Tales of the South Pacific - Honolulu Day 2

Cruise Day 10

Wednesday, October 8, 2025

It’s our second day in Honolulu and we have another ship excursion scheduled.  This one doesn’t leave until ten so we could do our normal morning routine.  After getting ready and having breakfast in the Neptune Lounge, we headed down to the World Stage where we were quickly sent on our way to our waiting bus.

Our tour today is actually just a bus ride to the Bishop Museum where we’ll have four hours to see the museum on our own before the bus takes us back to the ship.  There were only twelve of us doing this, but we found it was a full-size bus, so we had plenty of room to spread out.  It took about twenty minutes to get to the museum where we were dropped off with instructions on where to meet the bus later and then we were on our own to explore.

The Bishop Museum is the Hawaii State Museum of Natural and Cultural History.  Here is a brief description from the museum website: “Explore Hawaiʻi’s cultural and natural heritage at Bernice Pauahi Bishop Museum. With a legacy spanning over 130 years, the museum showcases over 25 million artifacts that narrate the rich history and cultures of the Pacific.”

The museum was built in 1889 by Charles Reed Bishop in memory of his late wife, Bernice Pauahi Bishop. She was born into the royal family and was the last legal heir to the Kamehameha Dynasty which ruled the Kingdom of Hawaii between 1810 to 1872.  The grounds are beautiful as are the older buildings.

We spent quite a bit of time going through the museum learning about the Hawaiian royal families and Hawaiian history.  It was all very interesting, but they also had a planetarium, and we had bought tickets to one of the shows and it was almost time for that, so we headed back to the more modern buildings on the museum grounds for the start of the show.

The Bishop Museum

 

This is a model of the large sea going rafts the Polynesians built and used to explore the South Pacific.

They have several shows at the planetarium that run throughout the day, and we had chosen “Wayfinders: Waves, Winds, and Stars”.  This presentation was about how the Ancient Polynesians explored and navigated across the huge expanse of the Pacific Ocean.  It was truly amazing how these ancient people were able to navigate through the vast Pacific Ocean, and between the islands without the benefit of modern navigational tools using only the stars, sun and ocean currents. 

The presentation also told the story of how some current day Polynesians have built replicas of the traditional seafaring vessels the ancient people used and, using only the traditional navigation tools they replicated the voyages of their ancestors.  When we were in Tahiti back in 2013, we saw one of the boats and talked to the people on board about what they were doing, it was very interesting and quite amazing.  Here is a link to that.

The final part of the presentation was a l,esson on how the Ancient Polynesians used the stars to navigate.  That was very interesting, and I learned quite a bit about celestial navigation.  We were actually sorry when the show ended as it was fascinating and we wished we had more time to see some of the other shows at the planetarium.

It was lunchtime when we left the planetarium, so we headed off to the adjacent café for lunch.  Unfortunately, so did everyone else and we found ourselves in a long line waiting to order.  It took a while, but we eventually got our lunch and Val found us a hard-to-come-by table to eat at, and we had our lunch.  Sadly, by the time we finished eating it was time to head back to the bus for the ride back to the ship.

These are the grounds outside the museum, it looks like they were going to have an event coming up.

I would highly recommend the Bishop Museum to anyone visiting Honolulu.  If we could do it again, we would take a taxi or Uber there and back so we had more time, but we made the most of the time we spent there and had a great time.

Back on the ship we spent a very enjoyable afternoon out on the balcony until it was time for trivia.  Donna wasn’t there today as she was taking the same excursion that we took yesterday, so she wouldn’t be back until later.  We had our usual mediocre result but had a good time talking to Arthur.

Since we were docked in the industrial part of the harbor, we saw a lot of ships going in and out.  This was one of several sea going barges we saw.

Back in our room we returned to the balcony where we relaxed until it was time for dinner.  Although the weather is quite warm and humid, sitting in the shade of our balcony is very pleasant and we are making the most of it.

We were back in the dining room for dinner, but because the casino is closed for the whole time we are in Hawaiian waters, we decided to go to the show.  We haven’t been very interested in the shows so far on the cruise, but tonight a group of local Polynesian performers are putting on a show at the World Stage.

The show was very good, and the drummers, dancers and singers were excellent.  Their MC was a little over the top, but overall, we really enjoyed the show.  After the show we returned to our room where we spent a little time on the balcony enjoying the balmy evening before calling it a night.  Tomorrow is our last day in Honolulu and we have nothing planned, so we’ll probably just spend the day relaxing.