Day 7, Thursday, February 14; Visit Shangri La

At 3am and 5am we received loud reverse-911 alerts on our cell phone that there was a flash flood warning for the next 3 hours. There were strong thunderstorms in the morning. When we left around 9:30, there were deep puddles on the road but not enough to be a problem.

The tour of Shangri La starts at the Honolulu Art Museum with a shuttle back and forth. There is public parking only a block from the museum but it took us 30 minutes to get there due to a major accident blocking one road, many one-way streets and no left turn signs. The GPS told at one point told us to make a u-turn on a 6-lane highway in the center of Honolulu but miraculously, I managed to do it.

Shangri La was created as a second home for Doris Duke, the only heir of the Duke tobacco fortune. She was married and divorced twice and had no children so she decided to leave it as an Islamic art museum. On her honeymoon in 1934, she traveled extensively in Asia and the orient, going through Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Syria and Turkey, developing a love for the art that she saw. She had her house built on a point on the ocean looking back toward Diamond Head. The house was built in Islamic style, with no windows on the public side but large open spaces inside, looking out on gardens, the ocean and the mountains.

When we arrived, her Cadillac convertible from the late 1950s was parked outside under a huge Banyon tree that had been planted in 1937. It was somewhat ironic that our docent / tour guide was from Tajikistan and spoke English as a second (actually fourth) language. It is hard to describe the inside as anything other than amazing with most of the walls covered with mosaics and religious art tiles with Islamic scriptures. She even out-bid the Metropolitan Museum in NY for one extremely rare piece.

Afterwards we had a late lunch / early dinner at the Hilton Hawaiian Village Waikiki Beach, looking out over the beach and the ocean. We then took the scenic route back along the east end of Oahu.

Our route

Doris Duke Cadillac

Shangri La interior courtyard with wall mosaics

Shangri La guest cottage with Diamond Head in background



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