Royal Hawaiian Hotel — Where Joni Mitchell Wrote "Big Yellow Taxi"

In late 1969, Joni Mitchell checked into the Royal Hawaiian Hotel on Waikiki Beach. She opened the curtains of her room to a stunning view of the Pacific — and then looked the other way to see a concrete parking lot sprawling where tropical landscape should have been. The contrast hit her immediately. She sat down and wrote "Big Yellow Taxi" in the room that night, with its famous opening line: "They paved paradise and put up a parking lot."

Mitchell later said the song came out in a burst of frustration and dark humour. It wasn't written as a deliberate environmental anthem — it was a gut reaction to what she saw out her hotel window. The song was released on her 1970 album Ladies of the Canyon and became one of the earliest and most enduring pop songs about environmental destruction. It's been covered dozens of times, most notably by the Counting Crows in 2002, and its message has only grown more relevant with time.

The Royal Hawaiian Hotel, known as the "Pink Palace of the Pacific," opened in 1927 and is one of the most iconic hotels in Hawaii. It sits on Waikiki Beach along Kalakaua Avenue, surrounded by high-rise developments that have only intensified the irony Mitchell captured. The hotel is still in operation as a luxury resort. There is no plaque marking Mitchell's stay, but the parking lot that inspired the song — while reconfigured over the decades — remains part of the surrounding landscape of concrete and commerce pressed up against the shoreline.