“They paved paradise and put up a parking lot” – Joni Mitchell, “Big Yellow Taxi.”
Joni Mitchell wrote the lyrics to that 1970 hit after her first trip to Hawaii. On her first morning there, she looked down from her room and “there was a parking lot as far as the eye could see, and it broke my heart … this blight on paradise.”
Joni, you should see the place now—one high-rise condo, hotel or shopping center after another, all sandwiched next to each other along Waikiki Beach.
Tell you what, though. What we didn’t see on our first trip back to Honolulu after 23 years was a parking lot. Way too valuable property, I assume. These days, those parking lots are either encased inside multi-story garages or tucked underneath all those high rises.
Sure, there were plenty of high-rises up and down Waikiki on our first visit in 1993. Even so, much of the old grace and charm of Hawaii remained, particularly at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. Opened in 1927, it featured 400 rooms inside its sprawling pink stucco walls.
By the time we first saw the Royal Hawaiian, it was already dwarfed by much taller hotels and condos along the beach. Even so, it stood apart from the others, with a little breathing room.
No more. This time to get to the Royal Hawaiian Hotel, we had to actually walk through the lobby of an adjacent hotel on one side. Meanwhile, the other side of the hotel is now overshadowed by the immense Royal Hawaiian Center — a 310,000 square-foot property sprawled across more than six acres, with 110 shops. Naturally, it features a parking garage—10 levels, with more than 600 stalls.
It never ceases to amaze me that people would rather shop at the iconic places they visit, rather than take in the moment. Sure, I can understand doing a little souvenir shopping for the folks back home at what a friend of mine refers to as “the rubber tomahawk store.” But does anyone go to Honolulu to shop at Macy’s when there’s one or two in your own hometown?
Meanwhile, I am happy to report that, once found, the Royal Hawaiian Hotel still holds the same grace and charm it’s always had, if not its cooling breezes. Maybe it’s because of all the concrete surrounding it, but we found its outside patios and bars warm and muggy.
Luckily, we were not staying there but at the Hale Koa, a wonderful hotel on 72 acres fronting a stretch of Waikiki Beach. The hotel is set aside for active-duty and retired military and we were there as guests of a friend who is retired military and her husband.
Operating self-sufficiently without any taxpayer support, the hotel takes up much of the Fort DeRussy Military Reservation, which once served as a now-retired shore battery for coastal defense.
Flanking the hotel on one side is a spacious park with picnic tables and grills open to the public. On the other side squats the former Battery Randolph, now housing the U.S. Army Museum of Hawaii.
We toured that museum as well as the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and the nearby Pacific Aviation Museum.
As for the hokiest-but-most-fun tour, I’ve gotta give it to the Macadamia Nut Farm Outlet. Located on Oahu’s windward coast near the Kualoa Ranch, the tour offered a rickety bus ride to several sites, where we were treated to fresh-shaved coconut and demonstrations involving fire-tossed torches.
After a week in Honolulu, we said goodbye to our friends and flew to Hilo, on the Big Island. Our final destination was Volcano Village, a tiny cluster of homes, restaurants and at least one general store set in the middle of a rain forest close to Kilauea.
We spent two calming nights there at a Zen-like bed and breakfast so relaxed that you summoned the owner not with a bell but with a drum hanging on the front porch.
Kilauea also did not disappoint, especially at night, when we returned to view its fiery plumage. All in all, it was a glorious visit to Hawaii — especially to the places where paradise still remains unpaved.
