Day 9 - Voting in Honolulu!

 

We've been waking up early, but we were both sleeping when Dave’s alarm went off. We got ourselves up and out & caught our Uber to Pearl Harbor. We sort of had time to watch an introductory movie, but the movie times don’t sync with the tour times so we had to leave early. We took the boat out to the memorial and walked around. I understand why people go there.

Our next stop was the Foster Botanic Gardens, because we really like botanic gardens. This is a very small one in the middle of the city. They have a map with 21 points of interest, most of which are trees. I liked how the paths and the order of the things to look at had pretty much nothing to do with each other; in fact to get from 19 to 20 you could either go halfway around the garden again or step up a short wall. Yes, we did the wall. Some favorites were the sausage tree, the cannonball tree, and the black pepper tree with actual green peppercorns. Photos in reverse order

 The Botanic Gardens are on the same hop on, hop off trolley route as the ship, and our tickets from yesterday were still good. So we waited for the trolley and rode it 3 stops to the statue of Kamehameha I which is across the street from the Royal Palace but more importantly is a block away from the post office.

We didn’t realize until just before we left that our ballots (Oregon is all vote by mail as I think everyone now knows) wouldn’t arrive before we left, and it was too late to get absentee ballots. So we had our house sitter put them in a priority mail envelope and send them general delivery to a post office near the ship. While we were on the trolley Dave got a notification that they’d arrived at the very post office we were about to be near! All is well! Except when we got there the mail person told us they don’t do general delivery. Dave just kept showing him the notification, and eventually he sent us to talk to his supervisor, who said the same thing. Dave kept doggedly showing her the notification and eventually she went and got the envelope. Apparently, the USPS website is wrong about this post office doing general delivery, but it all worked out. We took the ballots back to the ship, ate lunch, voted, and went out and found a mailbox. We’ll see if they make it.

 

Then we had a pretty slow afternoon of reading and relaxing. We’re sure Honolulu is a great place but somehow we don’t ever find the part of it that we can love. We both took little naplets and woke up in time for dinner, which was delicious and a good time. Turns out that coincidentally most of us are going to the Pinnacle tomorrow night for the Morimoto pop-up.

After dinner we went to the show, Erwin G Urbi, whose show was as fun as his name. And I’d like to clarify that I think his name is pretty fun. He sang mostly Hawai’ian songs, and then for some reason he closed his show with Nessun Dorma. It seemed like an odd choice anyway, but seemed even odder because DJ Bucciarelli started singing it as part of his show.

Then we went to Officer & Guest karaoke by the midships pool, which was mostly good singing by the officers and poor singing by the guests. What we want to know is why people who aren’t going to sing go to it? I still can’t answer that question for myself. 

It’s great to be back at sea and have the ship rock us to sleep. So far my brilliant engineering fix to hold the bathroom door open is working.

Day 8 - Honolulu day 1

 

Crepuscular Rays over Diamond Head

We woke up as the ship was coming in to Honolulu, then both of us went on Dave’s usual walk around the Promenade as we were pulling in to port. They turned the ship around to park bow towards the ocean, and we happened to be walking towards the bow when they started the turn. It was very disconcerting to be walking straight ahead and have the landscape rotating.

My plan was to go to Tai Chi and then bootcamp. Tai Chi was excellent, but bootcamp had been cancelled. I stayed up in the gym to do my stretches, then headed down to the cabin to do some research about port activities (we chose not to do any ship excursions). Meanwhile Dave was off having an adventure. The night before we left he went to grab his disposable contacts to use when we go snorkeling, only to discover that they had expired over 5 years ago. According to Dr. Google contact lenses really do expire. So, being the resourceful guy he is, he found an optometrist in Honolulu and made an appointment. He got an eye exam and about 50 sample disposable lenses, which should last him another 5 years.

When Dave got back we discussed the rest of our plan, and decided we’d go to an area of shops and restaurants called Salt at our Kala’ako not far from the pier and then take the hop on, hop off bus to the Ala Moana mall to do some shopping. We found a restaurant called Pau+Mana and had a delicious lunch – especially the beet and goat cheese salad that was outstanding and Dave’s taro & ube bun for his fish sandwich. The restaurant was open air and had a lovely breeze & vibe, but the service was glacial. We missed the window for the bus, and they only run once an hour. So we headed back to the ship and waited for the free Hilo Hattie shuttle, which took us right to Hilo Hattie’s, where Dave found 2 shirts. The bus driver had told us that ours was the last shuttle from the ship, and that the last return was at 2:45.

We booked over to the Target where we got several things, most importantly a beach umbrella for Dave to sit on the beach, a yoga mat to do yoga and pilates on our balcony, and a 3M command hook so we could fix the problem with the bathroom door not having a way to stay open in even moderate seas. It was 2:35 when we finished checking out at Target, so we had 10 minutes to get back to Hilo Hattie’s for the shuttle. Then it got crazy, because we went a different door and we were in a giant parking garage and nothing looked familiar and the GPS couldn’t get a fix and we kept going around corners and not recognizing anything and then the GPS said we were right there at HH but we weren’t, and then I realized that the parking garage was multi story and we went down a level and there was HH and we went in and they told us we’d just missed the shuttle even though it was only 2:40.

So I decided I might as well try on the dress that I couldn’t decide about when we were in before, and then it turned out that we had missed the next to last shuttle but we could sign up for the next one. I bought the dress and the shuttle came and we were back on the ship in time for me to go out on the balcony and practice my hula. In addition to enjoying practicing my hula I also go to see the atlantis submarine being towed in, which I didn’t know there were submarine tugboats.

Then it was time to get cleaned up for dinner, where everyone was surprised to see us. We had a good dinner, and I got Adi laughing very hard when I told him I would have the oxtails cakes appetizer for dessert because they are cakes. Apparently Adi has a low bar for what’s very funny.

Dinner actually got over unusually quickly, so I had time to get most of the blog written before the show. And even though we got to the show 15 minutes early, we had to sit downstairs. Fortunately we were able to get excellent seats, with only short people between us and the stage (the lower floor isn’t raked). The show was completely excellent, it was a singer, a guitarist, two drummers and 5 dancers doing dances from Hawai’I, New Zealand,  Samoa, Tahiti and maybe somewhere else? The music and dancing were excellent and the MC was fun. We all got fresh leis on the way in.

Afterwards we went forward on deck 6 which is all lit up since we’re in port, and then down to the Ocean Bar for the Dance Band who are usually the show band, but tonight they’re sitting in for the Dam band. They’re more jazzy and very enjoyable – so much so that I’m actually writing the blog in the Ocean Bar. Many couples are doing beautiful ballroom dancing, which I love watching and plan to learn to do someday. It’s funny though, because every so often the dancers will stumble, as if the floor had suddenly moved. Dave and I have noticed this too – even though the ship is perfectly still we’re still swaying and sometimes it really does feel like the ship moves, even when we’re standing on terra firma.

Cruise Note: Dave reminded me that I haven’t written about Texas Bix and Mrs. Texas Bix, who we see around the ship but mostly while we’re listening to the bands in the Ocean Bar and they are dancing. He is a tall older man with a giant 10 gallon hat, a tiny scraggly ponytail and more rings than fingers, and she’s a petite asian woman with a variety of hats. That’s all we know about them, but we always have to point them out to each other when we see them.

Today went by fast! We have an early morning reservation at the Arizona memorial tomorrow, so I’m hoping for a nap.

Day 8 - Land Ho!

I woke early & headed to the gym for the 2^nd Body burst workout while Dave did his walk & breakfast. By the time I was done there was just time to drop off my computer and come back up to the Crow’s Nest for Tai Chi. I was a little early so I started teaching Jorge some hula, and then a few people joined in. There were only 6 of us for class, so after we’d reviewed Jorge wanted someone else to try teaching, and everyone pointed at me. So I did, and everyone was very impressed until I admitted I could only do it in one direction. We tried it with me teaching going left and once again White Crane Spreads its Wings absolutely defeated me. Then everyone else taught a move, and we ran through the whole thing a few more times and we were done.

I grabbed my usual yogurt breakfast, and today was able to find some walnuts. Walnuts are plentiful when you first leave port, but then they slowly start disappearing from the Lido – first from one station, and then another, and then another. I call it the dance of the disappearing discretionary walnuts; Dave just calls the game “Where’s Walnuts”.

We’d originally booked a hike, but that part of the island was hit hard by a hurricane last month and the hike was cancelled. Instead we ended up doing the Wailua River Cruise & Fern Grotto, which is not our favorite kind of shore excursion with a big bus, a crowded boat, and a short visit to two waterfalls. However, our bus driver was very interesting and Dave and I hung back on the walk back from the fern grotto to the boat and enjoyed a quiet walk through the rain forest (quiet except for the chickens that is). Also on the boat ride back we had a group hula to the Hukilau song, a favorite of Josh & Tim’s from their youth. The MC on the boat made a lot of the kinds of jokes you used to hear on Disney’s Jungle Cruise, and we kept expecting an animatronic hippo to pop up. Which funnily enough is just the question that our tablemates asked when we told them about it.

 

We got back to the ship in time to catch the tail end of lunch on the Lido, and then Dave worked on the daily Kakuro while I had a nice chat to the Bubster and practiced my ukelele and hula. Dave went off for his afternoon beer at the Ocean bar (since there’s no Aloha Sunset on the Lido) and discovered better beer *and* peanuts. I did some blogging. Then it was time for showers and dinner. My lamb and Dave’s salmon bites bang bang were both worthy of mention, and the whole table was there too which was fun. Also because we’re no longer heading due west we got to see a sunset from the dining room. And a green flash!

After dinner was DJ Bucciarelli’s last show before he disembarks in Honolulu. We (as in, the whole audience) made a video for his dad, and enjoyed singing along. We went out front for a while – it’s very moony, so it’s hard to see all the cool southern sky stuff that’s starting to be visible.

We found seats in the Ocean Bar for the Dam band’s 9:15 set, but they were kind of far away and the table next to us was very loud, so after a while I set off for other pastures. I went to the piano bar with Marcel which was fun but then he finished his set, which is not fun. So I headed down to the cabin to finish the blog and also to maybe read a book, which I haven’t had time to do this whole cruise. When I got to the cabin I remembered that I could take my mug up to the Lido and get tea, which I did, which made the blogging very nice.

Here are some extra photos because we actually took a lot of pictures today. It's easier to do on a port day.