Honolulu is like Miami. It’s utterly commercial, it’s incredibly crowded, there are chain restaurants and convenience stores on every block, and honestly the beach isn’t that great. It can’t compare to the Big Island, and I don’t really feel the need to ever come back.

I mean, it’s nice and all. It’s soft-breezy and sunny, like I suspect the whole state is, and it’s been in the low- to mid-80s instead of in the 90s and low 100s as it has been on the mainland this week, but as far as I can tell, Oahu is simply just not as wonderful as Hawaii was.

There are exceptions to the lack of wonderfulness, of course. This morning I had a truly awesome cheeseburger at a restaurant called Cheeseburger in Paradise. And Wayne and I went to Pearl Harbor yesterday. Julie and Paul didn’t want to go, which I think is a decision that, had I made it, I would have regretted.

I felt somewhat obligated to go, but I’m glad I did. There wasn’t a whole lot to see, but it felt very similar to going to the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial or pretty much any of the memorials in DC that I’m so familiar with. There was a 20-minute movie with actual footage of the attack and pictures from the war in the Pacific, and the rangers made a point of telling everyone to be quiet and respectful. For the most part, and to my surprise, pretty much everyone was.

After we came back off the ferry, I overheard a child talking to her mother about the veterans in their family. The child’s great-grandmother had been living in Hawaii in 1941, and the mother remembered hearing about the air-raid sirens and the alert that all the military personnel (pretty much every adult man on the islands) had to report to duty that day. The child’s uncle had been stationed at Pearl Harbor (but much, much later than 1941), and the child’s father had been in Saudi in the first Gulf War. But the child didn’t understand the passage of time between these events, and kept asking if her relatives’ names were on the wall in the Arizona memorial (the 1,100-plus names of the sailors and Marines on the ship). The mother explained that that was a long time ago, a different war, and the child said, “Oh. I get them confused sometimes.”

It made me sad to stand on the Arizona memorial, with the Arizona below me where she sank and the Missouri docked nearby along what was Battleship Row, and try to imagine 350 Japanese planes flying overhead, dropping bombs and torpedos, and smoke and fire and explosions … but it made me sadder to hear an eight-year-old say there are so many wars that she gets them confused.

Technorati Tags: arizona, hawaii, honolulu, pearl harbor, star wars

Well, it’s beautiful beyond belief here; everywhere you look looks like a postcard. I’ll give it that.

Wayne pulls away like he’s burnt every time I come near enough to touch him, even accidentally. Julie and Paul forget everything, sit on everything, spill everything, and basically take six times longer to do everything than normal people. I feel like I’ve spent the whole fucking trip waiting for them or cleaning up after them or going back to get them or explaining the same things to them over and over and over again.
Despite knowing all along, for the six months we’ve been planning this trip, that you need to know what flight you’re on in order to check in at the airport, Julie and Paul never printed out the flight information (meaning they called me in a panic three times around five in the morning on Saturday before we left). And despite knowing that we’d be using Paypal to send Wayne the money for the hotel bills, Julie never got around to getting her Paypal account verified. So instead of being able to send Wayne the $780 that is hers and Paul’s share of this hotel bill (totally estimated, because we don’t really know how much the taxes are, the bill on the TV isn’t itemized, and I’m the only one who’s been saving receipts for split expenses at all), she was only able to send $15. So now we have to split the hotel bill between their two credit cards (that is, Wayne’s own, and Julie’s mommy’s) at the desk. Hopefully they won’t notice that we put four people in the room against the agreement.
Last night we drove for more than two hours (each way) to Hawaii Volcanoes National Park, where we spent about three other hours hiking in pitch blackness (we had a couple of cheap flashlights) over an incredibly uneven field of pitch black hardened lava so we could get to where lava was either glowing or venting or falling into the sea. After around two or three miles (only the first mile of which was blazed or marked in any way) we were told by passing hikers that it was another two hours to get to the red spots on the distant hillside. So we turned and went back. I’ve never done anything remotely so physically dangerous in my entire life. But despite walking in shorts for miles in the dark over slanted sheets and rocks and hillocks of what is basically broken glass, I didn’t fall, and I didn’t get cut. Wayne did (good), but I didn’t.

I went snorkeling this morning. It was utterly amazing. I bought a waterproof disposable camera, and I’m going again in the morning to hopefully take pictures. It was like swimming through the Discovery Channel. I couldn’t believe it.

At noon I went to the salon/spa in the hotel and had my eyebrows shaped and had a manicure and pedicure. The manicure and pedicure were really nice, despite the fact that I now have fingers and toes that match the dress I wore to the wedding but are a bright, whorish color that won’t complement anything else I brought to wear. The eyebrow lady was very sweet and articulate and educational, and I’m glad she took the time to explain to me what she was doing. It (the waxing and tweezing) didn’t hurt too much while she was doing it, but since instead of getting me the aloe she promised me for the burning, she went to lunch and forgot about me (even though after she came back she saw me in the pedicure chair and said hi), it’s now eight hours later and my eyes are all red and puffy and the skin hurts so bad I can hardly stand it.

The wedding was at 5, not 6 like the invitation said, and even though we were ready to be there at 4:45, we were late because we had to go back to the room three times for things Julie and Paul forgot. The last time, Paul had to go back for their present—a big saucepan thing in a huge box that they should have had shipped to Alecia, which is how wedding registries work—and missed the entire wedding.

Including the part where one of the bridesmaids (Dan’s sister, I guess?) fell over during the vows, and narrowly missed braining herself on the lava rocks. I cannot imagine the horror if she’d fallen even a few inches farther back. It’s a terrifying thought.

Instead of a real reception, we had to go to the resort next door to attend their luau. There were some tables reserved for the wedding guests, but there wasn’t any special service or any guidance. We were late, but we still got there before anyone else. By the time Alecia and her family even arrived, our whole table had been claimed by people who didn’t even speak any English but seemed to know exactly what they were doing. And there were easily a thousand other people at the luau. I was totally surrounded by strangers, shoulder to shoulder, with no idea what I was supposed to do or if I was even in the right place. I had a panic attack and I took the car key and the room key from Wayne so I could come back to our hotel room and hide. On my way out, the way we came in, an employee started to tell me I couldn’t go that way, but I hitched up my skirt and ran. I’m back in the room now, everyone else is at the luau, and I can’t stop crying. And since my eyebrows hurt so bad, it burns and burns.

I called my mother once this week, and she was too busy to talk to me and said she’d call me back in a few minutes and never did.

Never, ever, ever again will I go on a trip with people who aren’t able to take care of themselves, and never, ever, ever again will I assume that obvious things like saving receipts and printing flight confirmations are obvious to anyone but me. No one else seems to know what the fuck they’re doing. And don’t leave the goddamn Solarcaine I bought you in the car so you spend the next 24 hours lying in the hotel room moaning in pain and refusing to do anything so sensible as go back and get it. God forbid.

And don’t even get me started on J. K. “Bitch, What Are You Doing?” Rowling. We’ll have words, she and I.

It’s really beautiful here.