, I swam a bit, but most of the time, I was busy about photo shooting.
And I even made a way into a local public library, no ID needed, much different from those in China, you can just sit down and have some moment of quietness, I didn’t have the mood to read so far. I asked the lady by the computer if I could use the computer for receiving Email, she said I have to pay, okay, I was out just in minutes.
In the evening, I joined a group to have buffet dinner on a ship, and I was told someone will say Aloha and dance to us. Frankly speaking this optional package was just okay so far.
On the morning of our 3rd day in Hawaii, we had to leave as we have a busy schedule to caught up, we checked out from our hotel at around 5:00 am for an early flight to San Francisco. The photo above was taken thanks to a boy seating next to me by the window, and I was by the aisle, he said to me “look at the sun”, very quickly I took out my camera and got this nice photo. He gave me an email address, I will mail him this photo as I promised.
The following map shows where I visited in Hawaii:
View U.S.A in a larger map
