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HONOLULU

Hawaii | USA

300C FEATURE DESTINATION: Honolulu, Hawaii

Until the Europeans came, HONOLULU was insignificant; soon so many foreign ships were frequenting its waters that it had become Kamehameha’s capital, and it remains the economic center of the island. The city covers a long (if narrow) strip of southern Oahu, but downtown is a manageable size, and a lot quieter than its glamorous image might suggest. The tourist hotels, and most of Honolulu’s hustle, are concentrated among the skyscrapers of very distinct WAIKIKI , a couple of miles east.

The setting is beautiful, right on the Pacific and backed by dramatic cliffs and the extinct volcanoes of Punchbowl (a military cemetery) and Diamond Head ; but then beauty is not so rare a commodity on Hawaii, and you can see this sort of scenery in plenty of other places without a city in the middle of it. What attracts most visitors to stay in Honolulu, and especially Waikiki, is the sheer hedonism of shopping, eating and generally hanging out in the sun. It’s also the center of an exemplary public transportation system, facilitating exploration of the whole island.

THE CITY

Downtown Honolulu is surprisingly small, set back a little from the sea and centering around a spacious plaza on King Street that includes Iolani Palace and the state capitol . The palace was built for King David Kalakaua in 1882, but, apart from its koa -hardwood floors, contains little that is distinctively Hawaiian (Tues-Sat 9am-2.15pm; $15). Across the road is a flower-bedecked, gilt statue of Kamehameha the Great.

To reach the nearby ocean, pedestrians have to negotiate fearsome traffic. Although the sea may be turquoise, the shorefront is concrete, not beach, and you can’t wander along it for any distance due to excessive recent construction works. The Aloha Tower on Pier 9 used to be the city’s tallest building; the area around its base has been converted into an expensive shopping and dining mall, fronting onto the city docks. The view from the top of the tower is little short of ugly, but is good for orientation (daily: April-Sept 9am-7.30pm; Oct-March 9am-7pm; free). The Hawaii Maritime Center (daily 8.30am-5pm; $7.50), just east of Aloha Tower, documents Hawaii’s seafaring past in superb detail, from ancient migrations through to white contact, nineteenth-century trade and twentieth-century cruises. A stunning film from 1922 (with Clara Bow in a bit part) shows the true-life drama of whaling, and there’s a wall of gigantic historic surfboards. In the adjacent dock are the fully rigged four-master Falls of Clyde and the replica Polynesian canoe Hokulea , whose voyages to Tahiti and New Zealand over the last two decades have inspired tremendous interest in traditional methods of navigation.

Though few tourists seem to know about it, Honolulu residents take great pride in the stunning fine art on display at the Academy of Arts , half a mile east of the capitol at 900 S Beretania St (Tues-Sat 10am-4.30pm, Sun 1-5pm; $5). Highlights of the superb collection of paintings include Van Gogh’s Wheat Field , Gauguin’s Two Nudes on a Tahitian Beach and one of Monet’s Water Lilies . The Academy also holds some fascinating depictions of Hawaii by visiting artists, including a pencil sketch of Waikiki drawn in 1838, and vivid, stylized studies of Maui’s Iao Valley and Hana coast by Georgia O’Keeffe, plus magnifi-cent ancient Chinese ceramics and bronzes.

ARRIVAL

The runways of Honolulu’s International Airport , just west of downtown, extend out to sea on a coral reef. Car rental outlets abound, but a car is not especially desirable in Honolulu, what with city traffic and hefty parking fees in Waikiki. The Waikiki Airport Express (one-way $8, round-trip $13; tel 808/566-7333) is typical of the many shuttle services that run on request to any Waikiki hotel. Regular buses #19 and #20 connect Waikiki with the airport, but don’t allow large bags, cases or backpacks (there are left-luggage lockers at the airport). A taxi will cost around $20. The nine-mile – not at all scenic – drive to Waikiki can take anywhere from 25 to 75 minutes.

INFORMATION

The Hawaii Visitors Bureau runs an information office on the fourth floor of the Royal Hawaiian Shopping Center in Waikiki, at Kalakaua Avenue and Lewers Street (Mon-Fri 8am-4.30pm; tel 808/923-1811), but you’re unlikely to need it: free listings magazines and leaflets are everywhere you turn, and all the hotels have information desks. Kiosks around Kalakaua Avenue offer greatly discounted rates for island tours, helicopter rides, dinner cruises, surfing lessons and so on.

The main post office , the only one that takes general delivery (poste restante) mail, is at the airport (3600 Aolele St, Honolulu, HI 96820). The post office in Waikiki is at 330 Saratoga Rd.

GETTING AROUND

A network of over sixty bus routes, collectively named TheBus, covers the whole of Oahu. All journeys, however long, cost $1.50, with free transfers onto any connecting route if you ask as you board (enquiries tel 808/848-5555, ). The most popular routes with Waikiki-based tourists are #2 to downtown, #8 to Ala Moana Shopping Center, #20 to Pearl Harbor, #22 to Hanauma Bay, and the bargain ” Circle Island ” buses ( #52 clockwise and #55 counterclockwise), which take four hours to loop around the central valley and the east coast, passing the legendary North Shore surf spots.

In Waikiki, Aloha Funway (tel 808/942-9696) offers bicycle rental at seven locations, charging $20 for 24 hours. Among companies running city and island bus tours from around $25 for a full day, as well as off-island packages, are Polynesian Adventure Tours (tel 808/833-3000, ) and Roberts (tel 808/539-9400, ). Honolulu TimeWalks (tel 808/943-0371) runs a changing program of themed walking tours of the city.

EATING

Honolulu and Waikiki offer so many food possibilities that recommendations are inevitably highly personal. For fine dining, all the larger Waikiki hotels have good restaurants, and Restaurant Row mall near the harbor in Honolulu is a good bet. There are excellent fast-food malls in the Ala Moana Center , and the much cheaper and more exotic Maunakea Marketplace on Maunakea Street in Chinatown, while Waikiki’s Kuhio Avenue is lined with snack outlets and fast-food franchises.

Arancino 255 Beach Walk, Waikiki tel 808/923-5557. Good Italian trattoria in the heart of Waikiki, with plenty of moderately priced pasta, pizza and seafood specialties.

Bali by the Sea Hilton Hawaiian Village , 2005 Kalia Rd, Waikiki tel 808/941-2254. Highly refined gourmet restaurant, with irresistible views of the full length of Waikiki and very tasteful (and expensive) “Pacific Rim” cuisine.

Ezogiku 2546 Lemon Rd tel 808/923-2013. Plain and very inexpensive Japanese diner, with three branches in Waikiki – the others are at 2420 Koa Ave and 2146 Kalakaua Ave. Ramen soups plus rice and curry dishes, all at $6-7, to eat in or take out.

Kakaako Kitchen Ward Center, 1200 Ala Moana Blvd tel 808/596-7488. Mall diner that dishes up high-quality Hawaiian-style fast food; pretty much everything, from the hamburger stew to the signature dish chicken linguine, costs $6-9, and there’s a menu of daily $7.25 specials like meat loaf or pot roast.

Maxime 1134 Maunakea St tel 808/545-4188. Bright, clean, pastel-pink Chinatown restaurant serving very inexpensive Vietnamese food, especially pho (noodle soups).

Oceanarium Pacific Beach Hotel , 2490 Kalakaua Ave, Waikiki tel 808/922-6111. Simply furnished restaurant with a big gimmick: you gorge yourself beneath the goggling eyes of 400 live fish, plus the occasional scuba diver. Open for all meals, with noodles, burgers and sandwiches, and full surf’n’turf dinners – all moderately priced.

Perry’s Smorgy 2380 Kuhio Ave, Waikiki tel 808/926-0184. All-you-can-eat buffets, indoors and alfresco (with hordes of scavenging birds). Bargain prices – $5 breakfast (7-11am), $6 lunch (11.30am-2.30pm), $9 dinner (5-9pm) – but the food is bland in the extreme. A second location is at the Ohana Coral Seas , 250 Lewers St.

Sam Choy’s Breakfast, Lunch and Crab 580 N Nimitz Hwy tel 808/545-7979. Copious quantities of modern Hawaiian cuisine, plus a microbrewery, a mile or two west of downtown Honolulu.

Sansei Restaurant Row, 500 Ala Moana Blvd tel 808/536-6286. The central Honolulu setting may not be particularly attractive, but whether you go for the full Pacific Rim menu or stick to the sushi bar, the food is excellent and very well priced.

Shore Bird Beach Broiler Outrigger Reef on the Beach , 2169 Kalia Rd, Waikiki tel 808/922-2887. Open-air oceanfront restaurant that serves an $8 breakfast buffet, and dinner with an open salad bar for $13-19, depending on choice of entree. Guests cook their own meat or fish on a communal grill.

Texas Rock ‘n’ Roll Sushi Bar Hyatt Regency Hotel , 2424 Kalakaua Ave, Waikiki tel 808/923-7655. A high-concept, postmodern restaurant/bar, with a bizarre menu that combines traditional sushi at reasonable prices with duck, barbecued beef and chicken.

Yakiniku Canellia 2494 S Beretania St tel 1-800/331-9698. Korean buffet restaurant a mile north of Waikiki, where you select slices of marinated beef, chicken or pork and grill it yourself at the gas-fired burners set into each table. Open daily for lunch ($10) and dinner ($16).

ENTERTAINMENT & NIGHTLIFE

Most of Honolulu’s nightlife is concentrated in Waikiki, where fun-seeking tourists set the tone. On the whole, the available entertainment is on the bland side. Hawaii tends to be off the circuit for touring musicians, so if you enjoy live music you’ll probably have to settle for little-known local performers (rising stars of contemporary Hawaiian music tend to prefer to keep their credibility by not playing in Waikiki too often). Look out also for special events at downtown’s beautifully restored Hawaii Theater, 1130 Bethel St (tel 808/528-0506). As for bars , Chinatown has the most raucous in town, but they’re way too hair-raising for most tastes.

Chai’s Island Bistro Aloha Tower Marketplace, 101 Ala Moana Blvd tel 808/585-0011. Sumptuous and very expensive Thai restaurant, where the very finest Hawaiian musicians perform for diners nightly 7-8.30pm.

Duke’s Canoe Club Outrigger Waikiki on the Beach , 2335 Kalakaua Ave tel 808/923-0711. Smooth Hawaiian sounds wash over this oceanfront Waikiki cocktail bar nightly from 4pm to 6pm and 10pm to midnight – including big-name “Concerts on the Beach” Fri-Sun 4-6pm. No cover charge.

Hula’s Bar and Lei Stand Waikiki Grand Hotel , 134 Kapahulu Ave tel 808/923-0669. Waikiki’s most popular gay venue occupies a suite of ocean-view rooms across from the Honolulu Zoo. As well as a state-of-the-art dance bar equipped with giant video screens, there’s also a more casual lounge area. Daily 10am-2am.

La Mariana Sailing Club 50 Sand Island Access Rd tel 808/848-2800. Waterfront restaurant with a wonderful 1950s feel, hidden away amid Honolulu’s docks, and featuring live Hawaiian music at weekends. Daily 11am-11pm.

Wave Waikiki 1877 Kalakua Ave tel 808/941-0424. In so far as Waikiki has an alternative rock scene, this is it, with a bar upstairs and dance floor down below, and DJs rather than live bands most nights. Daily 9pm-4am.

World Café Nimitz Business Center, 1130 N Nimitz Highway tel 808/599-4450. Three-level club not far west of Chinatown that boasts Hawaii’s largest dance floor. Hip hop, house and trance music predominate, and as one of the few clubs to admit under-21s it tends to be crammed with hyped-up youngsters. Daily 9pm until late.

OCEAN SAFETY

Drownings in Hawaii are all too common. Waves can sweep in from two thousand miles of open ocean onto beaches magnificent to look at but unprotected by any reef. Not all beaches have lifeguards and warning flags; unattended beaches are not necessarily safe. Watch the sea carefully before going in, and never take your eyes off it thereafter. Fierce rogue waves can appear from the blue to drag waders – or even those walking along the shore – far out to sea in seconds, and powerful undertows may not be detectable until too late. If you do get swept out, don’t fight the big waves; wait for the current to die down before trying to swim back to shore.

Sea creatures to avoid include black spiky sea urchins , Portuguese man-of-war jellyfish , and coral in general, which can give painful infected cuts. Shark attacks are much rarer than popular imagination suggests; those that do occur are usually due to “misunderstandings,” such as surfers idling on their boards looking a bit too much like turtles from below.

Ocean Fun

The nation that invented surfing – long before the whites came – remains its greatest arena. The sport was popularized early in the twentieth century by Olympic swimmer Duke Kahanamoku, using a 20ft board; these days most are around six feet. Smaller boogie boards make an exhilarating initiation. Windsurfing , too, is rapidly growing, often using the same favorite beaches, usually on the north shore of each island. Snorkeling and diving are top-quality, although Hawaii’s coral has fewer brilliant hues than those in warmer equatorial waters.

BEST OF HONOLULU

Waikiki Beach
Learn to surf, or just sip a cocktail on the world’s most famous beach.

Pearl Harbor
Relive December 7, 1941 – the “day that will live in infamy” – by visiting the sunken USS Arizona.

Bishop Museum
A great museum for those with archeological interests, the Bishop has the world’s finest collection of Polynesian artifacts.

Hawaii Maritime Center
The Maritime Center excellently documents Hawaii’s seafaring past, including the lowdown on surfing’s local beginnings and exhibits on today’s luxury cruises.

Diamond Head
Climb the extinct volcano of Diamond Head at dawn for superb views of the whole city.

EXPLORE HONOLULU

Bishop Museum

The anthropological collection at the Bishop Museum at 1525 Bernice St (daily 9am-5pm; $15) – well away from both the ocean and downtown, near the foot of the Likelike Highway – showcases real Polynesian culture, as opposed to the fakery of Waikiki. Three floors of one of Hawaii’s oldest houses display ancient carved stone and wooden images of gods, magnificent feather leis and cloaks, and a full-sized hale (traditional hut) brought here from Kauai, in addition to Japanese samurai armor and a full-size sperm whale hanging in the central well. There are also excellent special exhibitions for kids, and a planetarium. TheBus #2 from Waikiki stops two blocks away on Kapalama Street.

Chinatown

TheBus #2 from Waikiki drops you at Hotel and Bishop streets, in front of the gleaming high-tech Executive Center in downtown Honolulu. Just five minutes’ walk away down Hotel Street, the faded green-clapboard storefronts of Chinatown seem like another world. Traditionally the city’s red-light district, the narrow streets leading down to the Nuuanu Stream are still characterized by pool halls, massage parlors and heavy-duty bars.

It’s well worth delving into a few of Chinatown’s inconspicuous alleyways. Some of its old walled courtyards are now modern malls, but the businesses remain much the same as ever, and you can still find herbalists weighing out dried leaves in front of vast arrays of bottles. Pig snouts and salmon heads are among the food specialties at Oahu Market , on N King and Kekaulike streets.

Diamond Head

Waikiki’s most famous landmark is the pinnacle of Diamond Head , another extinct volcano just to the east. The lawns of the crater interior are oddly bland, but a straightforward hiking trail leads up a mile or so to the summit, and a panorama of the whole coast, passing through a network of tunnels built during World War II. TheBus #22 and #58 stop on the road nearby.

Hanouma Bay

Magnificent crescent-shaped Hanauma Bay , formed when the wall of a crater collapsed and let in the sea, is renowned as Oahu’s best place to snorkel . Though it makes a nice excursion, and the sea is full of brightly colored fish, overuse has killed off most of the coral near the shore, and the feeding of fish has led to a decline in the range of species. Tour parties were banned in 1991, and access is now controlled via a visitor center that shows educational videos about the bay’s fragile ecology (daily except Tues 9am-6pm; $3). TheBus #22 (“The Beach Bus”) runs by the bay from Waikiki every forty minutes.

Pearl Harbor

Almost the whole of Pearl Harbor , the principal base for the US Pacific fleet (just over one hour west of Waikiki, beyond the airport, on TheBus #20), is off limits to visitors. However, the surprise Japanese attack of December 7, 1941, which an official US enquiry called “the greatest military and naval disaster in our nation’s history,” is commemorated by a simple white memorial set above the wreck of the battleship USS Arizona , still discernible in the clear blue waters. More than 1100 of its crew – who had earned the right to sleep in late that Sunday morning by coming second in a military band competition – are entombed there.

Free tours of the memorial operate between 8am and 3pm each day, but it can be two or three hours after you pick up your numbered ticket at the Pearl Harbor visitor center (daily 7.30am-5pm; tel 808/422-0561) before you’re called to board the ferry that will take you there. Many of the 1.5 million annual visitors are Japanese; a surprisingly even-handed twenty-minute film pays tribute to “one of the most brilliantly planned and executed attacks in naval history,” and books and charts are on sale telling the Japanese side of the story. The USS Arizona memorial was partly financed by Elvis Presley’s 1961 Honolulu concert, his first show after leaving the army.

The huge USS Missouri , which survived the attack and was used four years later for the ceremony in Tokyo Harbor that ended World War II, is now moored alongside the Arizona . Guided visits include the actual surrender site as well as sweeping views of the harbor from the Missouri ’s bridge (daily 9am-5pm; $14).

Punch Bowl

High above Honolulu, lush lawns growing in the caldera of an extinct volcano are the emotive setting for the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific (daily: March-Sept 8am-6.30pm; Oct-Feb 8am-5.30pm), in which are buried the dead of all US Pacific wars, including Vietnam. The Hawaiian shuttle astronaut Ellison Onizuka is also here. This spot is said to have held an ancient sacrificial temple, and is on TheBus route #15 from town.

Waikiki

Built on a reclaimed swamp, Waikiki is very nearly an island, all but separated from Honolulu between the sea and the Ala Wai canal (which provides the drainage to make its incredible highrise profusion possible). Once home to Kamehameha the Great, the site may be venerable, but these days its raison d’être is rampant commercialism. You could, just about, survive here with very little money, buying snacks from the omnipresent ABC convenience stores, but there would be no point – there’s nothing to see, and the only thing to do apart from surf and sunbathe is to stroll along the seafront Kalakaua Avenue and shop.

The most striking thing about the parallel Waikiki Beach is how narrow it is, a thin but nonetheless attractive strip of shipped-in sand. Compared to other Hawaiian beaches, it’s overcrowded and small, but the fact that it’s lined by a pedestrian walkway, with several pleasant gardens en route, make this, relatively speaking, a refuge from the resort frenzy nearby.

Two possible diversions on the eastern fringes of Waikiki are Honolulu Zoo (daily 8.30am-5.30pm; $6), where you can walk through a mock African savannah set against the magnificent backdrop of Diamond Head, and the more expensive oceanfront Waikiki Aquarium (daily 9am-5pm; $7) which, as well as holding sharks and monkfish seals, has a tank devoted to the many-hued reef fish of Hanauma Bay.

Copyright Rough Guides Ltd as trustee for its authors. Published by Rough Guides. All rights reserved.The Rough Guides name is a trademark of Rough Guides Ltd.

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