Now back to our day. First, we need FOOD. Where shall we go? Well, the Olelo Lounge! Why not start your day off in a bar?!?! Alas, the bar was closed
but they do serve a continental breakfast in the morning when MOST people think it is too early to imbibe in adult beverages. Hey were still on Mississippi time and its already afternoon there but it was not to be.
The Olelo lounge, for breakfast, has assorted Danish, croissants, cinnamon roll, muffins, bagels, fruit, cereal and yogurt parfait. They also have cappuccino, espresso, mocha as well as your regular breakfast beverages. We had croissants, muffins and the yogurt parfait with a bottled water and a Sprite. Total was $20.94.
Time to head out to the USS Arizona. The biggest gripe I have about Aulani is that the parking area is detached from the main building. You must either take the elevator in the Waianae Tower down to the ground level at the front of the resort or go out the front entrance and walk down the road to the garage. Either way, you walk outdoors (no covered breezeway) to the garage. Once in the garage, you can then take an elevator to the floor where you are parked. There are two parking areas but the one near the Ewa Tower is valet only. It would be nice if during the current construction at Aulani that they do something about this but I did not read in any of the updates that this was in the plans. Back to our visit to Pearl Harbor and the USS Arizona.
As previously stated, the traffic on Oahu is terrible. Thanks to others on the DISboards, we have read to plan on taking extra time when driving anywhere. We also read here that you can get online and make reservations for your tour of the USS Arizona. We had 9:30am reservations and it was suggested you arrive an hour early to pick up your tickets. Mapquest trip planner said it would take 24 minutes to get there. Remember me talking about the traffic? This will give you an idea of what I was talking about. We left about 6:45am
Yeah
bumper to bumper on the Interstate before 7:00am! It took us nearly 2 hours to go about 18 miles! We were supposed to be there at 8:30 to get our tickets and we arrived at the ticket counter just before 9:00am. We got the last two tickets for the 9:30 boat launch to the Arizona. Apparently they had given ours to someone else. Oh well. We made it and didnt have to wait hours. We rented a couple of audio headsets that you can use for a walking tour and made our way over to the boat launch staging area. And with my luck, they were running behind about 30 minutes! Okay, we made our way through one of the two Gallery Exhibit buildings. The walking tour has numbered stops and you can listen to commentary at each stop through the rented audio headset. One of the two exhibit buildings covers the time before the U.S. entry into WWII and the other covers the attack on Pearl Harbor. I wish we would have had more time to go through both exhibits but we didnt want to miss our boat launch. What little we viewed in the building covering the attack on Pearl Harbor was very somber, chilling and thought provoking. To me, the whole area was this way and I am not able to properly articulate the emotions this memorial brought forth.
Instead, Ill just show pictures.
A couple of pics before we boarded the launch
USS Bowfin submarine
The view of the USS Arizona memorial from the boat launch with the battleship Missouri to the left
The boat launch with the USN hospital ship Mercy in the background
A closer view of the USN Mercy from the shuttle boat
USS Missouri the Big Mo
(CONTINUED IN NEXT POST)
It makes me almost like United, which is our primary carrier out of NJ. Which is an airline I hate. But apparently not as much as I now hate AA.
At one point, there was a national security breach because of us- LOL. 
Very glad we all made it, though, it's not to be missed.
We haven't been to the MS State Fair in years but I do remember gorging myself on corn dogs the last time right before we rode the roller coaster. It wasn't a very smart combination! 
