Today, the rocking chairs on the front porch of the Sheraton Moana Surfrider are witness to a steady tangle of human and vehicular traffic and a forest of high-rises that dominate Honolulu. Echoes of the past remain: the giant Banyan tree still punctuates the courtyard, a waiter rolls a cart to your table and offers a series of seven teas in silver canisters (the Royal Blend combines banana, mango, apricot and pineapple), savories and sweets are presented on linen and silver. The t-shirt shops are far, far away during this gentile hour.

Oahu

If you are nostalgic for a bygone era, there's no better way to tap into it than staying at the Surfrider or her younger sister, the Royal Hawaiian, called the "Pink Palace of the Pacific" since its completion 1927. The blushing exterior is buffeted from modernity by thick landscaping and the hue extends to towels and marble in the bathrooms and striped umbrellas on the beach. I was tickled pink by the view of Diamond Head from my window. On a recent September evening, I sat in the elegant Monarch Room next to a gracious older woman draped with a fragrant white lei, listening to the Falsetto Contest finals. Part of the annual Aloha Festival, it's a unique musical heritage of the island. The woman's nephew, a corpulent young man, had a voice that nimbly rose in hills and valleys of sweet song. We clapped madly. He placed third.

Later that night, we dined at another of the Sheraton properties (they have a compound of four), the Hanohano Room at the Sheraton Waikiki. Talk about dinner with a view after zipping up 30 stories, the entire city glitters below. The food matched the lofty surroundings, especially the monchong, fish served with curry couscous, and beef tournedos stuffed with spinach and maui onion and bleu cheese.

It is hard to sunbathe in paradise all day and I say that as one who spent her adolescence in Florida slathered in Crisco while holding a reflector. So for half a day each day I escaped into the cool, dark museums of the island, to discover old Hawaii, explore its multicultural roots and connect to old rituals and rhythms of life in the Pacific in the first few decades of the 1900s. Unlike the crowded sands, all of us visitors, soldiers who served at Pearl Harbor, widows of a certain age, linked arm and arm have room to lull. I especially enjoyed the Honolulu Academy of Arts, which has one of the finest collections of Asian art in the U.S. Although it was closed when I was in town, don't miss touring Shangri-La, the spectacular Islamic-inspired home heiress Doris Duke built in the late 1930s overlooking the Pacific Ocean and Diamond Head.

The Hawaii State Art Museum, the newest in Honolulu, the Iolani Palace, the only official state residence of royalty in the U.S. and former home of Hawaii's last two monarchs, King Kalakaua, and his sister and successor, Queen Lili`uokalani, along with a tour of the USS Arizona Memorial at Pearl Harbor, all offer fascinating glimpses back in time. Everywhere are monkey pod trees, with their gnarled limbs and arcing, spreading crowns.

Chai's Island Bistro, a handsome restaurant at Aloha Tower Marketplace provides a link with the present: all the cruise ships dock here. But Chai's is no tourist trap. The night I have dinner, a large party of locals are celebrating a septuagenarian's birthday (a single red bloom tucked behind her left ear) while a musician plucks out soft tunes on the ukulele. I have one of the more sublime meals in recent memory, despite the fact that the moi, "royal fish," is sold out. The sherry-slicked escargot and prawns with mushrooms are woody, sweet and savory and ideal with a dry Riesling; pillowy tofu dumplings with look like miniature cupcakes and taste like no tofu I've ever eaten; the whole fried snapper is shaped like a comma, greaseless and served with a piquant tomato-orange sauce.

Kauai

The next day I jet off to Kauai, the garden isle and the least developed of the major islands. I saw actual jaws drop in the lobby of Princeville Resort, a dazzling hotel (part of the elite worldwide Luxury Collection) with panoramic scenery on the north shore of the island. Built in tiers on a point overlooking Hanalei Bay, the verdant mountains were immortalized as "Bali Hai" in the movie South Pacific, filmed here. At the Polynesian luau, which begins with conch blowing and a prayer, impossibly curvy women and girls and handsome men dance while we feast on continental and native specialties. Romantic couples stand and announce their coupledom: from five hours to 53 years.

To get to Hanalei town, you must cross the one-way Hanalei Bridge. Originally built in 1912, the structure embodies the island's quintessential charm. Because parts of the bridge were wrapped in chicken wire to prevent them from falling into the river below, the locals rebuilt the bridge in 2005. Age-old aloha spirit and automotive courtesy prevail, as each driver awaits his or her turn.

I ate at Bubba's Burgers, slurping chili rice as a side, under a thatched tiki-like picnic table. On the way to jaw-dropping stop number two, Waimea Canyon, the largest in the Pacific, we stop at Jo Jo's for shave ice, another long-time tradition. I recommend the vanilla ice cream with lychee and lilokoi (passionfruit). Lappert's coconut macadamia nut with real coconut shavings and ribbons of chocolate is also worth a caloric splurge.

Well worth two hours of your time is the Gay & Robinson sugarcane tour. Sugar cane has been a part of Kauai's economy for 65 years; countless immigrants and residents made their living as the highest paid agricultural workers in the world in the industry. One of only two processors still on the island, the tour covers plantation life, processing and irrigation systems and the history of sugar, which was once presented to royalty in jewel-studded boxes, it was so prized. The restroom off the gift shop/ticket office, smelled an office or schoolroom or maybe your grandmother's attic, circa 1950. I breathed in the smell of history. As the most isolated population on earth, Hawaiians still hear whispers of yesterday in the red dirt and so can you if you listen.

---