United States · Hawaii
Honolulu
The birthplace of modern surfing, the only royal palace on American soil and a rainforest waterfall all sit within half an hour of the same stretch of beach.
Honolulu is the only real city in the middle of the Pacific, a state capital of glass towers and plantation-era side streets wrapped around Waikiki, the beach that taught the world to surf. It carries three histories at once: a Hawaiian kingdom whose palace still stands and whose last queen was deposed by force, a plantation society that drew workers from China, Japan, Portugal, Korea and the Philippines and left the food to prove it, and Pearl Harbor, whose bombing pulled the United States into the Second World War. Behind the hotel wall the island climbs into fluted green ridges within twenty minutes of the sand, which is the part first-time visitors never expect.
Suggested stay
4–7 days
Language
English
Currency
USD
Timezone
UTC-10
Why you'll love Honolulu
Surfing's home long, slow, forgiving waves break a quarter of a mile out from the city beach, which is why the sport was revived here and why it is still the easiest place in the world to stand up for the first time
A real kingdom Hawaii was an internationally recognised monarchy with a palace, a throne and a queen overthrown by force, and the city keeps that history in plain sight rather than as a footnote to statehood
Plantation food a century of sugar and pineapple labour from across Asia and Portugal left a way of eating found nowhere else, from raw fish bowls to fried sugared dough to a rice-and-two-scoops plate
Green ridges the mountains start where the suburbs stop, so a rainforest waterfall, a crater rim or a cliff lookout over the windward coast is a short drive from a hotel towel
Best time to visit
all year
27-32° days
21.305° N, 157.856° W
UTC-10 · Pacific/Honolulu
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Weather & when to go to Honolulu
Month by month: typical highs and lows, rainfall and rain days.
✓ Best all year
Watch for Jun-Nov cyclones & hurricanes risk
Cards tinted by calculated verdict · big number = typical daily high, small = low · hover for conditions
When to avoid Honolulu
No bad season here: the trade winds blow year round, the temperature barely moves between January and July, and the water is swimmable every month, so the real variables are rain and crowds rather than good or bad weather. The trade-offs worth knowing are that November to March is the wetter half with more passing showers and heavy surf on the north and west shores, late summer is the muggiest stretch and sits inside the central Pacific hurricane season, the Christmas and New Year weeks are the most crowded and expensive of the year, and vog, a volcanic haze that drifts up from the Big Island, hangs over the city whenever the trades drop away and the wind swings round from the south.
Top things to do in Honolulu
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Waikiki Beach - the long forgiving break where modern surfing was revived
surfing scenic 👍 PopularTwo miles of imported and reclaimed sand in front of a wall of hotels, with waves that peel slowly a long way offshore over a shallow reef. Queens, Canoes and Publics are the named breaks; beach boys have taught beginners here for over a century, outrigger canoes take paying passengers out to catch a wave, and a statue of Duke Kahanamoku, the Olympic swimmer who carried the sport to the world, stands where the boards are racked.
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Diamond Head (Leahi) - the crater rim walk above the city
hiking scenic 👍 PopularA hollow tuff cone at the east end of the beach strip, entered through a tunnel into the crater floor and climbed by a paved path that turns into stairs, spiral steps and old military tunnels before it reaches a wartime bunker on the rim. Under an hour up if you keep moving, with the whole south shore laid out at the top, no shade to speak of, and an entry slot that out-of-state visitors usually have to book ahead.
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Pearl Harbor National Memorial - the USS Arizona and Battleship Row
history 👍 PopularA white memorial straddling a sunken battleship where more than a thousand of her crew still lie and oil still seeps to the surface, reached by navy launch from a visitor centre with two museums on the attack. Moored on the same harbour are the battleship Missouri, on whose deck Japan surrendered in 1945, a Second World War submarine, and an aviation museum in the bullet-scarred hangars on Ford Island. Timed tickets for the launch are free and go quickly, so reserve well ahead.
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Iolani Palace - the only royal palace on American soil
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedBuilt for King Kalakaua in the 1880s and wired for electric light and telephones before the White House had either, then used as a courthouse and a prison after the monarchy fell: Queen Liliuokalani was held for months in an upstairs room, where she stitched a quilt that is still on show. The throne room, the koa staircase and the basement gallery of crowns and orders make the case plainly that Hawaii was a recognised kingdom, not a frontier.
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Bishop Museum - the great collection of Hawaiian and Pacific culture
history culture arts ⭐ Highly recommendedFounded in the 1880s as a memorial to a Hawaiian princess and housed in dark Victorian stone, this is the state museum: feather cloaks and helmets of the chiefly class, carved temple images, a sperm whale hanging through three galleries of koa-panelled hall, and a science wing with a walk-through volcano for children. The single best hour for understanding what you are looking at everywhere else on the island.
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Hanauma Bay Nature Preserve - snorkelling a flooded volcanic crater
nature wildlife divingA breached cone on the southeast coast that fills with clear, sheltered water over a shallow reef of parrotfish, tangs, wrasse and the occasional green turtle. It was loved almost to death, so visitor numbers are now capped, entry is booked online, the bay closes for part of every week, and everyone watches a short conservation film before walking down to the sand.
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Nuuanu Pali Lookout - the cliff edge over the windward coast
scenic historyA notch in the Koolau range where the trade winds funnel through hard enough to lean into, opening onto a thousand-foot wall of fluted green and the whole windward plain beyond it. This is where Kamehameha's warriors drove the last defenders of Oahu over the cliff in 1795 to take the island, and it is twenty minutes from downtown.
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Chinatown and the downtown historic core - markets, temples and old shopfronts
culture arts foodOne of the oldest Chinatowns in the country, rebuilt after a plague-control fire escaped and burned it flat in 1900: lei stands, noodle houses, a covered market of live fish, taro and lychee, Vietnamese and Filipino kitchens, a Taoist temple by the stream, and a strip of galleries and cocktail bars in restored shopfronts that fills up one evening a month. It is a daytime quarter first, and the streets get noticeably thinner after dark.
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Koko Head Crater Trail - a thousand railway sleepers straight up
hiking adventureAn abandoned wartime tramway that runs dead straight up the flank of a cinder cone east of the city, its ties left in place as a punishing staircase with an airy trestle over a gully near the top. No shade, no switchbacks and no easy way down, with Hanauma Bay and the whole southeast corner spread out as the reward.
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Manoa Falls and Lyon Arboretum - rainforest twenty minutes from the beach
hiking nature wildlifeA muddy, root-tangled path up a dripping valley behind the university to a thin waterfall dropping into a pool, with a botanical garden of Hawaiian and Pacific plantings at the trailhead. Manoa is the wettest inhabited valley on this side of the island, so expect rain, mosquitoes and a trail that is slick whatever the forecast said in Waikiki.
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Punchbowl and the Tantalus loop - the lookouts above town
scenic historyAn extinct crater directly above downtown holds the Pacific war cemetery, thousands of flat markers on a lawn with the city and harbour below. From there a narrow road switchbacks up through rainforest and old timber houses to a lookout where the coast unrolls from the harbour to the crater in one view. Best in the last hour of daylight.
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Waikiki wrecks and the leeward reefs - diving off the south shore
divingTwo scuttled ships sit upright in clear water within sight of the hotels, deep enough for turtles and eagle rays to cruise the rails and shallow enough for a first open-water dive. Further west, warm outflow from a power station draws spinner dolphins and green turtles onto an easy shore-entry reef, and the north-shore caves and lava tubes open up once the winter swell drops out in summer.
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Honolulu Museum of Art and Shangri La - a courtyard museum and an Islamic art estate
culture artsA low tiled building of shaded courtyards and lily ponds from the 1920s, holding a serious Asian and Pacific collection along with the ticket desk for tours of a tobacco heiress's cliffside house below Diamond Head, built in the 1930s around Iranian tilework, Moroccan ceilings and Mughal marble and looking straight out at the surf.
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Plate lunch, poke and shave ice - eating the plantation legacy
foodTwo scoops of rice, macaroni salad and something grilled on a paper plate; raw tuna cut into a bowl with soy, sesame oil, onion and seaweed; Portuguese fried dough rolled in sugar; rice and spam wrapped in nori at every corner shop; saimin noodles, kalua pig, and finely shaved ice poured over sweet beans and ice cream. The city eats Japanese, Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Portuguese without thinking about it.
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Ala Moana Center and Ala Moana Beach Park - the mall and the beach the city actually uses
shoppingThe largest open-air shopping centre in the country, four levels of storefronts around planted courtyards with a centre stage that hosts hula, and across the road a mile of calm reef-protected water with lawns, showers and picnic tables. This is where residents swim laps and hold birthday parties while the visitors are all a kilometre east.
Best areas to stay in Honolulu
$ Budget $$ Mid-range $$$ Premium
Waikiki
First-time visitors $$Hotel towers, sand at the door, busy
Explore hotels in Waikiki →
Diamond Head end of Waikiki
Quieter beachfront $$$Low-rise, park-side, calmer beachfront
Explore hotels in Diamond Head end of Waikiki →
Ala Moana and Kakaako
Local-leaning base $$Condo towers, murals, breweries, big mall
Explore hotels in Ala Moana and Kakaako →
Kahala
Quiet and upscale $$$Leafy, moneyed, quiet residential coves
Explore hotels in Kahala →
Live nightly prices from Booking.com, Agoda and others, centred on Honolulu
Getting to & around Honolulu
Getting there
Fly into HNL, then roughly 20 to 30 min by road east to Waikiki, or barely 10 min into downtown
Flight
Daniel K. Inouye International Airport (HNL)
About 13 km west of Waikiki along the coast and barely 5 km from downtown, with the H-1 freeway linking all three. Rideshare and taxis reach Waikiki in roughly 20 to 30 min, longer in the afternoon peak; shared shuttle vans do hotel-by-hotel drops and take longer again. TheBus serves the airport but restricts luggage to what fits on your lap, which rules it out for most arrivals. Hire cars are collected from a consolidated rental centre reached by shuttle from the terminals.
Flight
Daniel K. Inouye International Airport
Almost everyone arrives by air: five to six hours from the west coast of the mainland, longer from Japan, Korea and Australasia, and inter-island hops from Maui, Kauai and the Big Island in well under an hour. There is no scheduled passenger ferry between the main Hawaiian islands, so island-hopping means flying
Cruise
Honolulu Harbor
Ships tie up beside the 1920s clock tower on the edge of downtown, a short ride from Waikiki; a weekly inter-island cruise circles the state from here and trans-Pacific sailings call in season
Getting around
Walking
Waikiki, Kakaako and the downtown core each walk well end to end, and a path runs along the water from the marina past the park; the hot, wide roads between the districts are much less pleasant
Free
TheBus
One of the better city bus networks in the country and it covers the whole island, not just the city: services run constantly between Waikiki, Ala Moana and downtown, and circle-island routes reach the windward coast and the North Shore slowly but very cheaply
TBC
Skyline rail
The island's elevated rail line runs in from the west side of Oahu and is being extended towards town in stages, so check what has actually opened before counting on it. It was built for commuters from the western suburbs and is of limited use on a beach-based trip
TBC
Taxi and rideshare
Plentiful across the urban south shore and the simplest way to reach a trailhead or a restaurant off the bus lines; availability thins fast once you are on the north or windward coast
TBC
Car hire
Worth it for the days you leave the city and a liability for the days you do not: hotel parking in Waikiki is scarce and charged by the night, the freeway jams hard at both peaks, and popular trailheads and beach car parks fill by mid-morning. Plenty of visitors hire for two or three days rather than the whole trip
TBC
Waikiki Trolley
Open-sided tourist trolleys looping Waikiki, Ala Moana, downtown and Diamond Head on fixed colour-coded lines; slower than the bus and aimed squarely at visitors, but it stops exactly where visitors want to go
TBC
Biki bike share
Docked bikes across the flat coastal strip from Diamond Head through Waikiki and Kakaako to Chinatown, which is often the quickest way across town at rush hour. Bike lanes are decent on the main corridors and absent elsewhere
TBC
Moped and scooter hire
Rented all over Waikiki and genuinely handy for short hops between beaches, though the traffic is heavy and the helmet rules are looser than you might expect, so wear one regardless
TBC
Day trips from Honolulu
North Shore
Full dayBig-wave coast
A seven-mile run of beaches that in winter carries some of the heaviest ridden waves on earth, watched from the sand by big crowds when a swell lands, and in summer goes flat enough to swim and snorkel over the same reefs. The hub is a low-slung former plantation town of surf shops and shave ice, with a walled botanical valley and waterfall behind it and a tide-pool snorkelling cove at the northern end.
Getting there
car | bus | tour
About 1 hr drive north over the central plateau, or 1.5 hr up the windward coast; TheBus and tour coaches run the same roads more slowly
Kailua and Lanikai
Full dayWindward beaches
The postcard beach on the far side of the mountains: pale sand, turquoise shallows and two small seabird islands offshore that people paddle out to by kayak. Behind it a short ridge trail climbs past wartime concrete bunkers for the view straight down onto the bay, and the town itself is a low-key strip of coffee, poke and surf shops rather than a resort.
Getting there
car | bus
About 30 to 40 min drive over the Pali or through the Koolau tunnels; TheBus runs from Ala Moana
Southeast coast loop
Half dayLava coast lookouts
The road east runs out of suburbs and onto a black lava shelf: a snorkelling crater, a blowhole that fires when the swell is up, a bodysurfing beach with a shorebreak best left to people who grew up on it, and a paved climb to a lighthouse where humpbacks are often visible offshore in winter. Two small volcanic islets sit off the point as seabird sanctuaries.
Getting there
car | bus
About 20 to 40 min drive east on the coast highway, with TheBus covering the same road
Windward coast and Kualoa
Full dayGreen cliffs and film sets
The wettest and greenest side of the island, where the range rises in fluted cliffs straight off the cattle paddocks. A working ranch here rents its valleys as film locations and runs horse, ATV and film-site tours; a replica Kyoto temple sits at the foot of the cliffs in a cemetery with koi ponds and a bronze bell; and a small cone offshore marks a bay whose submerged sandbar boats anchor over at low tide.
Getting there
car | tour
About 45 min to 1 hr drive over the Pali and north up the coast road, or by tour from Waikiki
Polynesian Cultural Center
Full dayPacific island villages
Six recreated island villages - Samoan, Tongan, Fijian, Tahitian, Maori and Hawaiian - staffed largely by Pacific island students from the university next door, with fire-knife and haka demonstrations, a canoe pageant down the lagoon and a large evening stage show. Frankly a theme park, and also the most serious attempt on the island to present the wider Pacific through the people who come from it.
Getting there
car | bus | tour
About 1 hr 15 drive north up the windward coast, or by tour coach from Waikiki
Big Island volcano by air
Full dayActive volcano
A very long day, but the only way to stand on an active volcano from a Honolulu base: steaming ground, a walk-through lava tube, hardened flows crossing a road, and a glow over the summit crater after dark when it happens to be erupting. There is no passenger ferry between the islands, so this is a flight or nothing.
Getting there
flight | tour | bus
About 50 min flight to Hilo or Kona, then a coach; tours leave Honolulu very early and get back late
A little history of Honolulu
Polynesian voyaging families settled the Hawaiian islands from the south Pacific and farmed the valleys behind Honolulu's harbour in terraced, irrigated taro patches for centuries before any European saw the place. The harbour itself is what made the city: a gap in the reef deep enough for a ship to enter, spotted by a British captain in the 1790s and quickly worth fighting over. Kamehameha I took Oahu in 1795 by driving the island's defenders up a valley and over the cliffs at its head, and by the 1840s his successors had moved the kingdom's capital here from Maui. Whaling ships wintered in the roads, then sugar took over, and the plantations imported labour from China, Japan, Portugal, Puerto Rico, Korea and the Philippines - the reason Honolulu today has no ethnic majority and eats the way it does.
The kingdom ended in the palace it had built. American and European businessmen, backed by marines from a ship in the harbour, deposed Queen Liliuokalani in 1893; annexation followed in 1898 and the palace became a government building. The twentieth century arrived in three shoves: a canal dug in the 1920s drained Waikiki's wetlands and turned a swamp of duck ponds and taro into a beach resort; the attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 brought martial law and made the island a staging ground for a Pacific war; and statehood in 1959, landing in the same year as regular jet service, turned a slow steamship destination into a mass one almost overnight. Since the 1970s a cultural revival has put the Hawaiian language back into schools, restored the palace, and sent a double-hulled voyaging canoe across the Pacific by the stars, which is the current the city still runs on underneath the hotels.
Polynesian voyagers settle the Hawaiian islands on current archaeological dating, farming Oahu's windward valleys and the streams behind the harbour
Kamehameha I takes Oahu at the Battle of Nuuanu, driving the island's defenders over the Pali cliffs
The first American Protestant missionaries land, beginning a century of literacy, land reform and cultural suppression
Kamehameha III moves the kingdom's capital from Lahaina on Maui to Honolulu
Iolani Palace is completed for King Kalakaua, and is wired for electric light and telephones within a few years
Queen Liliuokalani is deposed by American and European businessmen backed by United States marines
The United States annexes Hawaii; a territorial government follows two years later
A fire set to control an outbreak of plague escapes and burns Chinatown to the ground
The Ala Wai Canal is completed, draining Waikiki's wetlands and creating the ground the resort district stands on
Japanese aircraft attack Pearl Harbor and the island's airfields on 7 December, bringing the United States into the war and placing Hawaii under martial law
Hawaii becomes the fiftieth state in the same year regular jet service begins, and mass tourism arrives with it
A state constitutional convention makes Hawaiian an official language and creates the Office of Hawaiian Affairs, formalising the cultural revival
Know before you go
Payment
Cards everywhere
English
Everywhere
Wifi
Reliable
Power
Type A / B
120 V, 60 Hz
Dialing
+1
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Mobile network & SIM card
Get an eSIM before you fly
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FAQs about Honolulu
▸ When is the best time to visit Honolulu?
There is no wrong month. The trade winds blow all year, daytime temperatures barely shift between winter and summer, and the water stays swimmable throughout. If you want to split hairs, April to early June and September to October give you the calmest seas, the driest air and the smallest crowds; winter brings humpback whales offshore and huge waves to watch on the north shore; and high summer is when the whole coastline is flat and easy for swimming and snorkelling.
▸ Which months should I avoid in Honolulu?
None, honestly. The trade-offs are seasonal rather than good or bad: November to March is the wetter half, with more passing showers and surf big enough to close north and west shore beaches to swimmers; August and September are the muggiest stretch and fall inside the central Pacific hurricane season, which usually means a distant storm rather than a direct hit; and the Christmas to New Year fortnight is the busiest and priciest of the year. The one genuine air-quality quirk is vog, a volcanic haze that drifts up from the Big Island when the trades die and the wind swings southerly.
▸ How many days do you need in Honolulu?
Four full days is the sensible minimum: one for the beach and the surf lesson, one for Pearl Harbor, one for the palace, museums and Chinatown, and one for a hike and a lookout. A week lets you add the North Shore, the windward coast and a proper do-nothing beach day, which is what most people actually come for. Anything less than four and the long flight starts to feel disproportionate.
▸ Do I need a car in Honolulu?
Not for the city. Waikiki walks, the bus network is genuinely good and covers the whole island, and rideshare fills the gaps. You will want a car for the days you leave town - the North Shore, the windward coast, the east-side trailheads - because the bus takes hours to do what a car does in one. Many visitors hire for two or three days in the middle of the trip and skip the nightly parking charge the rest of the time.
▸ Is Honolulu expensive?
Yes, it is one of the pricier places in the country, and the reason is simple: almost everything arrives by ship. Hotels, groceries, petrol and restaurants all sit above mainland levels, and the beachfront in the Christmas and summer peaks is the steepest part of it. It scales down sharply if you eat the way residents do, though - plate lunches, poke counters, food trucks and supermarket bento are excellent and cheap, and the beaches, the lookouts and most of the hiking cost nothing at all.
▸ Should I stay in Waikiki or somewhere else on Oahu?
Waikiki on a first trip. Everything is walkable, the buses all start there, and the beach is genuinely good despite the crowds. If you have been before, the Diamond Head end of the same strip is quieter for the same water, and Ala Moana or Kakaako put you among residents with a calmer beach and better everyday food. The resort enclaves on the west side and the North Shore are lovely and remote, and commit you to driving for everything.
▸ Do I need to book Pearl Harbor, Hanauma Bay and Diamond Head in advance?
Yes, plan on it for all three. The launch out to the Arizona memorial runs on free timed tickets that are released in batches and go fast; Hanauma Bay caps daily numbers, sells entry online and closes for part of every week; and Diamond Head asks out-of-state visitors to reserve an entry and parking slot. Booking as early as the system allows is the difference between walking in and being turned away.
▸ Is Honolulu safe?
By the standards of American cities, very. Violent crime is low and the tourist districts are busy and well lit, though Chinatown and parts of downtown thin out and feel rougher after dark. The two risks that actually catch visitors out are the ocean and the car park: shorebreaks and rip currents injure people every year, so swim where there are lifeguards and take posted warnings literally, and never leave anything visible in a hire car at a trailhead or beach lot.
▸ How should visitors behave around Hawaiian culture and wildlife?
Treat it as a living culture rather than a theme. Temple platforms, stone walls and burial sites are sacred ground, so do not climb on them or move stones; ask before entering somewhere that looks like private or ceremonial space; and take the language seriously, since aloha and mahalo carry more weight than hello and thanks. Wildlife is protected by law with minimum distances you are expected to keep, especially from monk seals and green turtles resting on the sand, and sunscreens containing oxybenzone and octinoxate are banned statewide, so buy a mineral one before you swim.
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