Honolulu

Honolulu - is a city of minorities; home to people from all over the Pacific. Its ethnic diversity can be seen on almost every street corner - the sushi shop next door to the Vietnamese bakery, the Catholic church next to the Buddhist temple. The town centre is a hotchpotch of sleek high rises and stately Victorian-era buildings.

Attractions include Iolani Palace, the USA's only royal palace, a modernistic state capitol, a coral-black New England missionary church and a Spanish-style city hall. Visiting Chinatown, north-west of the centre, is like journeying to Asia. It has a lively market, fire-breathing dragons, cheap ethnic eateries, temples, shrines, tattoo parlours and noodle factories. The Bishop Museum is considered to be the best Polynesian anthropological museum in the world, and is an excellent place to get a grasp of pre-Western culture in Hawaii.

There are lovely hiking trails and scenic lookouts just two miles from downtown Honolulu in the dense growth of the Tantalus and Makiki Valley forest reserves.