We then climbed stairs back up to the main deck (there are many decks below the first deck, but they are not open to the public), where we toured some of the officer's quarters, then headed outside to explore a bit of the superstructure, bristling with all manner of guns and missiles. We spotted a restoration crew doing some deck replacement work - part of a long and expensive effort to maintain and restore this huge ship.
We finished off with a poke-around of the bridge area (which was composed of an open bridge on top, a navigating bridge with lots of windows, and a lower armored bridge with narrow slits for outside viewing. We had been walking around the ship for over an hour and half and still we had only seen a fraction of it. Quite an amazing seaborne fortress/city the Iowa-class battleship is!
Hungry from all of our touring, we disembarked and headed over to a very quaint WWII-era styled 'Pearl Canteen' for lunch. Set in what looked like a converted half-circular corrugated metal aircraft hangar, the canteen served up a decently tasty standard diner fare - i.e. burgers and such.
If you are interested in reading more about our visits to the USS Bowfin and USS Missouri, along with extra pictures not in this main narrative,
please click here.
There is one more main attraction at Pearl Harbour - the Pacific Aviation Museum - but we had all agreed that seeing three of the four historic military attractions was enough, especially considering that we wanted to spend some time exploring the civilian side of Hawai'i in downtown Honolulu. So, after finishing our Pearl Canteen burgers, we boarded the shuttle bus back to the visitor center, then headed back to Honolulu. After a quick stop back at the Pagoda Hotel, we set off for a walk of the heart of downtown Honolulu, to see what could be seen.