Honolulu is the obvious place for a quick stop to break up the long journey from mainland USA to the South Pacific. We had to stop here anyhow, so why not stay a few days, adjust a few time zones, and just hang out on Waikiki beach?

This is our second visit to Honolulu, and I would not say we are huge fans of the city itself. To us it feels like a ‘sanitized’ version of the tropics. The area all around Waikiki is pretty but antiseptic, sort of like a huge outdoor upscale mall. Restaurants are crazy expensive, yet packed to the gills. Fortunately, the hordes of Japanese tourists here eat on the early side, so the restaurants thin out a tad at our preferred dining times.

Since we ran around seeing the obligatory sights last time we were here (Pearl Harbor really is amazing), we now felt obliged to do nothing more than sit on the beach and practice readjusting to tropical life. We have spent very little time as beach bums since we left Greece and Turkey almost a year ago.

And I’ll admit, Waikiki beach is a stunning spot to do that. I love the bright turquoise water, the smooth sand, and the lush green of Diamond Head rising in the background. We stayed at a classic old hotel, the Royal Hawaiian, whose pink walls, pink rugs, and pink striped bathrobes add a bit of magic to this heavenly spot. I’m now pink, too, but we’ll call that a base. Give me another week, and I hope to have a teeny bit of a tan.

Our last day featured an unexpected little bit of drama. We like to dine sitting at the bar, especially in the US, where it’s more common. You often learn a few things from the bartender or from your neighbors. The bar at the Royal Hawaiian had lovely views and reasonable food, so we had lunch there every day. On that last day I sat next to a friendly young couple who started up a bit of conversation with us. We were soon surprised by just how much the young woman was slurring her words so early in the afternoon. Not 15 minutes later she was slumped lifelessly on top of the bar and had vomited a bit. It was all her colleague could do to get her to stand up and stumble away. We felt quite bad for them both.

That evening we had dinner at a nice steak place, where we snagged a couple more seats at a small bar. Once again the woman next to me tried to strike up a conversation and was obviously pretty smashed. I mostly sat with my back to her, as she tried to engage the bartenders and got mildly obnoxious, at one point informing us all that she was “richer than God,” which apparently meant she was due better treatment. It was a huge relief when she left after 15 minutes or so, as the bartender grumbled, “Three hours I’ve been babysitting her.”

What’s in the water in Honolulu?

The goal is the South Pacific, but first we’re going to stop for a few days in Hawai’i. And if you were going from Michigan to Hawai’i and had a brother in San Francisco, wouldn’t you stop for a few days to break up the trip? Especially if you had something approaching unlimited time (ignoring for the moment existential thoughts about ultimate mortality)? I thought so.

We stayed downtown at the St. Francis, a classic San Francisco landmark, and spent our two days while Mark’s brother John and his wife Alma were working exploring a couple museums. Our first full day we were going to tour the Museum of Modern Art, recently reopened after a three-year renovation, and after confirming online that it opened at 10:00 AM we headed there after breakfast. To our dismay, the museum was closed on Wednesdays, starting that day, explaining why Google didn’t know it yet.

Plan B, then, was to head out to the Legion of Honor, a European art museum built in honor of the fallen soldiers of World War I. It was a six-mile walk out there, pretty much across the entire city from east to west, all in new hiking shoes we’d both just bought. Perhaps not be the smartest thing we’ve ever done but it worked out alright. The walk itself wasn’t that interesting, taking us through kind of boring neighborhoods, but when we got close to the museum we were in beautiful Land’s End Park with great views of the Golden Gate Bridge and the entrance to the San Francisco Bay.

The museum was good, but the modern art museum the next day was spectacular. At $25 each it was the most expensive museum we’ve gone to but it was worth every penny. A huge collection all well presented in a way that you could really learn something about art over the last century. To top it off the museum has a free app available with absolutely great descriptions of probably a couple hundred highlights throughout the seven floors of exhibits. Each entry was interesting, informative, and – crucially – short, rarely exceeding two minutes. There were different people describing the art so it never got too routine. Simply the best museum we’ve been to in our multi-year travels. If you’re ever in San Francisco don’t miss it, even if you think modern art is kind of stupid.

And then we got to spend a little time with John & Alma. One night the four of us went to Al’s Place, what John describes as his new favorite restaurant. We could see why he thinks so highly of it; the food was amazing. Of course, we learned during the meal that it has a Michelin star, so it makes sense it would be somewhere on the “spectacular” spectrum. The next night Alma had an event at Ava’s school, so while she was being a good Mom we went with John, Ava, and Nico to a Wild Sushi, a great little place in their Sunset District neighborhood where we were the only English speakers in our section of the restaurant. That’s always a good sign.

That was the end of our quick trip through the U.S. mainland. From here it’s off to Honolulu for three days – again, largely just to break up the long trip – and then to American Samoa and the South Pacific. We’ve had it with all the ease of hanging out in the States; it’s time for some adventure!

From here on out it’s all art, first from the Legion of Honor, where there was a big Rodin collection to start with.

Now it’s art from the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.