One of my favorite places in Hawaii reopened to tours this week. Shangri La is closed during the month of September each year for conservation work. Called one of Hawaii’s “most architecturally significant houses,” it is both a tribute to and collection of Islamic art.
The five-acre compound is secreted in a residential area behind Diamond Head. By today’s standards, the home itself is relatively modest in size. However, the building and grounds compliment one another as parts of the overall composition. Large windows form walls that can be lifted or lowered to open rooms completely to the outside. The grounds include beautifully arranged plants, stairs, reflecting pools and water gardens. The view of the shore with Diamond Head in the distance frames the small estate. It is this combination of Islamic focus with Hawaii as backdrop that I find most interesting.
Doris Duke built Shangri La in the late 1930’s. Over the next 60 years, she filled it with an extensive collection of Islamic art. But to encounter Shangri La is much more than a tour of pieces of artwork in an unusual museum. This was the private retreat of one of the wealthiest women in the world for most of her adult life. She first visited Hawaii at the conclusion of her honeymoon, and immediately began plans to build a home. Duke already had several family estates at her disposal, including a Fifth Avenue mansion that she donated to the Institute of Fine Arts at New York University. This Hawaii home was the only one that she built for herself and filled with the Islamic art that she loved.
This quote from Duke captures what many of us feel when first experiencing Hawaii: “The idea of building a Near Eastern house in Honolulu may seem fantastic to many. But precisely at the time I fell in love with Hawaii and I decided I could never live anywhere else, a Mogul-inspired bedroom and bathroom planned for another house was being completed for me in India so there was nothing to do but have it shipped to Hawaii and build a house around it.” (from Shangri La: Islamic Art in a Honolulu Home by Sharon Littlefield)
Photos in the book show Duke surfing and enjoying a luau with another Duke – Olympian and surfing legend Duke Kahanamouku. It says she became friends with the entire family and they became her social circle for many years — quite a change from her New York society upbringing! Not all of us have the option to live in various mansions or travel the world, but we all feel the special spirit of Hawaii that captured Doris Duke’s heart and led her to create this serene escape.
[Tours of Shangri La MUST be arranged through the Honolulu Art Academy. Due to the residential nature of the neighborhood, you must arrive on a van from HAA to be admitted.]
Until this weekend, all I knew about sake was that it could be ordered either warm or cold in restaurants that serve Asian food. I am still far from an expert, but I have now tasted a full range of sake, from basic to exotic, many available only in Japan. My particular experience is courtesy of the Joy of Sake event at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. This event is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, there are only three: New York, San Francisco and Honolulu. Honolulu is MUCH smaller than either of the other venues, but attracts similar international events not available to mainland cities of its size. The second reason is that it demonstrates how popular sake is here.
When Rick and I first moved to Hawaii, we surveyed the liquor section of the grocery store. There are one or two bourbons, a small handful of scotches, and an aisle and a half of sake. We would look at all of them, clueless, wondering what makes a good or bad sake? It seems like such a wonderful opportunity to learn about something new, we both wanted to engage. Had the Joy of Sake event not presented itself, we could have explored other opportunities. Several restaurants and bars in Hawaii offer sake tastings or flights (a set of samples). Sake is best enjoyed with food and most local venues would be happy to suggest an appropriate sake for your meal.
This is what I learned this weekend. There are ten sake-brewing regions in Japan and one sake brewery on Okinawa. The four sake categories describe the rice-polishing ratio: the percentage of the rice kernel that remains after polishing. The are: Junmai (at least 70%), Gingo (60%+), Daiginjo B (40-50%) and Daiginjo A (40% or less). The lower the polishing ratio, the higher the quality of the sake. According to the program from Joy of Sake, experts pay attention to five areas when rating sake: balance, taste, aroma, finish and overall impression. Balance is the most important.
Sake is clear and subtle. Its flavor is much lighter than any liquor and most wines. It pairs well with Japanese and other Asian food because it is not overwhelming. Don’t be afraid to try it - you won’t make a wrong choice. There is no rigid definition of which sake goes with what food. And, as the Joy of Sake program says (quoting Takao Nihei) "There’s no such thing as a bad sake."
The hot discussion topic that dominated conversation as I headed out to the North Shore with AlohaBruce and Yaling was Hurricane Felicia. When I suggested that after nearly seventeen years without a serious hurricane in Hawai’i, we might be do for one, they both bristled. “Don’t say that!” they protested. At any rate, Felicia has since been downgraded to a tropical storm, a tropical depression, a tropical malaise, and, finally, a tropical ennui. As soon as we crested the hill heading down to the Mokuleia Polo Grounds, any thoughts of inclement weather fluttered away on brisk trade winds.
I had once again stumbled into day-long adventure with AlohaBruce. This time the mission was to take in the experience of the Mokuleia Polo Grounds , the strange and wonderful mix of down home barbequing, country club champagne flutes, ladies in big hats and a dozen frothing polo ponies thundering past with men swinging long mallets on their backs.
We were invited by the Equus Hotel, which had provided a fine spread of wine and tasty comestibles in a private area at midfield. Dozens of cars lined the polo pitch on both sides as a smoldering breeze brought savory smells coming from the grills on the other side. And the occasional whiff of horse manure. It was divine.
The format for the day’s competition was a handful of teams playing in a round-robin tournament, with each match lasting two six-minute “chuckers.” The easiest way to explain a chucker is to compare it to a quarter in football or basketball. I had secretly expected the matched to be tame affairs, more for show than for true competition. And I couldn’t have been more wrong. The players and their mounts chased the white wooden ball all over the pitch, which is a few hundred yards long, their horses colliding as mallets flashed. Every one of the players was out there to win, and the polo ponies were clearly every bit as intent as the riders. Those horses are magnificent beasts whose dignity is not diminished by the fact that they have no compunction about pooping in front of everyone.
And fans of the sport can be as equally passionate as the riders. One excitable lady in a big straw hat was evidently the wife of one of the riders and a rider herself. She cheered and jeered with an exuberance that could rival that of any Chicago Cubs fan in the bleachers at Wrigley Field.
As the day turned to late afternoon and the tournament ended, the mood became considerably more festive. A long time drummer friend of mine was on hand with his classic rock band (I’m constantly running into fellow musicians, even at a polo match way out in the country). There was a brisk business at Ed’s Polo Bar, and everyone was clearly feeling good. As the sun dipped behind the Waianae Mountains, we decided to head back to Honolulu.
My overall impression of the whole day was that a day at the polo fields (there’s another polo field in Waimanalo) is a brilliant was to spend an afternoon. I got the feeling that most of the people there on Sunday were there more for the atmosphere than for the spectacle of the sport. Whatever the case may be there is plenty of both at the Mokuleia Polo Grounds.
One of the great things about living in Hawaii is that when friends and family come to visit we get to play tourist with them. This weekend my cousin and his wife from Miami came to visit us and we got to experience some fun places we haven’t been to in a long time. It was so much fun I had to share our experiences.
Miami is another tourist destination but nothing like Hawaii. One of the big differences I noticed is our beautiful mountain ranges. As we drove to Waikiki from the airport my cousins could see mauka (toward the mountain) up into Manoa Valley. As we drove down the H-1freeway they could see the Honolulu skyline and Diamond Head. We checked them into their hotel and 30 minutes later we were at the Hula Grill celebrating the restaurant’s fifth anniversary. I could feel the Aloha spirit all around Waikiki. People were friendly and smiling and it made me proud that we have such a wonderful opportunity to help folks plan vacations in Hawaii. Next we took a walk down Kalakua Avenue and showed them the beautiful Royal Hawaiian Hotel and the Moana Surfrider. The great thing about these hotels is that you can just stroll onto properties and hang out; there so much Aloha spirit and history that you feel very welcome. Both properties are very beautiful and you can relax while having a drink and watching a wonderful Hawaiian sunset. The Pan Pacific Festival was happening in Waikiki that evening so we spent some time enjoying this wonderful event. I especially enjoyed seeing the festival and other activities through my cousins’ eyes; the multiculturalism, the beauty and excitement of being there was overwhelming.
On Saturday we started very early. My cousin told me about all fun they had doing simple things such as enjoying the sunrise, taking pictures of the beautiful scenery from the hotel room, and getting food at one of the ABC stores. After picking them up we drove up to a beautiful rainforest in Manoa with a trail that leads to a waterfall. Later, we went to the Waioli Tea Room, a wonderful restaurant located the heart of Manoa. As if that wasn’t enough, we took them back to the East side of the Island to our home in Hawaii Kai and took a little boat ride on Kuappa Pond.
Sunday was just as much fun but with a little twist. It was my cousin’s anniversary so we took them to Hanauma Bay for snorkeling. They had a great time enjoying the beach in this beautiful sanctuary. Unfortunately, when we returned to the car I discovered that I had my keys in my pocket while I was swimming. Little did I know that would cause my car not to start! We had plans to go to dinner in the evening in just a couple of hours. I thought to myself “What a bummer!” along a few other choice words, but my cousins were so relaxed it didn’t even faze them. They took the bus back to their hotel and we had our car home (only 3 mile away). We ended the night at Alan Wong’s, our favorite restaurant. I am not a food blogger so I will spare you all the details. I will tell you though, our meal was just incredible and I highly recommend you check out Alan Wong’s restaurant when you’re on Oahu.
We actually enjoyed being tourists again, seeing and experiencing Hawaii anew. It was the perfect end to a perfect weekend in Paradise.
If you’ve been considering a Hawaii vacation, you’ve probably read brochures, noted advertising and browsed the Internet to learn as much as you can about this wonderful place.
The following is just some basic stuff that isn’t carried in promotion materials, but you might be glad to be aware of it while you’re here.
The islands’ population is about a million and a half, with most of us living on Oahu, where Honolulu and Waikiki are located.
It was Polynesian immigrants who settled the islands originally some 1,000 years ago, but nobody else was aware of them until Captain James Cook “discovered” them in 1778.
Hawaii became a state in 1959.
In the 19th century, Hawaii developed an export economy, based on the cultivation of sugar and pineapple. Today, that business has dwindled considerably, Hawaii exports very little, and tourism is the engine that runs the islands.
Hawaii has the most advanced telecommunications system in the world. We’re among only five states with 100-percent digital switching for telephones. We have more fiber optic cable per mile, per capita, than any other state has.
Hawaii is the only state in which coffee is grown.
Hawaii is the widest state in the United States measuring from east to west.
The Hawaiian Islands are the projecting tops of a mountain range. It’s the largest mountain range on earth. Under-sea volcanoes that erupted thousands of years ago formed the islands.
Hawaii has its own time zone.
There is no daylight savings time here. We are five hours later than the East coast; two hours later than the West Coast. During DST it’s six and two.
Kilauea volcano, on the Big Island of Hawaii, remains the world’s most active.
The world’s highest sea cliffs are on the island of Molokai.
Okay, those are hardly earth-shaking facts. But they’re good to know, aren’t they?
If you’re from Hawaii please add to our list - just add yours in the comment section below and we’ll post it right away:)
It’s a solemn, moving place with a spectacular view of Honolulu and the eastern shore of Oahu.
The National Memorial of the Pacific rests high in Punchbowl, a volcanic crater that once was known as Puowaina, or “Hill of Sacrifice.” The volcano’s summit was used by early Hawaiians as a sacrificial site for those unfortunates who had committed acts that were deemed forbidden (kapu). Its slopes were the site of part of the battle between the forces of Oahu and those of Kamehameha, which ultimately led to the unification of the Hawaiian Islands in the early 1800s. The name “Punchbowl” comes from its elevation and round shape.
Built in 1948, the National Cemetery is a memorial to the sacrifice made by the men and women in the United States Armed Services. After its dedication on September 2, 1949, 776 casualties from the December 7, 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor were among the first to be buried there.
On the grounds, the Honolulu Memorial was dedicated in 1966 to honor the sacrifices and achievements of American Armed Forces in the Pacific during WW II, Korea, and Vietnam. The memorial sits high on the wall of the crater overlooking the graves area of the cemetery. It contains a non-sectarian chapel, two map galleries, a monumental staircase that leads from the crater floor to the Court of Honor. Flanking the staircase are the ten Courts of the Missing on which are inscribed a total of 28,778 names.
The front of the tower that houses the chapel bears a 30-foot female figure known as "Columbia" which stands on the symbolized prow of a U.S. Navy carrier. She holds a laurel branch in her left hand and this inscription of President Lincoln’s words: "…the Solemn Pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom." Columbia symbolizes all grieving mothers.
The grounds cover 116 acres and hold the remains of almost 50,000 war casualties. Five and a half million people visit the cemetery every year. Admission is free. The American Legion offers walking tours Monday through Friday. There is also a variety of broader tours that include Punchbowl among their stops.
Pick an agent from the Hawaii-Aloha Web site (hawaii-aloha.com) or call 1-800-843-8771. We’ll help you include the Memorial Cemetery in your vacation plans.
You may be familiar with dim sum, or you might think it’s a description of how a poor student does an arithmetic problem. It’s the name for small, translucent-skinned Chinese dumplings with a broad range of light dfillings that include meat, seafood, and vegetables, as well as desserts.
Pervasive in China, plentiful in Hawaii and relatively unknown on the mainland, you surely will find it on several of the menus you peruse while you’re on vacation here in the islands.
There are dim sum restaurants and dim sum stands in Honolulu’s Chinatown, Waikiki and virtually everywhere else on all the islands, and high-end restaurants — especially those that feature fusion cuisine and Hawaii Regional Cuisine — serve it enhanced with sensational sauces. Almost everyone, including children, love it.
Dim Sum is cooked mostly by steaming and deep-frying. The pieces are normally served as three or four in one dish.
The most popular steamed selections (at least with vacationers) are steamed pork spareribs and char siu (steamed buns with roast pork), and har gao (shrimp dumplings). Deep-fried treats include mini spring rolls and wu gok, a type of taro turnover. Chefs like to prepare their own versions, and those always are worth trying.
Here are two of the other more common selections you’ll find at most dim sum restaurants:
Spring Rolls are made with a thin wrapper and are lighter and less filling than egg rolls. They usually consist of dried mushrooms and shredded meat and carrot or bamboo shoots, then seasoned with oyster sauce, shoyu (soy sauce), and sugar.
Egg Custard is steamed with meat or seafood.
If you’d like some suggestions for good dim sum places near where you’re staying in Hawaii, pick an agent from the Hawaii-Aloha Web site home page (hawaii-aloha.com), or call 1-800-843-8771.
As is the case is most metropolitan areas, Honolulu is trying to figure out what to do with its homeless people. Part of the dilemma has resulted in major improvements to beautiful, 500-acre Kapiolani Park, which is located between Diamond Head and Waikiki.
Kapiolani Park was created by King Kalakaua in the 1870’s. A lot of its exceptional trees date back more than 100 years. It encompasses the 42-acre Honolulu Zoo, the Waikiki Shell, Sunday Art Shows, a tennis complex, soccer fields, an archery range, and a three-mile jogger’s course that includes a portion of the Honolulu Marathon course.
Local families as well as visitors enjoy the shady picnic sites and open grassy areas. The Royal Hawaiian Band provides free concerts every Sunday afternoon on the park’s bandstand.
Honolulu officials have launched a new effort to clean up the park, which will have the ancillary effect of evicting the homeless people who have relocated there following their having been pretty successfully removed from the beaches, Downtown Honolulu, Chinatown and the rest of Waikiki.
The four-stage park renovation is in response to a rising “level of anxiety” among both visitors and residents who have been worried about safety, sanitation and security due to the presence of homeless people.
Beach pavilions will be closed from 6:00 to 9:00 a.m. for daily cleaning. For the next month, the ocean-front grass area in Kapiolani Park between the Waikiki Aquarium and Kapiolani Beach Center will be closed and refurbished.
Upcoming renovations will include the grass areas around the Queen’s Surf beach, the Waikiki War Memorial and the Kapiolani Bandstand.
And, beginning March 30, there will be temporary closures for the painting and repair of comfort stations and pavilions along the Beach and in Kapiolani Park. Each closure should last about one week.
Beginning April 20 and lasting indefinitely, areas of the park mauka (toward the mountains) of Kalakaua Avenue will be closed from midnight until 5:00 a.m., including the tennis courts; and areas makai (toward the ocean) of Kalakaua Avenue will be closed from 2:00 a.m. to 5:00 a.m.
The police are enforcing the new program by ticketing people who do not abide by the closures and arresting them if necessary, and night sleeping in the park has been banned.
What’s happening, of course, is that the city is sweeping its homeless problem to some other location, not solving it.
But while you’re vacationing on Oahu and thinking of spending some pleasant time in a lovely park, Kapiolani Park will be at its very best for your visit.
When on vacation in Hawaii don’t be afraid to drink the water. There are lots of vacation destinations that come with built-in cautions about water quality. Hawaii definitely is not one of them.
Oahu in particular is blessed with water that ranks with the best quality in the world. Part of the reason is the island’s unique water cycle, which is difficult to find in places such as, say, Kansas City.
Hawaii’s almost-omnipresent trade winds carry with them moisture that has evaporated from ocean water warmed by the sun. The winds blow across the ocean and reach Oahu from the northeast, then are deflected upwards as they hit the steep cliffs of the Koolau Mountains. The rising moisture cools as it reaches the mountaintops then forms clouds, condenses and falls as rain. If Oahu didn’t have both mountain ranges and flat plains, the island wouldn’t be able to capture the moist air needed to support the living things that exist now. (The island of Niihau, on the other hand, gets very little rainfall because it doesn’t have much in the way of elevated slopes.)
In a year, about two billion gallons of rain fall on Oahu every day. About a third of that replenishes the island’s aquifer (the layer of rock, sand and gravel ground water flows through), another third nurtures the island’s vegetation and the rest runs off into the ocean.
For the drinking water you’ll enjoy while you’re here, the Honolulu Board of Water Supply uses four shafts, 12 tunnels and 84 well stations around the island to draw water from the ground. Dike Tunnels are drilled through a mountain to its dike rock compartment where freshwater is drawn out before it reaches the aquifer. Inclined shafts descend hundreds of feet to the top of the aquifer, skimming its upper layer to extract fresh water. Deep wells are located over the aquifer and supply most of the island’s water.
On the surface, the water enters a complex and unique water transmission system, which transports water from pumping stations to customers. Pumping stations pump water from the shafts, tunnels and wells into the transmission system. Sometimes, booster stations are used to push water over long distances and to higher elevations. The purpose of pumping and booster stations is to deliver fresh water to the reservoirs, which store water for future use. Finally, when water is needed, it’s fed back into water mains for delivery to hotels and resorts, homes and businesses. More than 2,000 miles of transmission mains are utilized to convey fresh water from the pumping stations to the reservoirs, and to your hotel room and the restaurants you visit.
You’re aware that a whole lot of exotic movies have been shot in Hawaii, as is the TV series “Lost.” You might correctly assume the most exotic locations would be found on the island of Kauai with its amazing verdure, or the Big Island with its other-world-like terrain.
But imagine you were location scouting for the first “Jurassic Park” film, looking for dense rainforestation; broad, open valleys and rich, green cliff faces through which the producers’ fantastic prehistoric creatures could roam and scamper.
Well, they found exactly what they were looking for on the island of Oahu, less than an hour from Honolulu.
Kualoa Ranch is a 4,000-acre working cattle ranch, spread between steep mountain cliffs and the sea, on the northeastern side of the island. More than just a pretty place, it’s truly a great setting for outdoor recreation, accessible only by horseback, on an all-terrain vehicle or by hiking. And, far from being remote and unattended, it’s one of the ten most popular visitor attractions among all the islands. There are two major areas of the ranch. The northern half includes K`a`a`awa Valley, which contains many of the movie location sites, and the southern half that includes Hakipu`u Valley, the 800 year-old Moli’i fishpond, and Secret Island. If the ranch’s views look familiar, you may have seen them in other movies such as “Windtalkers,” “Pearl Harbor,” “Godzilla,” “Tears of the Sun” or “50 First Dates,” or in other TV shows such as “Hawaii Five-O” or “Magnum P.I.”
The ranch offers one- and two-hour horseback tours, on which riders take different trails beneath the cliffs and overlooking the ocean. Vistas of the famed "Chinaman’s Hat" island and ancient Hawaiian fishponds combine spectacular scenery with the old saying that there’s nothing as good for the inside of a person as the outside of a horse.
Or you may choose to take it all in by navigating an ATV through trails deep into the scenic valleys and to remote areas rarely visited by others. The ranch’s tours go out in all weather, through the dirt and crossing seasonal streams. One- and two- hour tours are available.
Kualoa is one of the most historically significant destinations on Oahu. In ancient times, it was considered sacred land. In 1850, Dr. Gerrit P. Judd purchased the land from King Kamehameha III and the property has remained in the family since. The current family owners strive to be model stewards of the ‘aina (land) by preserving and protecting it from development.
If you’d like to learn more, or to work a visit to this wonderful place into your vacation plans, pick an agent from the Hawaii-Aloha Web site home page, or call 1-800-843-8771.
Until this weekend, all I knew about sake was that it could be ordered either warm or cold in restaurants that serve Asian food. I am still far from an expert, but I have now tasted a full range of sake, from basic to exotic, many available only in Japan. My particular experience is courtesy of the Joy of Sake event at the Honolulu Academy of Arts. This event is interesting for a couple of reasons. First, there are only three: New York, San Francisco and Honolulu. Honolulu is MUCH smaller than either of the other venues, but attracts similar international events not available to mainland cities of its size. The second reason is that it demonstrates how popular sake is here.
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