Where in the World are Dave and Elizabeth?

View of Honolulu from Diamond Head  We've hit some milestones! When we visited Hilo, we completed the first leg of this 128 day journey.  In Honolulu, several people disembarked to make their way home, while others came on board for the next part of the voyage.  Most of us are in for the long haul, We are beginning another long stretch of the Pacific.  It will take us 8 days to get to our next stop --Guam. We went back an hour last night and are going back an hour tonight.  We will cross the International Date Line on the 13th. Yesterday, in Honolulu, I had a craving for Chik Fil A and real southern tea.  We headed for the nearby mall, which turned out to be the largest outdoor mall in the US.  The food court alone was overwhelming, with many yummy smelling Asian inspired chains I had never encountered.  But, we got our taste of the Chik while we had a chance. I got a kick out of the Mahalo sign. That’s something you don’t see in Tennessee Chik Fi...

Part 1 How do you choose which botanical garden to go to in a city full of them?  We ended up at Foster Gardens, a beautiful oasis inside ultra urban Honolulu. The grounds were originally part of an estate owned by the Foster family, who collected plants and landscaped beds, walkways, etc. Now, it all belongs to the city, who has opened it to the public for free. This is a Bo tree or Bodhi tree.   Buddhists revere it as they believe that the Buddha reached enlightenment while meditating under this kind of tree. This is not a Buddhist garden, but it does have a few elements that reflect the Buddhist community in Honolulu.  This statue of Buddha is in honor of the many Japanese immigrants in Honolulu.  You probably know that Buddhism is a reform movement of Hinduism, and that Buddhism, Hinduism, Jainism, and certain elements of Sikhism had their origin in the yoga scriptures. Buddhism, like yoga, has as its goal to escape Samsara.  Have you thought about what the ...