A taxi picked us up and took us to meet the tour bus.  Once there, we met our tour guide, Sinjin and headed to pick up the others on our tour from the airport.  Their flight was a little late so we had to sit for a while.

Sinjin first drove us to the National Memorial of the Pacific inside of the Punchbowl Crater. It is know locally as the Punchbowl Cemetery.  The cemetery where soldiers from all of the branches of armed services can be interred in Hawaii.  The place is beautiful. All of the headstone are flat plaques lined up in rows. The groundskeepers were carefully trimming the grass off each one with a very sharp trimmer. The place just seemed to shimmer, it was so pretty.

We headed to see the statue of King Kamehama in front of the municipal building next. We had seen it yesterday, but now had a little more context as to the statue and the building.   This building has been used as the headquarters for the shows Hawaii Five-0, Magnum PI, both old and new, as well as NCIS Hawaii. ​

We then headed to Pearl Harbor with SInjin pointing out famous person’s high schools:  Bruno Mars, Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, and Barak Obama.along the way

 As we neared the military base where the Pearl Harbor National Monument  is located, Sinjin let us know that we had to go through two checkpoints; we’re not allowed to take any pictures until we were actually at the memorials. Of course me being me, it didn’t sink in that he meant from the time he said it so I did try to take a picture of a bridge and he politely reminded me that I wasn’t supposed to be doing this.

Upon entering the memorial area, we passed by the memorial for the USS Oklahoma where there were white columns, each representing someone who died on the Oklahoma. We then toured the Battleship Missouri; there was a 30-minute tour led by a docent.   She described many aspects about the ship: the daily life of the sailors, the surrender by the Japanese that took place on that ship, and  the guns and ammo on the top decks. When completed, we were able to go below deck to see where the soldiers had lived. I was quite amazed to realize just how small their bunks and living quarters were. There was also an exhibit that showed many of the movies which had used the U.S.S. Missouri.

Next, we went to the Pearl Harbor Visitor Center where we watched a movie about The Invasion. This was followed by a boat ride out to the Arizona Memorial. It was a very somber and moving experience. You could see actual parts of the battleship still in the water.

I did forget to mention above that we were not allowed to take any type of large bag or cameras on this excursion. Any purses had to be see through so with this limitation  the picture on this page were all taken with cell phones. 
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With the tour over, we were dropped off back at the tour headquarters to catch a taxi back to the hotel. Mary Ellen and I had been telling the others about how interesting the International Marketplace was, so this is where we headed next. The goal was to find a dinner spot that everyone could agree on. When we entered the mall everyone was as amazed as we had been the first time.  This time I noticed something I missed; that was a little river actually running through the middle of the mall and the trees.
 We had dinner at a pizza joint and then walked around the mall before heading back to the hotel.
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​The hotel was offering a free astronomy demonstration. Mary Ellen, Linda C. and I decided to attend so this is where the three of us headed next.  The young man giving the lesson had his own homemade telescope set up to view Venus.  It was the only thing visible in the sky as it was still daylight.  It looked like a small crescent moon. As the evening wore on you could eventually see shining in the sky.  We also learned that the Milky Way can usually be seen vertically in the night sky when it is visible, He also told us how the days of the week got their names. 
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Tomorrow we leave for Kauai.