Hawaii, Honolulu - 'S.S.Himalaya' - October 1970

 Those two buildings on the left, are in the middle of the photo below that I grabbed today from Google Maps.

The 'Himalaya' was nothing like the 'President Cleveland', the ship we took from Japan to the U.S.A., probably because the 'President Cleveland' had two classes and it was one big party in 2nd Class which was where we were with loads of students heading to America.

The 'Himalaya' was one class and full of middle aged Australian and English people, there were hardly any young ones on board, plus David and I couldn't get a room together so David was sharing a room with a German fellow, my room mate was also German and spent most of her time sleeping, which wasn't much fun and totally forgettable which I have done...  completely forgotten it!   The photos and tomorrows post letter reminds me of our trip.

One of the things these middle aged people did when arriving in each Port, was to catch a tourist coach.  This is something David and I have never done and even now that we are 'middle aged' ourselves,  couldn't even contemplate doing, we've always much preferred to explore and discover each Port - Country - City down on the ground on shanks pony, local transport or even a hired car!

In 1977 we sailed once again to the U.K., we had three children 5 yrs, 3 yrs and 4 months old, we chose to travel on a Greek shipping line, on the 'Australis'.  This ship was dreadful, they had no facilities for young children and they even ran out of toilet paper.  On our return at the end of 1978 we went back to P&O on the 'Oriana', this was a fantastic trip, so good the children didn't want to get off the ship in Ports, the playroom was such fun plus the Nanny would take them to the Bar for Pink Lemonades... for the kids and Pink Gin's for her  :-)  The children still have great memories of that trip.

David and I spent the day with Janet and David Reidie, a young Canadian couple, firstly on Waikiki Beach.  I wonder what happened to Janet and David?

From Google Maps today.

I can't believe I found this weird round thing on Google Maps, it does look as though it's been moved since 1970 and the buildings around are nothing like the ones in the photo above.  I'm amazed to see how enormous Honolulu is now.

Night time, and the Hare Krishna are out and about.  We'd never seen this sort of thing before, lots of new experiences.

Shops were open at night time!  Another new experience.

Halloween is another thing we'd never seen before, we'd heard about it, seen photos but never experienced Halloween.  Not something we've ever got into here in Australia.  Look at the prices of the hamburgers!