I told you last thursday that we will go to the ‘Iolani Palace this sunday since it is “kama’aina” sunday, which means that the entrance and tour with guide is free for those who live in Hawaii (and that is where my Hawaiian driver license will come in handy hehe).

We will still go to the palace tomorrow, but they decorated the whole palace since it is also the birthday (or better said: the memory of the birthday) of King Kalakaua. There will also be palaceguards and a parade in town itself in honor of the king, so it is the idea to see all that kind of stuff.

We also went to town yesterday and since we were there anyways, we decided to take a look at the palace to see the decorations ourselves. I had seen a small picture on the internet before and it looked quite pretty so now we wanted to see if it was really this nice, and I thought it was. And since we were around anyways, we decided to do a small walk through historic Honolulu. We made some pictures, of course, here they are:

The first two pictures are taken of Kawaiaha’o Church, the first Christian church on Hawaii, build between 1836 and 1842. On the third picture you can see the tomb of King Koning William Charles Lunalilo, the first elected monarch in the history of Hawaii.

Next to the church there is also a water source to be found. You would think in these days that they manually put it there but apparently this is an original spring, and like it also said on the sign, this is indeed to be called unique with such a warm and dry climate as the Hawaiian one. The spring can be found on the next photo:

Also, the church took its name from this source, “Ka Wai a Ha’o” means “the water of Ha’o”.

At the side of the church, at the other side of the road, are the mission houses:

I tried to make a panorama photo from the mission houses, I think it worked out pretty well:

You will have to click the picture to see the result a bit better, of course, haha

After that we crossed another road, one which could you make think about the previous pictures, like “is that the actual surrounding of those old buildings?”

Yep, the old buildings are in the middle of Honolulu, a world city haha.

On the right side of the photo, just outside the picture, you will find “Honolulu Hale” (translated: House of Honolulu) where the mayor has his office, city hall.

I just realized that I didn’t really took the best side of the building to make a picture of but oh well, you can at least get a bit an idea of how the building looks like. It is a bit in the Californian-Spanish style, something which fits pretty well in this place.

The second photo is from a fountain and such. In a few weeks we will make some more pictures there because they place a big statue of Santa and his wife on that spot, both in Aloha style with short sleeves and such. I think it will fit indeed hehe.

The third picture is a photo of the monument for the victims of 9/11, the day America was attacked by terrorists. The sign reads that it is an “eternal flame” but Michelle told me just now that she has seen that there was no flame at all… what the reason was is unkown to us, it could be that the rain or wind made it go out but it could also be that they forgot to pay their gasbill or that the coals were all gone

After that we crossed another road and we came to the Hawaiian State Library::

And next to the library you will find the gardens (and a big one) of ‘Iolani Palace, the Hawaiian royal palace:

In my previous post you could find the Judiciary Historic Center (Ali’iolani Hale) and the statue of King Kamehameha the first, which can be found right across the street::

But ok, ‘Iolani Palace looks a lot better at the moment, if only it was because of all the decorations, so let’s go back to the palace

There are a few more buildings next to the palace as you can see on the following three pictures. On the first you will find the Coronation Pavilion and on the other two photo’s you can find the barracks of the palace.

And when you walk to the back of the palace you will find some strange trees. Maybe not strange for everyone but I thought they were quite different from what I know. Michelle told me these are Banyan trees… doesn’t ring a bell to me, but oh well, see for yourself::

Behind the palace and the gardens, you will find a statue of queen Lili’uokalani, the queen after who the botanical garden has been called where Michelle and I got married. And across that statue you will find the State Capitol of Hawaii.

The first picture is, indeed, from queen Lili’uokalani, the second photo is a picture which shows the seal of the State of Hawaii, only just a very big size hehe. The text on the bottom says “Ua mau ke ea o ka aina i ka pono”, or in English: “The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness”. And the third picture contains the State Capitol itself.. Michelle explained to me that the pillars depict palmtrees and that there is also a vulcano shown in the building (I think the oval part up front) and some more things from the Hawaiian landscape.

Right, tomorrow we will go back to the palace again, I am unsure how much pictures we can make as I read earlier today that it is not allowed to take photos inside the palace of the interior and such. So we’ll see how much photo’s we can make.. you’ll notice

Also, we made some more photo’s that same day on our way back of the surroundings, I will place them below as the end of our walk through historic Honolulu (even though the next photo’s are not all really historic but oh well)):