They added another hour last night, so we were up early again this morning. We turned on nerd TV (a constant display of the ship’s position, speed, heading, weather, time – you get the idea). What’s interesting is we left San Diego 4 days ago, travelled over 2000 nautical miles, and basically went in a straight line that’s going to take us directly into the harbor. For some reason I find that really cool. When I went out on the veranda there appeared to be a big fog bank to the west, but on closer inspection I could see the lights of Hilo twinkling on the side of Mauna Kea. It was a beautiful sunny morning, and it was exciting to see land again – even though I like being at sea better. I went up to the Lido and had some breakfast, then went to stretch class, which is always a nice way to start the day. By the time I got back we were parked in port, our Clear Spot wireless hotspot had connected, and we had free internet again.
We went to the Vista Lounge to get in the group for our tour, which turned out to be 24 people in two 12 passenger vans. They lead us out of the lounge in a line, gave us our appropriately colored stickers (ours were green) and lined us up in the terminal. While we were standing in line I noticed something odd – almost all the passengers were swaying slightly, as if the ground were moving. After 4 days at sea, solid ground just doesn’t seem that way. After a very short wait our tour guide, Kana (you can use his given name of Dan or Daniel if you can’t pronounce Kana… although how you’d pronounce Dan if you can’t say Kana is a little beyond me) came with the waiver for us to sign, then loaded us into our van. He was both funny and informative. We basically drove around the island, stopping at various scenic bits. One interesting thing was driving around through many of the residential neighborhoods – sometimes it’s easy to forget that people actually live here. Two highlights of the tour were the lava tube cave and a short swim in the ocean. The lava tube cave was both fun and frustrating. It was fun because we’ve been in so many of them near home, and this one was the same and yet different – for one thing, because it’s in a tropical rainforest it has wonderful roots hanging down from the ceiling. And it’s very damp inside. The frustrating part is that it’s about two miles long and we only got to go in a hundred feet or so. On the other hand, as Dave pointed out, we’re here in tropical paradise – do we really want to spend the whole day underground?
The swimming was really fun. Where we climbed in there was a freshwater spring, so it was coooold. It took a little talking to get Dave into the water! But once you got more out into the open part the water was a very comfortable temperature, and there were wonderful corals growing everywhere. It made me wish I’d brought my goggles. We’re scheduled to go snorkeling in Maui so that should be a good time. Although later on, chatting as the ship was pulling out of port, we discovered that each of us thought that snorkeling was one of the other’s favorite things – turns out both of us like it, but neither of us is crazy about it.
We got back to the ship and took quick showers, then headed down and got some lunch. We’ve gotten in the bad habit of looking at the dessert menu at lunchtime, and I was about to order the signature chocolate cake when Dave reminded me that we’re eating a 5 course dinner at the ship’s on board high end restaurant, the Pinnacle Grill, tonight. So we left the dining room and took the shuttle to Hilo Hattie’s, a tourist trap of the first magnitude where Dave got two very good looking shirts and I got a packet of instant noni supplement, in case I suddenly feel my noni running low. No, I have no idea what it is, but I couldn’t resist it.
There was a long line waiting for the shuttle van back to the ship, so we walked across the street to the Wal-mart where there was supposed to be a larger shuttle bus going back to the ship. There was a Walgreens there as well, so we stopped in and bought a few necessities, like flip-flops for Dave. We waited for the shuttle bus for a while, but a taxi-van came by offering rides back to the ship for $2 each, which seemed like a good deal, so we jumped in. There was a long line waiting to go through security to get back on the ship, so we were glad we hadn’t waited.
It’s so hard to know where to stand when the ship is leaving port! Here in Hilo we were on the non-dock side, so our cabin was right out. But we were snugged up do tight to the dock that you couldn’t see the front robes form anywhere on deck. We started out in our usual place, which is on the Lido deck in front of the gym, right above the bridge. But then once we’d pushed back from the dock we (I) thought how cool it would be to watch the giant rear engines come online, so we headed aft and watched that for a little (it wasn’t as cool as I thought it would be – they don’t suddenly come on like speedboat engines and churn the water to foam – they ramp up slowly). But then I remembered the antique dry compass outside the crow’s nest, which has been steadily pointing W-SW for 4 days – when the ship turned, would it turn too? So back forward we went, with Dave saying complimentary things about how glad he was he’d married a nerd (I’m taking them as compliments) and sure enough, it was spinning in time with the ship, which we both thought was very cool.
A few photos and a wave from Chris the guitarist later and it was time to go get dressed for dinner at the Pinnacle Grill. The Pinnacle Grill is a small restaurant on board with its own executive chef (they’ve been Indian both times on this ship, although not the same person), kitchen, and menu. The food is comparable to any really good restaurant, and last night they were doing a menu from the famous Le Cirque in New York City – down to the same plates. The food was very, very good – the highlight for me was a roasted butternut squash soup made with maple syrup and browned butter that almost had me licking the bowl. The odd thing was that they had a per-course wine pairing, but it was 3 fixed wines – a prosecco, a chardonnay, and a merlot. The first two really would pair well with any of the soup/salad/appetizer offerings, but the merlot seemed a little heavy for some of the entrees. Anyway, it was a super enjoyable evening. It was nice to have it be just the four of us and get caught up a little – we like to share tables with other cruisers, but usually you don’t get to chat about yourselves that much. So this was fun. Also one of the funny moments was when they were talking about the crops that grew on the 5 acres they were growing up on. Merna mentioned “her” violets, and Mama turned to her and said, “YOUR violets? Since when were they your violets?” It ‘s the second time we’ve seen sibling rivalry and we all had to laugh.
After dinner it was just about time to go to the late showing of the magic show. We’d seen J Neal several times already in his various appearances around the ship, but this was the first full-length show and we had high expectations. When we got to the lounge it was not crowded, which was nice. We sat upstairs to remove any chance of being picked on to come up on stage. They were selling magic cocktails, which had the same light-up ice cubes that John and I got in our magic star drinks at Disneyland last year. Unfortunately we’d had too much wine with dinner to want more alcohol. But that was the only disappointment. The show was brilliantly done, sometimes with very nice patter, sometimes just set to music. No big splashy tricks, but everything done so smoothly and cleanly that you just kept going “how did he do that?” Really top quality illusions. He gave a talk yesterday where he broke down many of the tricks so you could see how they were done, and talked at some length about different types of distractions – but I noticed that every time he did something designed to take my attention off what he was really doing I completely fell for it. It’s my favorite show so far on the ship.
Then it was 11:00 and definitely time to call it a night. Tonight’s towel animal: cow or dog, we’re not sure, but it’s a very good one.
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