Day # 1 -Pearl Harbor Memorial

The first day we woke up kind of early, and decided to get some breakfast. Since none of us had actually been to Oahu before, we looked on trusty old Yelp to help us find some place to grab breakfast. We found a place called Koa Pancake House, getting there...was again a CLUSTER. Oh my gosh...we were turned pretty  much every which way, and got off on every wrong exit...basically every exit, BUT the one we needed, we got off on.
We finally arrived and it definitely was not what we were thinking. We were thinking it would be like a sit down place, where they come in and take your order. However, literally it is like Ala Carte. You just come up order your food, and then you pick it up at the counter, and they only serve in styrofoam containers. Say what!? I wasn't expecting a whole lot after we saw what kind of place it was, but we ordered anyways. For me, I had a cheese and mushroom omlette, complete with a medium pineapple juice straight from the island!!
Um...can we say YUM!? So freaking amazing, and it came with a side of baked home style potatoes. I also nibbled on some of the others banana pancakes, because...well..lets face it. They were nothing short of amazeballs.

After our delicious breakfast, we headed out to go see the Pearl Harbor Memorial.

We wanted to do this early on in our trip, because we knew that we definitely wanted to see it, but since it is so depressing, and sad, to kind of get the sad things out of the way first. When we first arrived, we got on a bus that took us to the USS Missouri ship. This was really cool to see because it was still in operation even just like 20 years ago. *Forgive me history buffs, if I get some things wrong, this is why I majored in English, not history, thank you*
This was really awesome to see, because if for some reason we were to ever need to use this ship in battle again, she is ready to go. We got to see where the crew lived, and dined, and the things they did. It was very crazy to see and think that many crew that had gone off to war in that ship, some never returned. Just crazy. We were able to walk around on a couple of decks and just explore which was super neat. Here are a few pics of the USS Missouri.

USS Missouri

General Store/Gift Shop outside

Yikes!

View from the top

Me on the USS Missouri

Important

Several others, followed my lead with this shot. Don't Hate.

Another view, from the top of the ship

These are probably useful

Captain oh Captain

Control room

Yeahhh get some

I found these chairs very interesting on the dining deck

General store onboard the ship that has since been closed. Found this interesting

Kitchen

After we got off the USS Missouri, we went and watched a video on the USS Arizona. This is such a heartbreaking story. I won't really go into details here, just because if you are interested, look it up, but SO many people lost their lives that day. Over 1100, just onboard the USS Arizona. This ship has sunk to the bottom of Pearl Harbor, and it is now the tomb for many of these bodies.

We watched this movie on the attack that awful day, and then took a small boat to the USS Arizona memorial. The memorial is a structure that looks kind of like a bridge and it was built right over the USS Arizona. These are some of the pictures from the memorial.

The memorial

Part of the ship 

Where it would have stood

Pieces

Peace

You can still see the oil in the water from this ship sinking SO many years ago. Crazy!

Oil in the water

Other ships

Names of lives lost

Survivors that wanted to be interred with their crewmates after they had passed

Inside the memorial

I can't thank the men and women enough who have lost their lives serving for our country and freedom. They make me so proud to be able to stand  here free, and just my heart is just forever grateful.

This was very humbling, and I am just thankful.

So anyways, thank you to our men and women who are/still serving. I love you. I love you. I love you.

So after we went to Pearl Harbor, we gathered our things, and decided to head back to the hotel to soak up what remained of the sunshine. When on our way back, Lo and behold...look what we found!!!

Did you just slide ride off your chair? Yes, I did too.

For those of you who aren't aware of this little diamond in the rough, these are Malasadas, which..the best way I can describe this to you, is like a fried donut/beignet type of thing, that is dipped afterwards in sugar/ or cinnamon sugar. You can also have cream filled with coconut cream or chocolate cream, but my favorite being just the cinnamon sugar Malasada. Oh my heavens, these were like sex in mouth, and esophagus, and gall bladder and intestine...all at the SAME.TIME.

Seriously amazing.

If you have not had one, you need to get one...stat...as in Staten Island...Ferry.

So after we had these amazing little slices of heaven, we went back to the pool and hung out a bit, then got ready to go to dinner.

We decided to eat at the hotel at this little buffet style thing called Makahiki. They serve Asian-Fusion buffet style things. Anything from Miso Soup to Lobster Ball, and sushi, and all sorts of things. It was okay, not my favorite, but of course they had a dessert table. Which of course, is my favorite part. Amazing.

After that we were all so tired, we just went to the hot tub, and then went to bed, and got ready for another amazing day in paradise.

More pics of the night