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October 15, Polynesian Cultural Center
The PCC (Polynesian Cultural Center) doesn't open until 12:30 or something so before we went there we had time to visit Chinatown and the Military Cemetary of the Pacific. For Chinatown, we found parking on the street for $.25 for 10 minutes, by far the best parking deal we encountered. We walked up the street and around four or five blocks in Chinatown. Lots of interesting things for sale including some fruits and vegtables we'd never seen before. The Military Cemetary of the Pacifc was free so I'm liking it right off the bat. Next, it is a beautiful place and its high up on the Punchbowl crater so the view out over Honolulu is really pretty spectacular. The graves are marked with bronze markers that are flush with the grass, so you don't get the visual impact of seeing row after row graves. There are 40,000 graves, but we didn't get the impression of there being that number of graves. When we got to Laie, home of PCC, we still had a couple of hours until the place opened so we got some lunch at L&I Diner a local fast food place. We both had oriental food. The food was OK, but the place stunk (see Smells). After we ate, I noticed on the GPS this long finger of land that stuck out into the ocean and had a street going out to the point. I thought it might have an interesting view and so we drove out there. It turns out to be Laie Point State Wayside. Very nice scenary. (and free!)
Polynesian Cultural CenterFirst of all, when we first arrived we had to pay $6 to park. That left a bit of a bad impression right off the bat. I'm going to drop two or three hunderd bucks to get into the place (Mrs. Boyd still hasn't told me how much it cost us and its probably just as well), but they are still charging $6 for parking. And, its not like they are in a downtown area where people would be wanting to park if you didn't charge for the parking.It doesn't open till afternoon and the luau starts at 5:30, but there's far more than you can see in the 5 hours available. To make matters worse, we paid the extra money to get the "Ambassador" package, so we had an "ambassador" known to us as "cousin Lloyd." |
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