Monday: History.

Since none of the palaces were open yesterday, seeing them was the plan for the day.

Iolani Palace.

Except we probably should have planned a bit more, as arriving at the palace at 11:30 meant we had to wait for the 12:15 tour.  I'm not totally sure why they have strict times for the tours, as they're entirely self guided, but I guess they probably have a reason other than crowd control.

So, side plan:

Aliiolani Hale.

Which is directly across the street from the palace, and is still the location of the Supreme Court of Hawaii.  They also have a small museum about the history of the judicial system in Hawaii.  It's pretty cool.

A courtroom as it was in 1913.

A super cool clock.

A tiny model of downtown in the late 1800s.

I liked the center sign.

So yeah, I thought it was pretty cool.  I didn't read everything, but that's how it goes sometimes.

Hale Koa, where you buy tickets for the palace, with downtown in the background.

The tour has changed since last time, if I remember correctly.  I just went back to check my blog, and I never put together a proper post for any of my previous visits.  I have sorted out the parking situation, which is good (that pink-ish building on the left in the previous picture).  In any case, when it's time for your tour, you go and pick up headphones and a player (which is basically a phone in a case), and they make you put on booties to cover your shoes so everything stays clean.  Not a problem.  Also no gum.  Whoops.

The player shows you where to go, and tells the story, and beeps when it's time to pay attention so you can see where to go again.  It also has some picture galleries to help identify portraits and things, given the room.

The staircase.

It was the first royal residence to have electric lights.  There are no switches anywhere in the palace, as the king would simply tell the lighting and electricity engineer what time he wanted particular rooms turned on or off.  Simple.

Crowns.

I took a lot of pictures to make mosaics, and then decided I didn't feel like making mosaics today.

The king's library.

The story turns upstairs, as that's where Liliuokalani was imprisoned after the overthrow.

The statehouse from the second floor windows.

I should probably visit more often than "almost never."

Touching harms artifacts.

The tour continues into the basement, but without the booties or headphones.  That's mostly jewelry and photos of the restoration process.  I didn't realize they basically had to rebuild the entire place after the state moved out in the 1960s.  I also didn't realize that some moron back then thought that putting temporary offices on the veranda was a good idea.  That was kind of a horrifying picture.

Then lunch, again at Nico's, although I didn't take any pictures.  I should remember that when I get the ahi catch of the day that I should specify "super rare," because anything else is dry and not so great.

The last thing to accomplish today was to go to Queen Emma's Summer Palace.  This has also changed tours since last time I visited.  The new docents are different than before, and apparently are doing tours based more on research than in the past.  They also have a somewhat different view of King Kalakaua than is present at Iolani Palace.  They've also switched to booties, and I think they probably need to come up with a headset tour as well.  Doing so would allow them to present a clear story based tour, as this tour was not exactly what I would call "clear" or "story based."  That's not necessarily strictly required, but being thrown a bunch of facts and dates and lineages seemingly at random isn't the best way to teach things.

This was the only picture I took.

Then we went back to Waikiki, I played Pokemon Go with the Plus for an hour or so, used up all my regular Pokeballs and caught 54 largely trash Pokemon.  After that, I returned home to watch a decent enough episode of Supergirl that ended with Mr. Mxyzptlk showing up, so I guess the writers know exactly what I'm not expecting and how to supply it.  Let me now explicitly state that I am not expecting Streaky the Supercat or Comet the Superhorse.

• Dog doesn't quite get security.
• This is a great photo, and the explanation behind it is equally great.
• Pretty Dang Weasel.
• I did not know Atsuko Nishida designed Pikachu.
• These are only available in size "S", and that explains why I have not ordered a pair of Gengar glasses from Japan.
• OMG this tonkatsu place looks delicious.  I don't think this is the same restaurant as the one I ate at the Skytree, but the setup and style look the same.
• For future easy searching, the Alameda police blotter to see what crime is happening there.  That's probably a sufficient set of words so I can find this again with the search box.

Oh, it's been twenty four days before the first person had to resign in shame from the current disaster.