Last Sea Day - Heading Home Tomorrow

 

Well, our cruise is nearly over.  This one has had its challenges, but all's well that ends well. Here's a picture of the map from our TV as we head back to San Francisco. 

We had a quiet morning and late breakfast. Mary visited the "Princess Garage Sale" where they sell off outdated merchandise at a discount, but she did not find anything of interest.  After that, we enjoyed lunch in the International Cafe.   The afternoon was reserved for packing suitcases and making sure we cleaned out the aafe and all the drawers and shelves. 

Dinner tonight was a surprise!  Surf and Turf, and it was excellent.  They also had a coconut mouse for dessert which capped off a last dinner quite well. 

Tomorrow we take a Princess shuttle to the airport for our flight home, with a layover in Denver.  Hopefully the flights are all one time, but we are prepared to stay over in Denver if things go wrong.   

Not much else to say and, hopefully, this is my final post of this trip.  

Ensenada

After 5 sea days, we pulled into Ensenada, Mexico this morning.  Mary and I did not get off the ship, but greatly enjoyed the sounds of a pack of sea lions right below our balcony. Quite a crowd swam over to the rocks by our ship and kept up barking most of the day. 

We had a surprise visitor on our balcony this morning as you can see on the picture on the right.  There were two of them there, but one flew away before I could take the picture. 

After lunch we watched the Lion's game.  Mary took the picture on the big screen  before we went to our room to watch he game. It was a nice 31-23 victory so now they are off to play San Francisco next weekend.  After that game we watched the KC vs Bills game so the final 4 teams are now set.  San Francisco vs Detroit and Baltimore vs Kansas City with the winners playing in the Super Bowl. 

As many of you may have seen on Facebook, Katie's sister-in-law, Amy, passed away today from Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome.   After the game we spoke with Katie to express our sympathies to her and were able to visit using FaceTime. 

That's about it for today.   Last sea day is tomorrow with the major activity being packing so we are ready to leave the ship Tuesday morning. 

Sea Day #9

We had a very nice day with a number of nice events.  I participated in a golf putting challenge before Sudoku.  That was followed by a "Coffee with the Captain" event which was very good.  The cruise director asked him a few prepared questions before taking some from the audience.   The captain answered all with humor and some good stories.   

We had lunch in the buffet after the noon time change (we are now on Pacific Time) before the golf tournament finale.  I have to admit there isn't a vanilla sauce dessert that I don't like!  This one was a chocolate- walnut brownie with 3 scoops of vanilla sauce.  YUM!

At golf I did not do good today and fell our of the top 5.  But I enjoyed competing.   

We then watched the NFL playoff game in our room before getting ready for dinner. 

Dinner was the last formal night of the cruise and featured lobster!  It was excellent!  And Mary was doubly thrilled when Floating Islands showed up on the dessert menu.  

When we returned to our room we were very surprised to find a towel animal on our bed. What a cute elephant!  

Tomorrow is Ensenada, Mexico and we may not get off the ship unless there are some interesting stores right at the port.  

We will be rooting for the Lions as they go for their second playoff victory this season. Hopefully the weather permits us to watch it on the big screen.

Sea Day #8

 Our reasonably calm seas continued today.  Nothing unusual, except for three different golf related events.  Today's Sudoku puzzle was so hard that no one finished it within the allotted 20 minutes, so no prize was awarded. 

An Officers vs Passengers golf event was held at 11 am.  An officer and passenger took turns trying to score points for their side.  You could either score 10, 5 or -1 points.  Due to the number of passengers, the officers ended up taking many attempts and won by a wide margin.  But it was nice to see them play.
A second event was 4 hole miniature golf challenge.  The winners had 10 strokes while I had 12. 
Lastly was a chipping challenge in the ongoing tournament.  I did OK and am tied for 3rd place, with the finale tomorrow afternoon.

Mary and I watched another movie in the afternoon then headed to dinner.   She had scallops and I had a pork entree.  Here's a picture of my Peanut Butter bar dessert.   

We're planning to watch another movie tonight before our 5th consecutive sea day before arriving at Ensenada  on Sunday morning. 

Sea Day #7

 Only two more sea days before we reach Ensenada, Mexico.  Fortunately we've had fairly calm seas so far on the return from Hawaii.  The captain has reported that there is a storm system north of us so we are glad to be staying on it's southern edge. 

As usual, Sudoku and an enrichment lecture for me in the morning while Mary enjoyed catching some rays, and reading.  After lunch, I competed in another round of the golf tournament, using only 6 putts to sink 4 balls.  I'm not sure of my actual standings, but I know I'm near the top. 

In the afternoon we watched a documentary about the Notre Dame fire which was quite interesting, showing how where the fire started, the fire department response and the heroic effort to save the north bell tower. 

We both enjoyed our dinning in the dining room.  Here are our desserts: a souffle for Mary and a triple trio for me.  The one on the right of my plate was billed as an ice cream sandwich.

After dinner we listened to an acoustic guitar singer for a while, then retreated to our cabin. 

Sea Day #6

Overall we had a quiet and relaxing day today. The most unusual thing was that we changed our clocks by 1 hour at noon!  The captain reported that they did this on an earlier cruise and it worked out OK so they are trying it again.  So we jumped from 11:59 am to 1:00 pm.  But the people that print the daily Princess Patter (that lists the events of the day) apparently did not get the word since several events started at noon.  8-)

After winning another first place win at Sudoku, I played round 2 of the golf tournament today and remained in 4th place.  The challenge was to put your ball into 1 of 5 cups that were 30' away with the ship encountering moderate seas. I got 1 in the cup out of 3 tries which was better than most golfers did today.

After golf we watched the the latest Greek Wedding movie.  It was entertaining, but not as good as the earlier ones. 

The dining room featured scallops (right) tonight (a favorite Mary's) so we ate there tonight.   I was surprised to see pulled pork (left) on the menu. It was delicious. We both ended our dinner with a drambuie souffle.

No show tonight so we'll probably watch another movie in our room.  Another sea day tomorrow, with a similar schedule. 6 1/2 days to go!

Sea Day #5

While information has been very hard to come by, it appears like last night's incident was triggered by an unruly passenger who Princess deemed to be "a threat to follow passengers".  Apparently since the incident happened while within 3 miles of the island of Hawaii, Princess has to involve the local authorities.  The captain did finally include a comment about this in his daily noon address. 

This morning's events included the daily Sudoku challenge and a Navigation at Sea presentation.  I came in 4th out of 10 at Sudoku.  

The presentation was quite interesting. A ship's officer spent quite a bit of time talking about what it takes to work on the bridge. The picture on the left shows the minimum years to reach each level and what license is required. On the right is a picture of the bridge controls. If you make it larger the small wheel on the blue box in the center is what they used to manually steer the ship.  He also spoke extensively about how, while they use several GPS systems,  they do manually check positions using charts, especially as they approach a port. 

The afternoon was the start of a new golf tournament.  We did the first of 6 contests with the scores being cumulative.  We will continue to play this week.

Being formal night, we had very good entrees at dinner this evening.  Lobster tail and some excellent desserts!  YUM! You gotta love Lobster night!

Princess has added a new option where you can have lobster or a steak any night, but for an extra $19, so we skip that option.  

Tonight's production show was Sweet Soul Music which featured a lot of Motown hits. We're pretty sure we'd seen this show before, but it was still very enjoyable and the cast did a great job of putting it on. 

Love those Princess production shows!!

Sea day #5 coming up tomorrow, with more on board activities. 

Kona, Hawaii

 We had a relaxing day today.  Originally we had a marine wildlife excursion scheduled, but the more we thought about it, sending 3 hours in a the hot sun on a Zodiac was not worth a few possible whale sightings.  So we took the tender into town on our own for some shopping. 

As we approached the town we were surprised to see a Cariloha (bamboo products) store!  I had been needing some new socks and they were out of stock online.  The store we found in Waikiki only had 2 pair, but this store had 4, so I bought them out!  I wear these daily so getting 6 new pair was a blessing.  As we wandered down the main street so Mary could visit some shops, I stopped in for a local brew.  Mary took a photo from the street, and I did a selfie with my view of the shore, with the ship in the background. 

On our way back to the ship we were able to get more photos of the Crown Princess. Based on how it was docked at the other three ports, this was our best opportunity to get pictures of the whole ship. 

So now we are on our way to Ensenada, Mexico. At least we were on our way, but when I checked the navigation screen, I noticed we had reversed course and are headed back to Kona.  All passenger services will say is "an incident happened and the Captain will be making an announcement".   Further info to follow, when we find out!

Well, its now an hour later and we are now at anchor back at Kona. We've let down one tender that made a trip to shore, and it just returned. No announcement from the Captain and it's getting late so I assume we will know more in the morning.  A ship's officer told me that this will not affect our arrival in Ensenada. 

Nawiliwili, Kauai

Today we visited the island of Kauai, the farthest northwest of the 8 islands that make up Hawaii.  But it was also a heavy sports day (more to come about that). The entrance to this harbor is unusual.  The ship has to weave its way in by making a zig-zag path as you can see in the picture on the right.   (click to enlarge) 

We had an early excursion for a river ride to visit a fern grotto. We rode the boat on the left up the quiet river, then walked a lovely path to the fern grotto.  There were many interesting plants along the way, including this pretty red flower. 

The grotto has quite a history of being a wedding chapel for some Hollywood elites.  It has a small spring fed waterfall cascading down from the cliff, but that is not visible in the picture. This was followed by a stop to see the Opaekaa waterfall, lone of over 150 waterfalls on the island. 

Overall it was a pleasant half day excursion. 

The main afternoon events involved sports. The Red Wings were playing Toronto starting at 3pm and the Lions playoff game was at 3:30 pm.  What to watch?  Well, Mary and I settled in at Movies Under the Stars, the ship's outdoor big screen, to watch the Lions game, and I put the Red Wings game on my iPad,  using one earpiece to listen to it.  

As it turned out, both teams won!  Red Wings 4, Toronto 2 and Lions 24, Rams 23.  So it was a very good sports day. 

Due to the game being late, we skipped the dining room and ate in the buffet after the game and after Mary took this beautiful sunset picture.

Tonight's entertainment was Piano Man by the same guy who did the Elton John show back on our first night on the ship.  He featured songs by Billy Joel, Ray Charles and others.  It was a very entertaining show.

Tomorrow we head to Kona, our last stop in the islands.

Honolulu

 After a night of fairly rough seas, we woke this morning to smooth sailing as we slowly approached Honolulu; the ship has to travel quite a ways after entering the channel to arrive at our dock. Since we left early yesterday (thanks to everyone being back on board before the "All Aboard" time) we arrived before our scheduled 7am time.  

We took our time getting ready before taking a taxi to the International Marketplace. I was amazed to find a live Banyan tree (left) growing inside the mall! After some shopping we met our John Denver friend Janette Frawley for lunch.  Janette is from Melbourne Australia and was vacationing here for a month.  It was great to see her again and catch up on things.

After lunch we took a walk on the Waikiki beach to enjoy the sights.  We also got this nice view of Diamond Head.  Many people were out on surf boards, but the waves were not conducive to surfing.

We got back onboard in time for me to enter a golf putting contest.  I won, and my prize was what the guy called a "manual iPad"; actually a 4x6 bound notebook.  After reviewing the dining room menu for tonight, we opted to eat at the buffet. Nothing much going on this evening so we'll just watch a movie in our room.

On to the island of Kauai tomorrow!

Hilo, Hawaii

This morning we docked in Hilo, on the Big Island of Hawaii.  The seas were a bit rough last night; the captain told us that the winds were changing direction which would cause the seas to be "disturbed" and they sure were! However, by the time we got up this morning, we were approaching Hilo and the seas had calmed down. 

We were headed to Rainbow Falls and the Kilauea volcano on our half day excursion.  While we were waiting, it was announced that one tour, to the summit of Mauna Kea, was being cancelled due to too much snow! Rainbow Falls was pretty. We had a very good guide and enjoyed the excursion. On the right is a banyan tree planted by Babe Ruth in 1930.  There were many others planted by famous people, including Amelia Earhart and Richard Nixon.  He told a lot about living in Hawaii, and on the Big Island in particular.  Everything costs about 40% more than in the lower 48 (gas was running $4.75/gallon) and has to be imported. Things like Amazon delivery take a week at a minimum.  

There was no eruption in progress at Kilauea (pictured on the left)  but we were quite surprised that it was under 60 at the crater; Brrrr! Also a nice visitor center at the summit was damaged in an eruption a few years ago and was closed.  The picture on the right is a close up of steam rising out of the crater.

Dinner tonight was excellent! I had prime rib, Mary had Coq au Vin, and we both had a macadamia nut brownie with ice cream on top for dessert.  YUM!

Unfortunately, the captain says the we will have troubled seas for this evening which does not bode well.  Time to put on the sea sickness bracelets!  We dock in Honolulu at 7:00 am tomorrow and plan do to some shopping and sight-seeing in Waikiki Beach.  While there we're also getting together with an Australian John Denver friend who happens to be vacationing in the area.