Day 12...or is it still 11?...and Pearl Harbor

 We are sitting in Hawaii, waiting for our flight to the mainland, so I'm catching up on my posts that I couldn't do because of the afore mentioned chaos in the previous posts.

We had an uneventful flight and most of the crew slept on the flight. For them it feels like "tomorrow". For those of us that weren't lucky enough to catch a snooze, it still feels like today.  Let's couple that with crossing the international date line and we're all sorts of messed up at the moment haha

The last glimpses of Australia as we were taking off.

Sunrise in Hawaii as we landed.

We made it through customs in tact, so WOOHOO, we didn't do anything against the rules...I think. I hope. Moving along... We rented a luggage locker, since our layover was so long here, and decided to hop on over to Pearl Harbor to pay our respects as well as look around. It truly is a sacred ground and very peaceful there. We didn't think we'd have time to go out to the USS Arizona, however, the standby line was nearly empty right when we showed up, so guess who got to go out there first thing?! We did! Talk about humbling. It brought a few tears to our eyes as we listened to the guide discuss the wall of names and the addition of the stone for the "survivor names" (the ones that survived the attacks and chose to have their ashes buried there after they passed on). It was so touching, and quite eye opening to see the wall full of names.  You hear the numbers and think "yeah, that's a lot" but having a visual right in front of you is breathtaking.

We ate a quick lunch there, and headed back to the airport, after going through the museum (WWII and Cold War) and touring the submarine. We have decided it is a good thing we don't live on a submarine. We're either too giagantic to fit through the doors (imagine James and Tyler trying to fit through a kid's play place door that's built for a toddler), or we're too claustrophobic LOL (no pictures from inside the sub, sorry).

After getting our luggage from the locker area (our luggage took up half their room LOL), we got checked in and through security again. We had a couple hiccups in security this time, however, notes have been taken and the next flight will be less eventful in checking in, we hope haha

We have a little bit of downtime, so we thought we'd break out some more foreign things to try. It's better than I thought it would be, but I was done after one piece LOL The crocodile jerky reminds me of turkey jerky (Chris compared it to that and I must agree with him on that one), and I'm just deciding that I'm not really a fan of kangaroo meat. Chris said it tasted too much like BBQ for him to get any flavors coming through, but I disagree. It's not bad, but I'm not going to jump at buying it if I see it in a market somewhere. *shrugs*