The word of mouth is that you have to wake up and get in line early in the morning to visit Arizona Memorial. It was tough, but we packed, checked out of the hotel (left the luggage with their bell-boy) before the sunrise. With a little luck we got the bus that took us directly to Pearl Harbor and dropped us off (about 1 hour later) at 7:15. We still didn't make it among the first to go to the memorial, but we took the second wave. There were a few displays in the little museum that we checked out while waiting for our turn.

Visiting the memorial is a very orderly process, perfected in the American way. People watch a movie, then get on a boat that sails to the memorial, docks, unloads everybody, loads the visitors who finished their tour and heads back to the Visitor Center. The visit lasts until the next boat brings a new set of visitors to the memorial (half an hour or so). There's not much to see inside the memorial except for a few flags and the list of names - the sailors who died during the attack. We saw the ship in a few aerial photos, but - With the exception of a few parts that are not submerged - it was not clearly visible from the memorial. Most people stare for a while at a few colorful spots formed by oil leaking from the ship.

Once close to Arizona Memorial, one has the opportunity to visit USS Missouri and USS Bowfin. This costs quite some money though (about $10/person each), so we passed. We looked around at the displays, then took the bus back to Waikiki. We walked on the beach for a while, then took a shuttle to the Harbor, where Pride of Hawaii was waiting for us.

In terms of security, boarding a cruise ship is very similar to boarding a plane. The luggage gets X-rayed and goes aboard separately. You stay in line to get through the metal detector, then stay in another line to get your key/card to whatever cabin you end up in. They put us in a cabin in the front of the ship on the 8th deck.

We were some of the lucky ones: our luggage made it in front of the cabin before us. We were also some of the unlucky ones: the light in our bathroom was off. We called the maintenance, unpacked and started exploring the ship. After the safety drill, we ate at the Grand Pacific Restaurant, witnessed the ship departure while the musicians tried to create a party atmosphere, then went to the theatre for a sampling plate of the entertainment they were going to offer the following evenings. During this show we felt that the ship started shaking really nicely - going back to the cabins was funny: only a few had too much to drink, but everybody seemed to have issues walking straight. We called the maintenence again because they didn't fix the bathroom light. The hope that the waves would cradle us into a deep sleep vanished pretty fast - we slept horribly.

• Diamond Head
• Driving around Oahu
• Pearl Harbor
• Volcanoes National Park
• Road to Hana
• Haleakala and Makena
• North Kohala
• North Kauai
• Waimea Canyon