Honolulu, United States

Evergreen city guide with quick facts, travel, business, and culture.

United StatesHawaii

Overview

Honolulu is the gateway to Hawai'i and a real city in its own right — but O'ahu rewards visitors who leave Waikiki, and the island's other coasts are an hour away by car.

Waikiki & Surfing

A sheltered beginner beach, century-old surf schools, and easy swimming with Diamond Head closing the view.

Craters & Rainforest Trails

The Diamond Head rim walk, booked ahead, and the cooler waterfall trails in the valleys behind the city.

North Shore & Windward Coast

Surf towns, shrimp trucks, giant winter swell and the green cliff-backed east side, all within an hour.

Museums & Chinatown

The Bishop Museum's Polynesian collections, the art museum, and Chinatown's markets and evening food.

Culture

Eat casually and you eat far better here. Poke is sold by the pound at supermarket and fish-market counters, fresher and cheaper than any restaurant plate. Plate lunch — rice, macaroni salad and something grilled — is the everyday meal, and the Japanese, Korean, Filipino and Portuguese threads in local cooking run much deeper than resort menus suggest. Malasadas are worth a queue, shave ice is the afternoon habit, and Honolulu's ramen is unusually good for an American city. Festivals: Lei Day, 1 May, Merrie Monarch hula week, on the Big Island in spring, Aloha Festivals, in autumn, Honolulu Festival, in spring. Museums: Bishop Museum — Polynesian voyaging and natural history, Honolulu Museum of Art, Pearl Harbor memorial sites and vessels, Iolani Palace, downtown.

Practical Info

Safety: The ocean is the real hazard and it is routinely underestimated: swim only at lifeguarded beaches, read the posted flag warnings, and stay out of winter north-shore surf entirely regardless of experience. Shore break can injure people standing in knee-deep water. Sun is intense at this latitude and reef-safe sunscreen is required by state law. On land, do not leave valuables visible in a parked car at trailheads or beach lots, which is where opportunistic break-ins happen. Language: English, with Hawaiian used in place names, greetings and signage throughout — learning how to pronounce the ʻokina and the vowels is a small courtesy that goes a long way. Currency: The US dollar; cards are universal, and tipping is expected in restaurants, for guides and for hotel staff.
Travel Overview

Honolulu is where almost every Hawai'i trip begins, and the common pattern — land, check into a Waikiki tower, stay within four blocks of it — is what makes people describe the island as overdeveloped. Waikiki is genuinely good at what it does: a sheltered, gently shelving beach that is one of the best places in the world to learn to surf, with Diamond Head's crater closing the view at one end. But O'ahu is small enough to cross in an hour, and the rest of it looks nothing like the strip. The windward coast on the east is green, cliff-backed and quiet; the North Shore is a string of surf towns where the winter waves are enormous and the summer water is flat enough to swim; and the interior holds rainforest valleys with waterfall trails a short drive from downtown. Back in the city itself, Chinatown has the best eating and a serious bar scene, the Bishop Museum is the place to understand Polynesian voyaging, and Pearl Harbor's memorials sit west of downtown and take a planned half-day with timed entry. Food is the underrated pleasure: poke by the pound from a supermarket counter, plate lunch, malasadas, shave ice, and a Japanese, Filipino and Korean influence that runs deeper than the resort menus suggest. Trade winds keep the temperature steady year-round; the difference between seasons is the surf, not the thermometer.

Discover Honolulu

Waikiki is dense, commercial and busy, and it is also a genuinely excellent beginner beach: the reef breaks the swell well offshore, so the waves arrive small and slow, which is why the surf schools clustered along it have taught people to stand up for a century. Take a lesson in the morning when the water is calmest, walk the length of the beach to the Natatorium end where the crowds thin, and use the strip for what it is good at — sunset, casual food, and easy swimming — rather than expecting it to be the whole island.

Frequently asked questions

Not for the city. The bus network is comprehensive and inexpensive and covers Waikiki, downtown, the museums and Pearl Harbor perfectly well, and parking in Waikiki is expensive enough that a permanently-parked hire car is money wasted. What a car unlocks is the rest of O'ahu — the North Shore, the windward coast and the trailheads — so the efficient pattern is to hire one for a day or two mid-trip rather than for the whole stay, and to use buses and walking the rest of the time.

Plan it rather than improvise it. Entry to the main memorial is by timed ticket released in advance, and slots disappear quickly in high season, so book as early as you can. Bags are not allowed and there is a storage facility on site, which adds time. Allow half a day including travel from Waikiki, arrive early in the day, and be aware that the wider complex contains several separately ticketed museums and vessels. It is a memorial site and is treated as such by staff and visitors alike.

Temperatures barely move across the year — the trade winds keep it warm and steady — so the season changes the ocean rather than the weather. Winter brings very large surf to the north shore, which is spectacular to watch and dangerous to swim, while the south side stays calmer; summer reverses it, flattening the north shore into good snorkelling water. Rain falls in short bursts and mostly on the windward side. Peak crowds and prices come with the northern-hemisphere winter holidays and midsummer; spring and autumn are the quieter, cheaper windows.

Diplomatic missions in Honolulu

1 embassy based in this city, grouped by region.