Busy day

Today dawned early with the time change of 5 hours between home time and time here in Hawaii. We were out the door quickly this morning and our first stop was the NEX on the Naval base at Pearl Harbor. We were treated to beautiful paintings on the ceiling of the main entry hall by a painter who does his sealife paintings on buildings. I'd seen a couple of other examples of his work in the past and the way he did this building was striking. We spent some time shopping and looking for things to bring back to the family, we had breakfast, and we then spent some time driving around the base looking at all the ships docked there. There was an aircraft carrier and some ships in from Japan...all in all fun, just like being at an airport looking at planes parked and their comings and goings too. Our next stop was the USS Arizona Memorial where we spent a couple of hours learning and waiting for our turn to take the boat over to the place where the battleships were moored on the morning of December 7, 1941. The memorial straddles the remains of the ship so you can look out the windows and get views of what is left in the water and small parts which ride above the surface. It's very solumn and very beautiful there. We then went to the North shore to watch the sunset and eat Garlic Shrimp from a roadside truck...they were fantastic! We are tired and I'm sure we'll all sleep well tonight.