Dave and Val's Travel Blog: Tales of the South Pacific

Cruise Day 9

Tuesday, October 7, 2025

Today is the first day of our three day stay in Honolulu on the island of Oahu. We were originally supposed to be in Kauai today, but the ship needed some precautionary work done to one of the its engines that could only be done in Honolulu, so the stop in Kauai was cancelled and an extra day was added to our stay in Honolulu. The weather was a little cooler and less humid than in Kona yesterday, so it looked like we were in for a good day today.

From Kona we moved on to Honolulu on the island of Oahu where we'll spend three days.

The ship arrived at seven and we were already up as we have an early excursion today. In the past when we have visited Honolulu, we have always docked by the Aloha Tower, but this time we docked in a industrial part of the harbor. This was disappointing as there are things to walk to around the Aloha Tower, but not so much in this part of the harbor

We arrive in Honolulu.

Before when we've visited Honolulu, we have always docked at the Aloha Tower (the tower to the right of the boat with the blue hull), but not this time.

Our excursion doesn’t leave until nine, but we have to meet at the World Stage before 8:30 to check in for our tour. Ours was the only tour leaving this morning, so our tour was promptly called, and we made our way through the terminal and onto the bus. The tour was almost sold out so there were 51 of us on the bus, quite a crowd.

The tour is called The Island Grand Circle that will cover most of the island of Oahu. We started with a drive through Honolulu with our driver / guide narrating the whole way. Our first stop was the Halona Cove so see the Halona Blow Hole and the beach that is called Eternity Beach because that’s where a famous scene was filmed for the movie “From Here to Eternity”. The waves were not very strong today, so there was no action at the blowhole, but it was a beautiful spot to just get out and walk around.

These are the places we visited on our tour today. From Honolulu we drove west to the Halona Blow Hole and then followed the west coast north until we turned inland to visit the Byodo-In Temple and then continued north to the Dole Plantation. From the Dole Plantation we drove north to the town of Haleiwa and had lunch. After lunch we followed the north and west coast until we turned back towards Honolulu and made one last stop at the Nu’uanu Pali Lookout before returning to the ship.

Halona Cove

The beach at Halona Cove also know as Eternity Beach as one of the scenes from the movie "From Here to Eternity" was filmed on it.

After that we made a brief stop at a scenic viewpoint overlooking a beautiful cove and island. I believe this is a well-known place, but I don’t know the name. Next, we drove up into the Ko’olau Mountain Range to visit Byodo-In Temple, a replica of the Kyoto Temple of Equality. I didn’t think this would be very interesting, but it was a beautiful spot with koi ponds, lush foliage and the temple itself was also beautiful. There was a huge gong that supposedly gave you good luck if you rang it, so I gave it a try; we’ll see how that works.

I don't know where this was, but it was a beautiful spot.

The Byodo-In Temple

The grounds were beautiful with several ponds and water features that were full of Koi.

It seemed a bit out of place, but here you could get the iconic Hawaiian Shave Ice. It's somewhat similar to an American snow cone, but it is made from shaved ice not crushed ice and is quite different in other ways.

From there we drove to the Dole Plantation where we had an extended stop. Commercial pineapple growing has long left Hawaii, but the plantation remains. This stop was mainly made for a visit to the very large store that sold everything you can imagine that is made from pineapples. Someone told Val that she had to buy something called Dole Whip while she was there so that was the first thing we did and it was delicious. It was like a soft serve ice cream with a pineapple flavor, and it was very tasty. Val also found some stocking-stuffer things as it will be nearing Christmas when we get back, but those were our only purchases.

We were getting hungry as it was nearly three when we left the Dole Plantation, and thankfully we next drove to the historic town of Haleiwa on the north coast where we had an hour and a half to eat lunch and wander around the town. Val and I found found Jorge's Mexican Restaurant that advertised sea food tacos and decided to eat there. My shrimp tacos were delicious. Val got some beer battered catch of the day tacos that were OK, but the fish and breading dominated the flavor so much, that was all you tasted. By the time we finished eating, we didn’t have much time to walk around so we headed back to the bus. Haleiwa seemed like a nice little town, but I have no idea of why it is historic and we weren’t dropped off in a very picturesque area. There is a very nice beach and cove area, but we didn’t have time to walk down there.

From Haleiwa we drove back along the North Coast past some of the famous surfing beaches like Waimea where they have the big wave surfing competitions, Pipeline also famous for its surfing competitions, and Sunset Beach. It had been partly cloudy all day and we drove along the North Coast, it just poured; we were glad we were on the bus and not walking around. As it is in the tropics, it went away just as quickly as it arrived.

It was an interesting drive back to the ship with our guide pointing out various points of interest along the way. We made one last stop at the Nu’uanu Pali Lookout, but we were up in the cloud cover, and you couldn’t see anything, so it was short stop. From there it was back to the ship. We didn’t arrive until almost six, it had been a very long day with a lot of it spent riding the bus. Despite that, it was an interesting tour, and we saw a lot of Oahu we hadn’t seen before and we enjoyed that even if most of it was from the bus. Our guide was pretty good, and we got a lot of interesting information from him, but he talked constantly for almost the whole time we were on the bus, so it got a little tiring.

We had eaten lunch so late, we decided to skip dinner and just got a few snacks from the Neptune Lounge. We were tired so we just stayed in our room and made it an early night. Tomorrow, we have another excursion, but it doesn’t start until one, so we don’t have to get up early.