Honolulu, Hawaii

Day 87 - Honolulu, Oahu, Hawaii

We have been to Honolulu many times. It's an easy flight from California were we live and it was a safe destination when the kids were small. We needed a few sundry's so we took the free shuttle to Wal-Mart. I think half the ship decided to do the same thing. After Wal-Mart we walked around the corner and went to the Ala Moana Shopping Center. I had not been to the Ala Moana Shopping Center in quite a few years and I could not believe how large it has gotten. Progress I guess. It had all the high end shops and the everyday shops that are in the malls on the mainland. We finely found the Reef flip flops Randy had been looking for and we headed off to the Pink Trolley to Waikiki Beach. As it was lightly raining we had a late lunch- early dinner at the Cheesecake Factory. What's not to like? After dinner we walked over to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel and then to the Sheraton Hotel. We took some pictures from the Club lounge at the Sheraton (It is on the 30^th floor so the views was beautiful) for our friend Ray so he could complete his painting of Diamondhead and Waikiki Beach. I took a few pictures and we spent about 10 mins taking with the hostess about our world cruise and then turned around again and there was a beautiful rainbow in front of Diamondhead. So I took more photos. We spent more time walking around Waikiki beach and the shopping area in front of the hotels. We were feeling tired and did not understand why we were so tired at 9:00pm, then we started thinking about how we had turned back our clocks back 4 times in the last week. So in reality our bodies thought it was 1am, so we headed back to the ship. For the first time on this cruise California was 3 hours ahead of us. When we got on the ship in Sydney we were 17 hours ahead of California. In 83 days we turned the clock back 17 times to get to the same time as California. When you go around the world in this direction you turn the clock back the whole way around the world. Once we cross the dateline we will automaticity gain one day and be ahead of California again. Next Port Papeete, Tahiti.