Visitors to Honolulu, Hawaii, may hear that, because it's Hawaii's largest city, it is less "Hawaiian" than the rest of the state. The high-rise office buildings and traffic of Honolulu don't match people's romantic ideal of what Hawaii should be—remote, palm-fringed beaches and lavish resorts.
In truth, Honolulu is probably the most Hawaiian part of the state, because it best reflects the different things that Hawaii can be. Honolulu tourist attractions include a multicultural mix of people, a beautiful landscape of greenery and ocean, and a place where amazing events have unfolded—many of them recounted in Honolulu's historic sites and museums. All that's exciting about big-city life—theater, opera, museums, shopping, nightclubs, fine dining—is set against Honolulu's backdrop of majestic mountains, lush rain forests and sweeping vistas for Hawaii's visitors to enjoy.
And, with Waikiki along one edge of the city, travelers to Honolulu even have a beach resort. Waikiki remains Hawaii's busiest tourist spot and makes a good departure point for exploring Honolulu's recreation possibilities. Active travelers can ramble across pastureland and ancient religious shrines, swim with the green sea turtles off Waikiki Beach and surf past Diamond Head. Honolulu activities also include hiking a coastline trail, watching for humpback whales, renting kayaks at Kailua Beach Park or playing a round of golf at a variety of public and resort golf courses.
Honolulu visitors should take advantage of the city's busyness but also enjoy the quieter spaces.
Sights—USS
Arizona Memorial; Waikiki Beach; Polynesian Cultural Center; National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific; watching the sunset from one of the hotel lounges fronting the ocean.
Museums—Iolani Palace; Bishop Museum; Honolulu Academy of Arts; the Contemporary Museum.
Memorable Meals—Hiroshi Eurasion Tapas for a delectable fusion of Asian, Polynesian, American and European cooking; Orchids for a massive Sunday brunch; the Royal Hawaiian Luau.
Late Night—Musical comedy by the Society of Seven; dancing at Rumors nightclub; meeting young, hip professionals at W Hotel's Wonderlounge.
Walks—Hiking through rain forest and bamboo groves at the Hawaii Nature Center; climbing to the top of Diamond Head; strolling among the noodle shops and street vendors of Chinatown; hiking the trail at Makapuu Point Lighthouse.
Especially for Kids—Dolphin shows and supervised underwater exploration at Sea Life Park Hawaii; children's excursions at the Hawaii Nature Center; hands-on exhibits at the Hawaii Children's Discovery Center.
Honolulu is on the south shore of Oahu; it dominates the island, and the city's government administers all of Oahu. Oahu itself is a volcanic mass divided into sections by two separate mountain ranges. Both ranges run northwest to southeast: the Waianae Range on the western side of the island, and the Koolau Range to the east. The Koolau separates the city of Honolulu and its hotel-choked neighborhood of Waikiki from the windward side of the island and the towns of Kailua and Kaneohe.
Honolulu's neighborhoods have distinctive identities. The office buildings of downtown Honolulu are just north of Honolulu Harbor. To the south of downtown is Waikiki, which is bordered by Diamond Head. Makiki Heights, to the north of downtown, surrounds the Punchbowl, a crater that is the home of the National Memorial Cemetery of the Pacific.
The history of Honolulu is really the history of Oahu. The island was an independent fiefdom controlled by a succession of Polynesian chiefs until the 1780s. That's when the ambitious king of Maui, Kahekili, conquered Oahu and killed its chief—his own stepson—in a bid to enlarge his territories. After Kahekili's death, his sons battled one another for control of the islands. This division made it easier for the now-legendary Kamehameha I to conquer all of the Hawaiian Islands. With the help of Westerners with firearms, Kamehameha's troops took Oahu in 1795 in a rout that ultimately forced the defenders to flee to the mountains behind Honolulu and over the cliffs at Nuuanu Pali. His court was set up in Waikiki, then moved to Honolulu in 1809.
By the 1840s, Honolulu was a busy port town doing a brisk trade in the sandalwood harvested on the island. Sandalwood later gave way to sugar, and laborers from China, Japan, Portugal and the Philippines were brought in to work the plantations.
After U.S. sugar companies engineered the takeover of the Hawaiian Islands (they were annexed by the U.S. in 1898), Oahu's Pearl Harbor became the centerpiece of U.S. naval operations in the Pacific. On 7 December 1941, a squadron of some 400 Japanese planes attacked the base, killing more than 2,400 people and marking the entrance of the U.S. into World War II.
With the advent of jet travel in the postwar years, Honolulu became the gateway for millions of paradise-seeking vacationers, and developers built the towering hotels of Waikiki.
The Royal Hawaiian Hotel was the Western White House for U.S. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.
Poet and writer Robert Lewis Stevenson lived in Hawaii for some time and was befriended by King David Kalakaua and the Princess Victoria Kaiulani, who had a common bond with him in their Scottish heritage.
Hawaii's federal roads are referred to as interstates, although technically they are intra-state arteries built to connect its military bases.
You're just as likely to run into an actor from the television show Lost at Safeway or City Mill in Hawaii Kai as you are to see them on TV that week.
Fans of Dog the Bounty Hunter press their noses to the glass of his modest-looking Honolulu business, Da Kine Bail Bonds, day and night, hoping for a glimpse of the TV star.
