Hi,

I agree with someguy; the beach ( Waikiki) ( assuming your six hour's are during daylight!! :D ) would be good- even walking down Waikiki and looking at the hotels would be fun ( if your six hours are in the evening then a walk would still be a good idea)

Remember to leave enough time to get back to the airport ( do any of the lounges have showers?)

Enjoy HNL!

Regards

TBS

Take a bus to Waikiki. Shop, walk along the beach, watch tourists.

Or, rent a car. You have enough time to drive around the island. Swim at Lanikai beach or watch the surfers at Waimea beach.

Walk out the front door and pick up a rental car. Pre-reserve your flavour of choice so you dont get the 'walk up' shaft.

A convertriple sounds nice. :D

You really don't have 6 hours. You have about 3 1/2 - 4, and if it's during rush hour, you can just forget about driving or taking a bus to Waikiki. You'll spend a good 45 minutes sitting in traffic. You definitely do not have time to get to Waimea Bay and back.

Your best bet - drive the other way and see if you can get yourself to the Marriott Ihilani and spend the time there.

It's a beautiful man made beach and the hotel is quite nice. Much nicer than the president's club.

Take a cab to the Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor and then walk over to the Bowfin museum. From there cab it ot bus it to ChinaTown and eat anything you don't recgnize

A different idea
 

If this is your first visit then I would head for the Arizona memorial. Yes there are some incredible beaches, but there are beaches other places too, the Arizona is a can't miss chance to remember and honor the past. It will choke you up. (Forgive me, I typed this assuming you are from the USA, if not, it is still worthwhile but maybe not be as clear cut of a decision.)

My only visit to Hawaii came on an 8 hour lay over, timed in the middle of the day, we rented a car, visited the Arizona, drove by Aloha stadium, out to Diamond Head and back. It felt like we crammed 2 days into 8 hours. I'm coming back this summer for a week, and I can't wait.

Have a meal at a great restaurant; we hit Alan Wong's on our way home from our honeymoon. 6 hours isn't all that much since you'll have to go through agricultural screening again and for Hawaii to mainland flights (assuming this is what you're doing) they want you there a good deal ahead of time (somewhat like int'l).

I'm in a similar situation with a 14hr layover in HNL... 7am into HNL, 10pm departure to LAX.

Any suggestions where there is a cafe with free wifi access? I will be taking the bus. Is there like a day bus pass for unlimited travel?

There's a nice thread on the topic, if a wee bit dated, in the FAQ at the top of this forum

http://www.flyertalk.com/forum/showp...17&postcount=4

You can get free wifi access sitting outside of the CO Presidents Club or the Aloha Ali'i Club in the interisland terminal.

There is a little restaurant center on Nimitz near the airport (don't remember the name, but it has an Aloha sushi, a chinese place, a Subway, etc.) and I could pick up someone's free signal there :)

Long Layover in HNL - reasonable day?
 

On our way back from Micronesia we have an ~20 hour layover in HNL.
Arr 02:30am Dep. 10:40pm. We will be there on a Monday.

We plan to grab a cheap hotel room and a few hours of sleep. Then visiting the USS Arizona in the morning and going to Hanauma Bay for the afternoon. Then find some nice place for dinner before heading to the airport.

Rather than use shuttles my thought is to get a car for the day and visit a few sties. My thinking is a car rather than shuttles because we will have a couple of bags to deal with and leaving them at a hotel to retrive latter seems like a hassle and the cost of the car will probably be less than using shuttles. But then again what are the chances of a car clout happening? Parking at the Arizona I understand is reasonable and Hanauma limited. I assume this is true everyday.

So thoughts on the car thing versus shuttles? Or perhaps some other nice area to visit for the afternoon.

TIA

it would probably be better to rent a car vs shuttle service. shuttle service to pearl harbor would cost $5/head o/w and to hanauma from waikiki would probably cost arount $10/head o/w. i'm sure you could get a car for around $30/day. i would probably suggest going to hanauma bay in the morning than visiting pearl harbor later. you are correct that hanauma bay gets very crowded and i'm sure parking would be almost impossible in the afternoon there.

You can always try public transportation, but if you can get a car for under 30, you'll be better off.

The bus takes about 10 minutes from HNL to Pearl Harbor, and about 1.5 hrs (with a transfer) to Hanauma Bay.

Will the hotel room be close to the airport or somewhere where you can rent a car? Most car rental counters are closed past midnight and reopen early in the morning--a consideration you might want to take into account.

For that short amount of time, you're better off with a car. There's a bunch of discount codes you can find over on the respective car rental forums that'll also help to lower the cost.

Thanks everyone for the tips. Seems that only Hertz is open at that hour. So we either need to get a hotel next to airport with a free shuttle and grab the car in the morning or get a car from Hertz. I given the hour I think the hotel next to airport and then leave in the morning.

The least wait for Pearl Harbor is getting there about 45 minutes before it opens. Given your schedule, that probably doesn't make sense. If I had your schedule, I'd check into a hotel, get a few good hours of sleep, then drive to Diamond Head and stretch my legs to the summit. After that, head to Pearl Harbor. In February, we were first in line at Pearl Harbor. That was good. The bad thing was doing Diamond Head immediately after. It was only 9 or 9:30 AM, but the Diamond Head trail became a traffic jam with all the busloads of foriegn tourists. It would have been far more enjoyable if I beat the crowd. I'm sorry for all this if you're not interested in Daimond Head.