Tuesday Was going through my computer files and realized that I forgot to post the last day of our vacation; Pearl Harbor.
So, without further ado…
Unfortunately, this was our last day in Hawaii. As our flight from HNL to jfk was at 3 pm we decided to go see pearl Harbor memorial before we left.
The pearl Harbor memorial sells their tickets online and in person. It's absolutely imperative that you reserve in advance because the sell out almost immediately. I can't tell you how many people we saw that day that were trying to get tickets to the USS Arizona memorial that were turned away. Online they release an extremely limited number of tickets 2 months beforehand and the day beforehand. The release it 7AM Hawaiian time. So 2 months before I planned on going (at that point I don't think I even booked tickets yet, but I wanted to reserve just in case) I was waiting at 1pm Est time. While I snagged 2 tickets it was completely sold out by 1:03. They release a much greater number of tickets in person at 7AM for that day of you could reserve online.
Since pearl Harbor memorial is only a 10 minute drive from the airport I reserved a 12PM tour. The tour takes an hour and 15 minutes so it seemed like it was enough time to get back to the gate at 3pm. As our luggage was being checked through from LIH to JFK we would only have to worry about our carry-ons.
Pearl Harbor is an active naval base so they do not allow you to bring any bags. They have a storage room where they will hold your bags for $4 a bag.
We had a 10:10 flight from LIH TO HNL. Our flight was a bit delayed but we ended up landing in HNL at 11. We were in a cab 15 minutes later. With no traffic at all, we checked in our carry-ons and got our tickets by 11:40. This gave us some time to walk around and pearl Harbor base.
The tour started exactly at 12 with a short but very informative video portraying the events before, during and after pearl Harbor. Then the entire group boarded a boat to take us to the USS Arizona.
The memorial is situated on top of the sunken USS Arizona that is in middle of pearl Harbor. It is done really well. I strongly encourage everyone to try to go see it.
Gun turrets from the sunken USS Arizona
This shows how the memorial lies perpendicular to the sunken ship
5 quarts of oil that are being leaked daily. Supposedly there are 500,000 gallons still in the ship!
Wall of names of soldiers who died that day
Anchor of the USS memorial
We quickly got our luggage and hailed a cab that was waiting outside the harbor. We were through security (thank you TSA pre check!) and in the lounge at 1:40. With our flight not scheduled to leave till 3PM we had plenty of time to spare.
All in all Hawaii was an amazing vacation with a perfect mix of relaxing and activities that would satisfy everyone
Hope this trip report was helpful as I really got a lot of tips from other users who posted TRs and though I would give back a bit (as well as saving my trip for my own future reference!)
Show Posts
