HONOLULU: We Show You What It Cost Us To Visit Paradise - Is It Worth It?

We have arrived at Honolulu at the airport and now we've got to get a ride to the hotel. Hey are you dressed for Hawaii? Look at you look like you're dressed for North Dakota. Now while here in Hawaii we are staying at the Embassy Suites on Waikiki Beach. So we checked in over there. Heading up to our room now. There's Nicole way up ahead of me. We'll show you the room first. Now we're in a corner room. Nicole's already out on the balcony. Sorry. Yeah there's two balconies actually. Nice view. What do we got on this balcony? What are we looking at? Oh yeah yeah there's a swimming pool for this hotel. All right let's check out the bedroom real quick. It's pretty roomy in the balcony or you can access the balcony from the this room as well and the bathroom. Yeah your typical bathroom. So there it is guys. The room. All right everyone I am in Honolulu, Hawaii. A really interesting city. This is a city crammed full of amazing unique architecture. I'm not even going to try to show you all of it. It would take a series of videos to do that but I am going to show you my favorites including this one. This is the Aloha Tower. It is a lighthouse built in 1926. This building by Hawaiians is considered one of the crown jewels of the city and in fact during Pearl Harbor it was fiercely defended by the Hawaiian U.S. Coast Guard. That's how important it is to them. It is an architectural style called Hawaiian Gothic. Hawaii has its own unique architecture but in some of the buildings they fused in a little bit of the more traditional architectural styles of the time and they fused in a little gothic with this one. It surely is beautiful isn't it? Let's walk up a little closer. Yeah here I am up close at a statue of a Hawaiian lady right out the front of it. It is magnificent. Looks like it's closed off right now. It's a Saturday morning and it's very quiet here. There was a sign that said don't come here because there's a private event but I don't see anything happening to you. Anyway you can see the water there of the bay. Well in this direction is downtown Honolulu and yes Honolulu has a downtown with skyscrapers like a regular downtown. Now when you come to Honolulu the tall hotels that are everywhere really dwarf the downtown but there is a downtown here. You know we're staying in Waikiki Beach. We could be showing you that right now but doesn't everybody who come to Hawaii show that? I'm going to show you guys something a little different. Downtown Honolulu. Like I said it's Saturday so it's a bit quiet. Trust me this is the only place in Honolulu where it is quiet right now. I rented a car and just driving over here it was an adventure. Holy cow the traffic here is bad. I've driven in Manhattan in New York. It's easier to drive there than it is here. There's no parking anywhere. Oh my god I got lucky. One of the buildings I'm going to show you is about 10 minutes walk. I managed to get lucky and get a parking spot there but we'll get to it shortly. I want to take you through downtown Honolulu give you some numbers check out a few more amazing buildings. Of course Nicole and I will be going to Pearl Harbor and visiting the capital. Get our books stamped. I'm going to go to a luau. Luau is that how you say it? Let me say it right. Luau and of course we're going to have some traditional Hawaiian food. All right so that's all coming up but let's get into downtown here and I'll give you some numbers first. Downtown Honolulu is actually pretty impressive. Again it's calm here today. It's nice. Waikiki beach where we're staying. It is a zoo. Hordes of people. I guess I'm just getting old because I like things calm and relaxing. I would guess downtown's a lot busier during the week but I got it to myself today and I like that. It's quite beautiful. Now here's some info. Honolulu is Hawaiian for sheltered harbor. Honolulu is unincorporated. Yeah it's an unincorporated city located within the county of Honolulu and the county administers all the city services. 70 percent of the state's population lives here in Honolulu. Now as you can well guess tourism is the major industry here to the tune of 10 billion dollars a year. Another interesting fact about Honolulu. This is the most remote major city in the world. In fact Hawaii has its own time zone. I believe San Francisco is the closest city to Honolulu. Somewhere around 28, 29 hundred miles away. So population. There's 350,000 people here in Honolulu. The county of Honolulu has right at a million people. All right so I'm going to get across the street and I'll tell you some more as I show you life in Honolulu. Oh we got some excitement. Something's happening. All right median age here 43 years old. A little bit older than the U.S. which is 39. Gender breakdown 50-50. Now here's the ethnic breakdown. Pretty interesting. 51 percent Asian. 16 percent white. Eight percent Pacific Islander. I thought that would have been a lot higher. Eight percent Hispanic. Honestly I thought that would be a little bit lower. Two percent black. Last 15 percent is mixed race or other. It's really a pretty impressive downtown. Kind of an unexpected. Median household income $82,006 a year. That's $15.77 a week. They're going to need it here. This is the most expensive place in the U.S. to live in. Everything is expensive here except surprisingly clothing or at least the clothing that we've been buying here. You know we bought some bikinis for Nicole and I got some more swim trunks and t-shirts and stuff. It's pretty cheap. They have these stores called ABC stores. They are everywhere in Waikiki, along the beach and streets near. I mean one every block. Here's a little footage of one. People have been to Hawaii probably know exactly what I'm talking about. Yeah they're everywhere. Anyway what's that mean for poverty? This being the most expensive place to live in. It's actually not too bad. 12.4 percent overall. School-aged children 17 percent. Folk 65 and older 10 percent. So those are all a little bit lower than the U.S. But here's the cost of living. You ready? Here's the index. 185. That's up there isn't it? It's almost twice more expensive to live here than the rest of the U.S. Housing see that 216 percent higher. Wow. So what's that mean for median home value? 818,700. So crime. What's crime like in Honolulu? It's a little high. Latest numbers 2832 crimes per 100k. That compares to the U.S. 2324. So yeah a little bit higher than the U.S. overall. It's not out of sight high but they do have a little bit of crime here. Well I'm making my way to some really interesting buildings that I want to show you. They're right up here. So let's go check them out. All right guys so this is downtown Honolulu. I'm kind of on the edge of it. Pearl Harbor is that way. Like I said we'll go there in a bit. And if you swing around this way the hotel zone and Waikiki beach is over in that direction. The building I'm at is I would say the crown jewel for the entire state. This is Iolani Palace. Am I pronouncing that right? Here's the spelling down below. This building was built in 1879. It was the home of the king and queen of Hawaii. This was their palace. In 1893 it became the headquarters of the territory of Hawaii and for a time it was the state's capital building. So just to let you know this is the only building in the entire United States that was once the home of royalty. Incredible huh? The architecture of this building is unique to anywhere else on earth. It's called American Florentine. It's a mix of Italianate, ancient Rome, ancient Greece with Hawaiian architecture. And yes Hawaii has their own architecture all mixed in making this one of the most unique buildings on earth. I'd like to go in but it's closed today. Of course it's on the national register. It is an incredible building. Across the street there's a couple more incredible buildings. I'm going to show you those right now. I'm here on the palace grounds. There are some homeless here asleep on the grounds. I was interested to see that. You know I guess if I was to find myself homeless Hawaii would be the best place for that right? Interesting. This is the territorial building. It is the site of numerous government agencies for the county of Honolulu. It was built in 1926. It's classical revival. You can see the columns there. Ancient Greece and Rome. Now next to it is a building called the, let me try to pronounce it, Eliolani Hale. Here's the spelling. A little bit tough for my Texas tongue. This building was built in 1928. Formerly the seat of government for the kingdom of Hawaii. It is now where the Hawaii state supreme court resides. It is an extraordinarily beautiful building. You can see why Hawaii is proud of it. And it has a statue of the former king in front of it. Let's take a look at it shall we? There he is. Let me zoom in. I can't get on the grass here. It says don't get on the grass. So I will not do that. Isn't that something? That is amazing. Let me give you a second to take it all in. Beautiful building. Now this is, well it's this church. I'm not even going to try that word. It is, well in Hawaii they call it the Westminster Abbey of Hawaii. I've been to Westminster Abbey in London. Not sure if it compares to that, but it is beautiful. This was built in 1840. Now tucked in some of the skyscrapers of downtown Honolulu is a building over here that I think you should see. Found this beautiful little walkway. It is a church. It's called the Cathedral Basilica of Our Lady of Peace. Yeah it's right here. It was built in 1843. It's one of the oldest catholic churches in the United States. Yeah this is it right here. That's Romanesque architecture. I needed to pick us up some stuff at Walmart and I saw there was one here in the city and I was thinking to myself as I drove here where on earth is there going to be a parking lot big enough for Walmart? Because it is very crowded here. And then you get here and you see what they did. They built the parking lot on a big deck above the rest of the city and Walmart's below me. Isn't that something? I mean what a town. Look at all these buildings. Well I am in residential Honolulu. You know I always like to show you guys what a residential street or two looks like. I just left the hotel and headed straight out. I want to say north. No rhyme or reason to it. It's pretty nice here isn't it? Those houses way up there. Well that's pretty awesome isn't it? The houses on the hills here. I see there's Waikiki Beach there in the distance. Not much in the way of front yards. Basically the driveways dominate. Well I mean look at that teeny yard there. They just don't really have much in the way of yards. At least not in this part of town. Huh that's the biggest yard I've seen so far. A lot of it's just like this. And see the entrance to the house is right there to the side. Kind of claustrophobic isn't it? I mean no yards at all. I don't know if I would personally like that. I like to have a bit of a yard. I don't know about you guys. Interesting. Definitely something different isn't it? You can see the hotels of Waikiki Beach that way. Just looking around came across this mural. It's pretty awesome looking. Is that Hawaiian Betty Boop? Sure looks like it doesn't it? Oh we got some graffiti here. Not sure if you would call that artwork. Got some trash on the ground. Honolulu is not perfect that's for sure. As you know this is not a travel brochure type travel channel. I'm not just going to show you the fancy nice places. I want to show you places like this that exist in these towns. They sure do here in Honolulu. What is this? It says Ota Water Factory. I wonder what that was. Yeah it's pretty interesting huh? A lot of security cam cameras. You know signs everywhere here. Makes you wonder what the crime is like. To give you guys an idea where I'm at. I'm just off or I'm on Cully Street. If you want to look it up in Google Maps. Homes tucked in here. Just a couple little houses right there. There's a canal here. Kind of separates the rest of the separates Waikiki Beach area from the rest of the city. You see quite a few homeless here. Ma'am here you go. Yeah that's about the last spot you're going to see homeless. You don't really see it in this part of the city over here. Yeah so here's the canal. Some pretty amazing modern architecture here in this part of the city. Anyhow I'm going to try to roust Nicole out of bed now. Not an easy thing to do. She's one of those people that sleeps 10 hours a day. I'm just the opposite. I sleep five or six. But you know it works for us. Kind of reminds me of Key West Florida because there are chickens and roosters running around all over the place. Not just loose. Looks like we got a little family here. Got some chicks following their mom. You see that? That's pretty nice isn't it? All right we are at Pearl Harbor. This is one of the anchors of the USS Arizona which was sunk during the attack. Yeah this is one of three anchors apparently. Yeah we're gonna take a look around here. See a few things. Yeah absolutely. I've always wanted to come here. By the way uh see Nicole's little sundress we bought? What do you think? Hawaiian like? Yeah it's really cheap. It was only what was it like 30 bucks? Something like that yeah. Yeah uh I can't believe how inexpensive the clothing is when everything else is so expensive. But anyway we got like three of these for her because they look nice on her don't they? What do you guys Anyway enough of that. We're going to check out some sites here at Pearl Harbor. Putting this statue right here and see what all we can see. We are about to board a small boat and head over to the USS Arizona Memorial Cemetery. It's over there across the water. All right we're out on the memorial for the USS Arizona. You can see Hawaii there. This is the well this is Pearl Harbor. You can imagine what it looked like back in December 41. Being rained. Bombs and fire everywhere. And here the ship went down the USS Arizona. There are 900 sailors on board. They all died. Yeah that's the ship right there I believe. Right below us. Now the USS Arizona of course. The memorial here. It's all the names on it. I'm on the other side of the memorial. See a lot of the ships over there. It's still a naval base. There's a piece of the Arizona right there. A little bit above water. Yeah it's right there below us. It's kind of an amazing thing being here. Read about it all your life you know. All of us have. But to be actually here at Pearl Harbor. It's sobering. Now here's a map of the ship that's underneath us right now. This is the memorial. We're standing in right now. This kind of straddles the ship. Yeah I just looked at the map because I was wondering what this here was. This was one of the gun turrets on the ship that's still above water. Here's a quick picture of the exterior of this memorial. You've probably seen it in pictures before. And then here we are inside it. Now we're getting ready to go get back on the boat. All right we are at the capitol building of Hawaii. The state capitol. But we want to show you these trees first that are right outside it. Pretty incredible aren't they? Yeah I mean are they indigenous to here? Because I've never seen a tree like this before. They form like a genuine canopy over the area. Isn't that something? Yeah but it's just it's really strange looking. It looks like the tree is like kind of melting. Yeah. And it dripped like these smaller trees. I don't I don't know how else to put it. How else to describe it. Anyway they're behind this palace. The Aeoliani Palace. Residence of the former king and queen. That's beautiful. Yeah and of course there's downtown Honolulu right there. But we are here to see the capitol. Yes we are. So we're gonna head that way right now. There's a rooster. Yeah he doesn't seem scared of me at all. Hey fella. And outside the capitol building they have a statue of the former queen of Hawaii. I showed you the former king earlier in the video. He's uh over this way. It's just across the street. I'm sure I'm gonna butcher this but I'm gonna give it a try. Could be. There she is the regal queen. She looks regal doesn't she? Of course she does because look what she's wearing. Yeah. Anyway here's the capitol. Let's go check it out. Now this is the building. I just I really don't know what to say about it. It is certainly different than any capitol building we have ever been to. They are doing some work on it. Obviously you got all this all these barriers built up around the grounds. But in any case we're going to go inside take a look a little bit of a look around get her passport book stamped. I will show you this statue of father Damien first. He was a catholic priest that came here in the mid-1800s and was known for working with people that had leprosy here. They had an outbreak. 16 years he comforted them knowing that you know when they died they would go to heaven as per the catholic way. He himself died of leprosy among those people after 16 years of doing that. So he is very highly regarded here in Hawaii as a historical figure. It is an interesting look. They've got a big opening instead of a not a dome a rotunda. I guess you could say their rotunda is the open sky. This is the building. This is where the house operates there and then the senate works from there. I'm guessing the governor's office and all the rest of the offices for the state are up there. Let's go check it out. Looks like we have to go through some security here to do that. So let's go. We are up on the fourth floor now and wow it's just open to the elements. I do too. Yeah there's no glass here like everything's just open. I gotta admit I was well I was thinking I don't know if what I thought about this capitol building initially but it's really grown on me now. I'm getting to where I kind of like it a lot. I like all this. I think it reflects the fact that it's open. Yeah I do. I think it really reflects the state. Of course in the really nice weather. You couldn't do this in North Dakota for instance but here in Hawaii yeah you can do this. This gentleman here is going to stamp her book. So here we go. Perfect. There we go. It's beautiful. Thank you. There it is. Cool. Another one done. Thank you sir. Now we are on the fifth floor. The top floor. The executive floor. The executive floor. Yes it is. And this is where the governor's office is. Aloha. Office of the governor. That looks pretty grand doesn't it? Got a big deck over here. Let's take a quick look shall we? Sure. We are on the top floor of the capitol building on this big deck here. Nice view of Honolulu. I'll do a slow pan around. Give you a good look. That is awesome isn't it? Yeah Hawaii itself is beautiful. Look how beautiful it is. It really is. It's gorgeous. Let's go see um yeah let's go see the other side over there real quick. This is downtown Honolulu. This is the business district right here and if you look right there that is the palace I showed you guys earlier and you can see the ocean in the distance I'm thinking Pacific Ocean and then you start hitting the hotel zone in this direction and uh Waikiki beach is straight that way. Can you see our hotel I don't think you can see our hotel but they're uh you know that range of high-rise hotels and apartment buildings huge. This city's got to be one of the top five in the U.S. in terms of skyscrapers. They're just everywhere here. So here's this palace I showed you guys earlier in the video and then there is the capitol building. We just walked by this building. I didn't really see any information about it online but that is fascinating looking. That looks like something straight out of medieval Europe like a castle or fort that kind of thing. Anyway here's the uh the placard. It's built in 1870 during the reign of King Kamahamaha used by the royal household guards until the overthrow of the monarchy in 1893. When I looked at it I thought I thought of the Knights of Templar. It looks like something the Knights Templar would use. Who knew Hawaii was so interesting? What'd you say? I knew it. We are at Waikiki beach. A quick obligatory shot of the beach because it's one of the most popular in the world. One of the most famous. So we at least got to show a quick shot of it to you guys and there's Nicole playing in the water. You think the water is chilly? A little bit chilly. It's not really. It feels pretty good. She just gets cold easily. Whatever. Whatever is right. Anyway yeah it's a beautiful beach. All right everyone today is going to be a pool day. We're going to catch some rays, work on our tans, have a drink and that's just about going to be the extent of it. Isn't that right Nicole? Are you talking to me? I was talking to you. They have an interesting food item that they eat here in Hawaii that I'd never heard of before. It's called musubi. Spam musubi. It's spam with formed rice and that is seaweed wrapped around it and a lot of restaurants here sell it. This is a musubi shop. I think I'm pronouncing that right. Hey man you got to try it. So I'm going to grab one and let's check it out. All right I have a plain musubi. So I'm going to sit over here and Nicole's going to drink her Starbucks coffee because she won't try it. This is spam and that's rice underneath and this is seaweed and it's made in some container that forms the rice like this. Anyway like I said this is served all over the island so here goes. You sure you don't want to try some? I am quite positive. I mean that is Starbucks coffee. You can get that anywhere. This is musubi. You can only get this here. You don't want to try something local? You know what they shouldn't have told me that that was spam on top. Had I not had I not known it was spam I probably would have tried it. You can tell that's spam. All right here goes. Here goes a bite. Hmm well I gotta say it's not bad. Yeah I like spam though. Yeah no it's pretty good. Yeah I'm gonna eat this whole thing. We're at a restaurant in the hotel across the street that has Hawaiian food. Here's the name of it. Yeah that's the name of it. I have no idea if I'm pronouncing it correctly or not so you'll have to you'll have to correct me yourselves. Well we know they have actual Hawaiian food so that's why we're here. That's what counts. That's what counts and so we got my double jacket coat. Nick's got a glass of wine and we're going to figure out what we're going to order. All right guys our entrees are here and we are both having Hawaiian dishes. I'm having kalua pork cabbage and sweet onions. So this is shredded Hawaiian pork, pan-seared locally grown cabbage, some sweet Maui onions and tomato relish with white rice and Nicole who I'm proud of is having a local dish as well. Actually it's a it's ferikake ahi tuna so it's going to be an ahi steak with ferikake and teriyaki sauce over steamed rice and stir-fried vegetables and then it has ginger and a garlic aioli on it. Yeah and it smells amazing. Yeah they look good don't they? Well let's see how they taste. Mine is incredibly good. This is one of the best things I have ever eaten out on the road and videoed for you guys. It is. This is incredible. Wow. Yeah. I think Hawaii. That's pretty high praise there hun. I'm thinking Hawaiian food might be my new second favorite kind of food now. Your second favorite? Yeah. No no no go ahead and take it. Pork is very tender, lots of cabbage. I love cabbage and then do the rice and they call this a tomato relish but it tastes suspiciously like pico de gallo but it's it's really good. It's fantastic. This is a really good dinner. How's your ahi? It's very very good. Apparently the ferikake, again I don't know if I'm saying it right, but that's the seasoning on the ahi steak and it's really really very good. I love this seasoning. It's amazing. Of course I have to take the ginger off because I'm not crazy about it and the cauliflower. I'm not crazy about that but the rest of it is so so good. Like the tuna steak is nice and moist. The veggies are amazing. You can't go wrong with stir-fried veggies and even the rice is Yeah it's good food here at this place. We're at the Outrigger Hotel. It's a restaurant in the bottom floor across the street from our hotel. We've ordered dessert and it is here. It is a caramelized pineapple creme brulee. So it's a sweet Hawaiian pineapple with vanilla bean custard in a pineapple bowl. How cool is that? I like that presentation. And then it is filled on the inside with caramelized pineapple and whipped cream on top with some strawberry. I can't wait to dig in. That looks pretty fantastic doesn't it? Yes. That is a good presentation. I like that. I'm ready to dig in. All right let's do it. All right. It's pretty freaking awesome guys. Oh god it is so very good. It's bliss. Yeah if you dig down in the bottom there's chunks of pineapple there that have been caramelized. Oh my goodness yeah so so very good. This is a great dessert. All right guys here's the check. $120.21. That's not bad. Not when you're out in a vacationy spot. That's not bad at all. Well in an expensive place like Hawaii yes this is probably pretty good. That's what I meant. In a vacationy spot. We didn't have any appetizers. Still $120. A couple of cocktails and we had an amazing dessert. Yeah amazing dessert for sure. All right so there it is guys. There's the tab. Well I'm out on world famous Waikiki Beach. You guys are probably wondering how much does this cost? That's a good question. The answer is very expensive. This is definitely the most expensive place we've ever been to. Here's the flights. $27.65. Round trip to Dallas. Back and forth. We flew non-stop both ways or that's what we're doing. Eight hour flights. It's pretty long. Here is the hotel. $4,811. See that resort fee for $330. Yeah it's pretty ridiculous. Just add it in you know. So total $7,576. Yeah that's um we're here for seven nights. It's over a thousand a day. That's not counting eating you know cab rides. It was an $80 cab ride including tip. From the airport. I rented a car for three days. That was $500. Like I said we ate out a little bit. Not a whole lot. We got some sandwiches and things from those ABC stores that are everywhere here. And our room had a little refrigerator and a microwave. So that part wasn't too bad. But anyway yeah. Yeah there it is guys. That's how much it cost. All right everyone. That will be the end of this video. Up next I'm going to head away from Honolulu to some of the small towns that dot the island. I've always wanted to see that. Should be interesting. So that's coming up next. I hope you come along and well I will see you there.