Alrighty! HM day 9, Tuesday!
As I was saying, the bus was leaving Aulani at 6:30AM- and we'd been sleeping in for the last week til about 9 or so then laying in bed til about 10:30... ha! What was even scarier, was that in a few days, 6:30AM was going to be 12:30PM at home. We were totally on Hawaiian time...
I set my alarm for 5:45 so we could shower and get dressed (I have a lot of hair to dry), well it went off and I decided I had til 6 to get up. So I got up and got in the shower at 6. Somehow I stayed in the shower for 20 minutes. I think I was sleep-showering. I got my towel on and looked at the clock to wake up Josh and it was like 6:23... uhhh we have to be downstairs dressed in 7 minutes, yikes!! I tell Josh and he jumps in the shower, I throw clothes on and gel in my hair, clearly no time to dry it in 7 minutes. Then our phone rings. It's the front desk, valet, what have you, looking for us to see if we overslept, eek!! We're on our way!!!!!
We went down the stairs quick and came out to the front of the hotel, and the bus was there waiting for us. Thankfully our tour wasn't full, there was only about 15 of us, but nonetheless they were all on the bus waiting for us. I felt so bad, I hate to be "one of those" and I'm sure they were rolling their eyes at us. haha But we made it!
We met our tour guide, Shannon O'Brian (He was totally Hawaiian with an Irish name, and he kept making jokes about it). Shannon was by far the best tour guide we've ever had besides maybe Levi Baron in Domanica when we went on our cruise. But they might be tied (if you go to Domanica, look him up rather than going through the ship haha)
Shannon pulled out a huge map of the whole Memorial, told us what we'd see and we were off! He was very funny and had us laughing at 7AM which was great (you know how miserable it is to be up at 7AM with someone that hates their job...lol) He had us all introduce ourselves and say why we were in Hawaii etc. When we said we were on our honeymoon, we got the "OHHHH's" from the bus for being late... lol It was hysterical. We hit morning rush hour in Hawaii and becasue of traffic it took us about an hour to get to Pearl Harbor. I could tell we were close because we were passing all the barrack's and there were military people everywhere. Maybe it's very normal for you ladies who are military wives or about to be, to see military people in their uniforms constantly, but it was such a treat for me! I'm sure Josh wanted to ring my neck by the end, because every time I saw a handsome man in uniform, I'd nudge him to look. And yes, every man in a military uniform is handsome in my opinion!
Shannon told us about the entire history of the attack on Pearl Harbor, how it came about, etc. Josh said he was spot on with everything he said and you could tell he was really passionate about it. He told us what he thought was a perfect game plan for seeing everything in the allotted time, etc. Then of course, we made it to Pearl Harbor! When we got there, Shannon told us what time to come back to the bus and where it would be, and told us he would be blowing a conch shell for us to find him again. He also told us there was an air carrier that was scheduled to come in that day but he wasn't sure at what time and hoped it would come while we were there. He said it was huge and there was no way we'd miss it. (Unfortunately it didn't come) and I'm not a huge current events or history buff etc, but it was supposed to be the carrier they threw Bin Laden's body off of. Josh really wanted to see it but we were on a schedule to leave so when it didn't come, we didn't have a choice to stay.
Shannon walked us to the front- you are not allowed to bring in any bags at all to the Memorial. No camera bags, no wristlets, nothing. So I brought my camera in one pocket and phone in the other. It was so odd to not have a purse but those are the rules. You would be amazed people trying to come in with their book bag's...... what about "no bags permitted" on the ticket did you not get?? ha!
Once we got in, we got our tickets for the actual tour out to the memorial and had about a half hour to explore on our own first. We did a quick bathroom break then Shannon offered to take our picture in front of the anchor
While we were waiting for people in the bathroom, I took pictures of this painting on the ground showing Pearl Harbor in 1941
Then we headed for the anchor:
We did some exploring and made use of our "free time" before we headed out to the memorial
It was about 5 minutes until our "tour time" so we waited in shade.
Then our time slot was called. We were all taken into a theatre to watch a short film about the attack on pearl harbor, and invited to board our boat out to the memorial. They asked us to keep quiet and keep in mind this was a tomb we were about to go out to...