Book Honolulu attraction tickets

Few American cities carry as much symbolic and geographic weight as Honolulu. Positioned on the south shore of O'ahu, roughly 2,400 miles from the continental United States, it is simultaneously the capital of Hawaii, the most remote major city on earth, and the point where Polynesian culture, American history, and Pacific ecology converge in ways that nowhere else quite replicates. The Ko'olau Range rises sharply to the north, Diamond Head crater anchors the eastern skyline, and the reef-sheltered waters of Mamala Bay define the city's southern edge. That physical setting is not incidental to what visitors do here; it is the entire premise.

Waikiki remains the gravitational centre for first-time arrivals, and with good reason. The strip of reclaimed land between the Ala Wai Canal and the ocean was engineered into a resort district in the early twentieth century, and it has never stopped drawing people. But Waikiki is a starting point rather than a summary. Downtown Honolulu, a short drive west, holds the only royal palace on American soil in 'Iolani Palace, the seat of the Hawaiian monarchy until the kingdom's overthrow in 1893. Chinatown, immediately adjacent, is one of the oldest in the United States and rewards an afternoon of wandering through its covered markets and art galleries. Kaka'ako, further along the waterfront, has become the city's mural district, its warehouse walls covered in large-scale work commissioned through the annual Pow! Wow! Hawaii festival.