Day 27: Land ho in Hilo!

As much as we’ve enjoyed the five sea days required to get us here, it was very exciting this morning when I first woke up at 4:30am to see the faint lights and mountain profiles of the Big Island on the ship’s web cam. G was up shortly after that, walking all around the ship to view our arrival from different vantage points. I’m not quite as hard core, but was outside above the bridge when the ship finally was tied up at its berth in Hilo. 

The view?  Postcard-perfect. 

Kilauea putting on a show

It was spewing boulders the size of footballs 650 feet into the air!

Mauna Kea summit

Been there!

A clear view this morning of the observatories on top of Mauna Kea

This side of the island is so green, quite a contrast to the black lava on the Kona side

We went to breakfast in the Botticelli Dining Room (almost empty today), and discovered our next door table mates were from a development just ten miles from where we live. They’re both small towns; it’s a very small world. When the man asked what we were going to do today, G answered that he would do whatever his wife wanted to do. After I lifted my jaw back in to place, I asked our waiter for a special order:  pancakes with (maybe? please?) just a couple of blueberries in them. I figured today might be a tough day, and needed my favorite breakfast comfort food to prepare. 

This is what I received:

A thing of beauty
#spoiledontheemeraldprincess 

#ilovethisship

#ilovethesepeople

I took a few minutes to exchange some $100 bills at Guest Services. I realized that we’ll be in Honolulu tomorrow, and know that’s a huge shopping port for the crew. I figured that if we tipped today (please, no emails about tips vs. bribes), they’d have some extra cash. Let’s just say that no one seemed at all disappointed about that. 😉

And then it was time to claim chairs and settle in for today’s AFC championship game. Sure, we were watching it on a cruise ship in Hawaii and not in the brutal cold and snow at home, and the outcome was certainly not unexpected, but that was as soul crushing a defeat as I’ve experienced in recent years. Soul crushing. 

Deep, deep sigh. 

We were in the sun for most of the first game, which required lots of sunscreen which meant a shower would be needed before dinner. We took the time between the games to walk over to the little market near the port of Hilo where - our relief here was palpable 😉- they had 12-packs of Mountain Dew. Not cheap, but certainly easier than transporting a case of pop from WalMart back to the ship in Honolulu. 

We watched part of the second half of the NFC game in our cabin until my spirit could handle no more, and then watched the end of the game on my iPhone in the Elite Lounge followed by dinner in the Michelangelo Dining Room. The coast of the island as we sailed north was visible for quite a while from our dinner table. Beautiful!

Elite lounge appies

I shouldn’t even be going to dinner!

Tonight’s Princess Theater performance was vocal group The Company Men. I remember when we’ve seen them before being underimpressed, but they won me over tonight with their high energy, synchronized choreography and intricate harmonies. I’m still not a fan of music mashups, but they were very entertaining. 

There was a second vocal show at 9pm in the Explorers Lounge, but today’s hours in the sun and tomorrow’s planned late evening in Honolulu had us back in the cabin by 8:30pm. 

Day 26: At Sea

I decided to keep my streak going, and went to use a treadmill and a bike in the gym instead of going to breakfast this morning. It wasn’t hard to pass up the food; today was MTG luncheon day!  Then I returned the cabin and did some of the serious freshening up- manicure and face mask and red light therapy- that has been neglected too much lately. I’ve got another solid day of football spectatorship upcoming, and we know how hard that is on the body.

We were cleaned up a bit for today’s MTG luncheon (cutoff was 696 days; there are fewer than 600 Elites on board, hence our 24-hour laundry turnaround) and went to the Adagio Lounge around noon. The nice part about MTG luncheons on the Emerald Princess is that they start with champagne in Adagio before moving into Sabatini’s for lunch.

Food and Beverage Director Antonio has left the ship and Roy Kelly has come in to replace him. We go way back with Roy, to our early seasons of cruising on the Emerald Princess and it was great to get caught up with him. I teased CD Nathan that I had been getting worried. As of last night, tomorrow’s championship games were not appearing in Journey in the app. However, I checked first thing this morning and they were there. He said he literally loses sleep over these games, and wakes up in a cold sweat imagining that he forgot to schedule them into the day. He may be British, but he fully understands their importance to many of us on board. 

With Captain Todd McBain
It says Captains Circle Party, but it was MTG

My fruit plate starter

The food, service and conversation were all delightful, and this lunch absolutely ruins us for the rest of the afternoon (in the best way imaginable). We spent the afternoon catching up on enrichment lectures and feeling the very gentle motion of the ocean in our forward cabin.

We’ve been very lucky since we first boarded the Emerald Princess on December 30. Our weather has been remarkably, consistently good. Today was much warmer (mid-70s) and the air felt tropical. The pool decks were busy, not crowded, but people have finally spread out on the ship. It’s nice!

As I mentioned last night, we were absent at today’s ukulele lesson, and, while one of us might not have minded (🙄), I was sorry to have missed it. I really need all the practice time I can get. 

With no right to, we went to the Elite Lounge in Skywalkers at 4:30pm (they have candied ginger there every night. It’s my weakness on this ship. Every cruise has one kryptonite for me, and I suppose this can’t be too much worse than the Regal’s oatmeal cookies without raisins). We ate very lightly at dinner in the Michelangelo Dining Room and then went to Club Fusion early to get seats for Jeff Bughart’s comedy show tonight.

That had us first sitting through a family karaoke session in Club Fusion that was alternately entertaining or heart warming or positively ear-bleedingly horrid. Club Fusion was completely packed for karaoke; do people really enjoy karaoke, or were they, like us, simply claiming seats for the upcoming comedy show?  It was a kinda high price to pay, but we survived. 

Jeff Bughart’s show tonight was fantastic. A different feel, of course, being in Club Fusion rather than the Princess Theater, but he totally owned that venue, and we loved his quick mix of comedy and impressions. 

Jeff’s show finished in time for us to get to tenor Connor Bogart’s own show, called Mic Drop Moments. We had just seen this late last cruise but enjoyed it so much then that we were happy to see it again. A two-show night!

We move clocks back an hour tonight, putting us on Hawaii time.  We will pick up the Hilo port pilot at 6:45am tomorrow, and the morning weather is supposed to be a bit sunny, with the usual showers moving in during the afternoon. A lot of the Volcano National Park excursions have been cancelled as Kilauea is shooting debris 650 feet into the air. In fact, the park was closed today.  My husband originally had visions of us seeing lava flow tomorrow, while I instead had visions of camping out at the MUTS screen for back to back divisional championship games.  I needed a natural disaster to allow me to do that, and…well, here we are. Do you believe in miracles?

A friend shared this with me this week, and I have to say, it’s spot on. Tomorrow could be ugly, and I’ve spent the week preparing for it. I survived watching Super Bowl XLVIII on the Emerald Princess where the Broncos didn’t even get a first down the entire first quarter. I’ll survive tomorrow, too. 

Broncos fans this week

Today marks the half way point of this series of cruises.  Am I enjoying it?  Oh yeah.  I’m having the time of my life. This ship, this crew, this entertainment… all making me fall in love again with the Emerald Princess. 

Life is good. :-)

Day 25: At Sea

I was dragging a little this morning, but forced myself to go to the gym to use a treadmill for 45 minutes. After all, it is literally located right above my head; Thank God I don’t have to walk too far…to walk. 😉 

We had returned to the cabin last night to find an invitation to a party for in transit guests to be held in Skywalkers today at 11am. This sounded like fun. I swung by the World Fresh Marketplace to grab a cup of coffee, imagining that this party might include alcohol and hors doerves. It did, and was a very enjoyable time. HGM Simona told us that there had been nearly 150 in transit guests last cruise (between the Mexico cruise and this Hawaii cruise). 

Some people were jokingly calling it an apology party.  Apparently the immigration issue that I mentioned a few days ago that I kind skated through caused a lot of trouble for the guests behind me and some of them had to wait in the terminal for quite a while (one guest was mistakenly instructed to leave the terminal and wait outside!), so while I was sitting on the empty Terrace Deck enjoying another cup of coffee before I went to Embarkation Day lunch, several others were having a much tougher time of things. 

We went to lunch in the Botticelli Dining Room which Nebo opens a little early, about 11:50am. That works well, since we have to get to ukulele lessons by 1pm, though we like to get there early to practice. The ukuleles usually appear about ten minutes before class starts. 

I had the longest laugh I have had in forever today during our class. As much as I’m loving it, I’ve really struggled and have to focus intensely to keep up. G and I have just one song book to share, and had it on the table between us. I was looking at the song book, at my fingers on the frets, back and forth, back and forth, not really paying attention to G when, out of the corner of my eye I noticed that he wasn’t working hard at this at all. I was impressed, thinking he remembered a lot more from those ukulele lessons he had taken on the Pacific Princess than I realized. 

Then I looked closer and saw he wasn’t moving his left hand fingers at all. In fact, his right hand fingers weren’t even touching the strings. And then we played a C (one finger) chord, and that one he strummed loudly and confidently.  He had been fake playing!  Like lip syncing, but finger syncing! And when I called him on it, he got such an impish grin on his face that I couldn’t help but laugh. He said he just wanted to go to classes with me because I was enjoying it so much, and he was enjoying me enjoying it. 

It doesn’t matter. We have to miss tomorrow’s class because of the MTG luncheon, and I’ll never catch up. I think I’ll be finger syncing too!

We spent some time walking on the Promenade Deck after class. It was very slightly warmer today, but I still wore slacks, as it wasn’t sunny as yesterday. The seas were still fairly smooth until around dinner time today, and we were comfortable in our Lido Deck forward cabin last night. 

Plenty of seating available at the Neptunes pool at 2pm. It still isn’t great pool weather. 

The evening started with the Elite Lounge in Skywalkers and then dinner with Ronie and Ivy in the Michelangelo Dining Room. We had to rush- we always have to rush dinner- because the Princess Theater shows start at 7pm and one of us (not me) is mighty fussy about where we sit, so we generally get to the theater 45-60 minutes early. It works well for blog writing, not so good enjoying for dessert and coffee after our dinner. We literally eat and run. 

Tonight’s performance by vocalist Gen Muldonado was exceptional. She sang the music of the divas, and this girl could sing. Patsy Cline, Aretha, Tina Turner…every song was a hit. We enjoyed it so much that we returned for the 9pm show. She said she’s heading to Fort Lauderdale and Caribbean Princess when we get to Hilo, so watch for her there, and then returning to the Emerald Princess, so maybe we’ll see her again next cruise. 

In between the two shows, we danced to the Silent Disco in the Piazza and then returned to the Michelangelo Dining Room for coffee and dessert, which we ate quickly because there was more entertainment to enjoy. 

In case you can’t tell, we’re having a great time. 

Life is good. :-)

Day 24: At Sea

Today, finally, the weather warmed enough that the whole feeling on the ship changed. It went from being interior-focused to ocean-oriented. We went up to the Terrace Deck right after breakfast to enjoy another cup of coffee or two (love this Lavazza coffee!) and when we first stepped outside, there was a gentle mist falling. We found two chairs under the overhang, but within a few minutes the rain stopped, the sun started to appear and so did more people. By the afternoon, most of the loungers around the pool were starting to fill. 

That realization that you ate breakfast in the dining room…and ate more breakfast in the buffet…and ate more breakfast on the Terrace Deck…and have no business eating lunch but you still do. 😱

We were enjoying the quiet instrumental music and the sound of the wake on the Terrace Deck so much that we ended up skipping the 10am enrichment lecture we had intended to get to and just stayed out here, soaking up the sun. While we were there, there was a group of ukulele players and singers (fellow guests) sitting in the back of the buffet, playing and singing. And that’s when it hit me…I’m not sure I can ever really master the ukulele because I truly can’t sing a note. The family joke is that my mom pushing me into piano lessons at age 5 was an act of re-direction. 😆

We stayed outside until nearly noon, reading about the winter storm marching across the country. It sounds brutal, it’s quite a change for those at home, and we feel we are finally getting our money’s worth, weather-wise, on this cruise. 

I’m not sure why, other than we could, but we went to the Botticelli Dining Room for lunch (just soup and salad), then to our third ukulele class. Dare I say it was a little easier today, or at least less painful?  Considering that, going into today’s class, I’d only had ukulele in my hands for 90 minutes total in my entire life, it gave me great hope. I think I’m going to buy one when I get home. Yes, I’m enjoying it that much. We actually learned enough chords to play You Are My Sunshine today, and, except for the fact that I was always a measure and a fret and a finger off…yay me!

Ukulele class must exhaust us, because we returned to the cabin and chilled for a while. We went to the Elite Lounge and then to dinner where we gave our window side table to our neighbors celebrating their 54th wedding anniversary today. 

A beautiful surprise in our cabin when we returned this afternoon

Tonight’s Princess Theater entertainment was a comedian juggler, and note this date on your calendar because we went, sitting in the “just in casiest” of the “just in case” seats…and stayed for the entire show. Mark Nizer was actually really good, and between his LED lighted objects and lighting director Mustafa’s (from Turkey) artistry, it was a beautiful show to watch.

We are back in the cabin watching the enrichment lectures we missed today when we played hooky to stay outside. Tomorrow:  shorts weather and more sunshine. Stay safe and warm at home!

Oh, and BTW:  24 hour laundry turnaround twice so far this cruise!!!