Honolulu on a budget

Best free attractions

Honolulu's free outdoor inventory runs unusually deep for a city this size — botanical gardens downtown, a zoo inside a royal park, a state park on the windward coast, an aquarium on the south shore. The twelve below skip the souvenir trail and the hotel-curated lookouts entirely. Most reward an early start, before the leeward sun gets going; a few sit at the far end of bus routes you would never find from a Waikiki itinerary, and those are the ones worth the trip. The list runs roughly from the urban core out to the windward coast and around to Koko Head, in descending order of convenience. The locals head for the further-out gardens first; the visitor crowd defaults to the closest beach park, which is fine but the obvious answer. Bring water, bring a hat, and assume nothing about parking.