First, I want to wish everyone (not just the Americans...we all have something to be thankful for) a wonderful and safe Thanksgiving holiday. It's not Thanksgiving Day yet where I am, but it's close, and by the time anyone reads this, it will probably be next week. So, Happy Thanksgiving!
Second, this is one of those rare nights when I wonder why the heck I ever started this blog thing. It's late. I'm tired. With the big holiday weekend, no one cares if I let it slip a day or two. But then I remember that tomorrow we're in Honolulu, with a very late on board time (and you know our history in Honolulu...seldom early, never late (but cutting it very, very close)), so I really can't put it off until tomorrow.
Luckily, we did almost nothing today, so I can be quick. In fact, I'll start at the end, which was definitely the high point, and then backtrack.
We had the best entertainment of the whole cruise season tonight, a 4-singer group called These Guys. Now, I thought we had seen those guys, These Guys, somewhere in a past cruise life, and, as it turns out, we have. They were an a capella group on Celebrity ships back when we cruised primarily on Celebrity. But then we started cruising Princess and Celebrity eliminated the a capella groups on their ships (because it's all about real estate on ships and four singers need four beds that can't be sold to revenue paying passengers) and those guys, These Guys, started performing on Princess as featured entertainers. They came onboard today in Hilo and will leave in Maui and even then have to share cabins. There's not enough for them to each have one. To have a four person entertainment group on the Pacific Princess is a real treat. Our orchestra is a four-musician show band; our party bands are duos; they make due with less on this small ship.
We caught the second half of the first These Guys show, which was for the late diners and started at 6:45pm, sitting in the cheap seats at the very back of the Cabaret Lounge, so all we could do was hear those guys, These Guys, not see them. As soon as the show was over, we moved up to the front row and stayed for their 8:15pm show. They were sensational. The majority of their show was a capella but then they did a Temptations and a Jersey Boys set that had me bouncing in my seat and they received a standing O both shows. And then they mingled in the audience after each one, too, and we'e really friendly and personable. We loved it.
And then we had the Love Boat Disco Deck party starting at 9:30pm. Picture it (Suzan and Greg)...dancing under a star filled sky and almost full moon and singing and partying with our light up flashing Princess party glasses filled with our drinks of choice (at this point, it's Maalox for me) and enjoying our last Disco Deck party on the Pacific Princess. And G said, we are going to miss the Pacific Princess...and the Pacific Ocean.
So, that was the end of our day. Now I'll start at the beginning, but let me say this first: AT&T. Internet. Texting. Phone calls. This year it was me hanging off the Promenade Deck at the wee hours of the morning to turn my phone off Airplane Mode for the first time in over two months and retrieve my cell phone messages, some of them two months old. Honestly, it's like taking a Valium for me to reconnect with my world at home. I also uploaded photos to the blog posts since Moorea a week ago, if you're interested.
The twins' mom sent me several pics, and one of them is so priceless I have to share it here. During a Ross Dress for Less shopping trip:
Harious. Absolutely harious. These guys have been making me smile for 12 years.
And I miss them, just a little. :-(
We had to go through US immigration and were assigned the first group to be processed at 8am, but by 7:25am we were already docked and Passenger Services was making an announcement that we could go immediately. We flew out of our cabin and walked ito the Cabaret Lounge with our passports in hand right behind the three agents who had just boarded. By 7:30am we were the first passengers stepping off the ship onto terra firma. Land. U.S. land! Wucy, we're home!!
Our excitement sated, we quickly returned to the ship for breakfast. Security was teasing us that we couldn't make it more than 5 minutes on the 'outside'. Hey, it's rough out there! We sat in the Club Restaurant and ate and Interneted and looked over the brochures we had picked up in the terminal building. I made some phone calls for waiter Ricky who had drowned his iPhone 6 in Bora Bora, but, unfortunately, I couldn't find an iPhone repair place that could fix it today. These poor crew members are really hurting because we're in Honolulu (where there is an Apple Store) on Thanksgiving Day, when everything will be closed.
Our first order of business was to return to our cabin to make some phone calls before offices started to close back home for the holiday. That completed, we walked off again, heading to WalMart. When there was a line of crew members waiting for the free shuttle, we grabbed the first taxi that held six people and had the first four crew members in line join us and we paid for the $12 ride to WalMart, just 10 minutes or so away.
We didn't need a lot of stuff, just Wet Ones hand wipes and I saw a tropical shirt that I liked and G bought French Vanilla liquid coffee creamer (of course) and Bugles (of course) and a 12-pack of Mountain Dew. The boy likes his Dew, and, though he found one little shop in Papeete that sold expired cans of it, once he'd bought them all he had had to do without.
We took a free shuttle (actually, a large bus) back to the ship and had lunch in the Panorama Buffet, and then returned to our cabin where we surfed the Net 'till we were tired and had exhausted our batteries. We have missed it!! I can't access the Internet for free on my iPad, so I was downloading People and Sports Illustrated magazines on my iPhone, never an optimum reading experience, but beggars can't be choosers and there won't be a Starbucks or Apple Store with free WiFi open tomorrow in Honolulu.
I finally reached Mom by phone (she has a busy social schedule and was out the first few times I'd tried to call her today) and we had the longest phone conversation we'd had since I left Hilo in September it was great to talk with her. We had had one decent conversation over Vonage (for free! Get the app!) when I was in Papeete in October, but mostly we've communicated via blog and email and postcards and those are just not the same. It will be nice when I get home to be able to talk daily!
By 3:45pm, G and I were done with the Internet, but we needed to get showered to be up in the Elite Lounge by 4:30pm to watch sailaway, so we couldn't even get off the ship for a walk. That's all right...we'll walk 10 miles tomorrow in Honolulu. We didn't want to miss the Elite Lounge; it was port wine and Stilton cheese night accompanied by a beautiful sailaway and that really started off our great evening.
Mom called me right after we sailed while I still had phone service and we talked some more. :-)
We went to dinner at 5:15pm, where we watched a beautiful sunset over Mauna Kea right from our table (again through salt-stained windows). We had had a wonderfully sunny day, which was very unexpected, and we had a nice view of the top of the mountain we had been on in September.
Sunset over Mauna Kea
The Pacific Princess in Hawaii combines the best of our home life and our cruising life. I decided today that, in a perfect world, I would be quite happy spending three months a year repeatedly bouncing between the four major Hawaiian islands with a sea day every fifth day.
Hey, a girl can dream, can't she?