Yellow Fish cruises: Day 6: Honolulu

We were so excited to reach land, particularly Hawaii, that I set an alarm and we were up at 5:30am this morning. Not that that was a hardship; just five days earlier that was 8:30am in Los Angeles and even later back at home. I pulled G away from the Liar’s Club and we went up to the Terrace Deck on the back of the ship to watch sunrise and the Ruby Princess’ arrival at Pier 2 in Honolulu. Spectacular on both counts!

Sunrise off Oahu

The Diamond Head lighthouse light at sunrise

The DaVinci Dining Room opens for breakfast 30 minutes earlier (at 7am) on port days, and, once the Ruby Princess was at its berth, we went there to eat. Once again, I knew my day was going to be light (in reality, very light) on protein, and had fruit and smoked salmon. Though we have eaten all of our breakfasts to date in the DaVinci Dining Room, I have scoped out the smoked salmon situation at breakfast in the Horizon Court Buffet. Two years ago, on the Golden Princess, there was no smoked salmon in the Buffet, just some bony, tiny chunks of smoked meat. Last year on the Sapphire, smoked salmon could be had but one needed to ask for it. It’s the same way on the Ruby Princess.

After breakfast, I stopped by the Internet Cafe to speak with the Internet Manager about unlimited WiFi. He confirmed that the speed is managed off-ship, based on supply and demand. I’d suspected that; our download speed had been hovering right around 4Mbps since we boarded the ship. It was significantly higher this morning in port. I also asked about why my purchased unlimited WiFi was good for 45 days. He said it’s because, in the case of extended back to back cruisers, the ship arbitrarily breaks the cruises into segments. He told to me to look at my ship card to see how long it was good...November 8, exactly 45 days after we boarded. I wish I could figure out how to squeeze our remaining time on the Ruby Princess onto one card.

Best download speed so far...with many people off the ship in Honolulu

Around 8:30am, we walked off the ship with our two roll aboard suitcases and boarded a waiting bus taking passengers to Walmart for free. This was the easiest and quickest way to get to the Ala Moana Mall area. The day was already sunny, hot and humid. Once at Walmart, G went in to check out the prices for 12-packs of soda: $6 each. Ouch. We had done our research online this morning and already knew that Target’s price was cheaper. So we walked down to Walgreens to check out their price, and it was on sale there. We bought three 12-packs for G, two bottles of wine and G’s favorite gum made in Hawaii and then crossed the street to Target.

Yesterday I had gone online and ordered 23 items (7 of them were boxes of Handi Wipes) for store pick up. We went directly to Customer Service and claimed our order, managing to squeeze most of it into the roll aboards. G carried the laundry detergent separately, I kept a hand on my cane and we wheeled our purchases back to the Walmart bus. Between the heat, the humidity, the waiting and the walking, I was thrilled when the bus finally arrived, and needed a rest on the ship before we headed out again.

We ate our first meal in the Horizon Court Buffet (lunch started at 11:30am) and I was surprised to see there wasn’t any plant based protein on the salad bar. Usually there are some sort of beans available. There also wasn’t any plant based ready made salads (such as bean salad) available either. I didn’t bother to ask, and could probably have had some brought out for me, but I was glad I had the smoked salmon at breakfast. We rested a little on the Terrace Deck and walked off the ship again.

This time we caught a bus down to the Hale Koa, the military resort we’ve stayed at for the past two winters. We needed to cancel a reservation we had for early next year (no Hawaii stay for us this winter) and use the only fee-free ATM we know of in all of Waikiki. We checked out the new aquatics complex there which had been under construction for two years and just opened (it looks amazing) and then made our way along the beach boardwalk down to the Outrigger Reef Hotel. Except that the boardwalk plays out just before the hotel, and, armed with two crutches on this trip, I was trying to walk on loose sand the last 100 feet or so. As I found out immediately, loose sand and crutches are a tough combination.

Walking to our sunset sail

Back in July, we had reserved two spaces on the Holokai Sunset Sail for tonight. Never did I ever in a million years imagine I’d still be using crutches today, and I might not have been (or at least might have been using just one), but the shopping trip this morning wore me out. Luckily, the guys on the Holokai were great, letting me board the boat first and helping me every step of the way.

We were so lucky to be on board with a 30-person family group from Australia, including several kids. We were swept up in their fun, the weather couldn’t have been better, and we enjoyed a beautiful sail out to the Diamond Head Lighthouse and back, seeing a gorgeous sunset and...yes, we saw it, a green flash. So many of my blog readers email me about our green flash photos taken when we stay in Hawaii, but I think Hawaii might be where the green flash at sunset was born. I didn’t get a photo of it tonight, perched as I was with one hand on the railing and the camera in the other, but it was there, all the same. What a perfect evening.

Somehow I can’t stop myself from taking photos of bare-chested captains.

The Holokai Catamaran sail

Diambd Head crater and lighthouse

A wire from the ship’s railing is in this photo, as I was sitting down when I took it.

But those colors...

It doesn’t get any better than this.

I am mostly off alcohol, but my doctor said I could enjoy it on special occasions, and since I don’t think there is an occasional more special than a sunset sail in Hawaii, I enjoyed a couple of MaiTais, which made my foot feel better but my head feel worse. Once we arrived back at Waikiki Beach, I was the first one off the boat (they said the boat was more stable with everyone else on it), and once again I was helped down the stairs and through the surf up onto the beach. This part is very fuzzy - it was dark, I’d had two MaiTais, but somehow G got me back to the main street and we caught a bus back to the ship. It was nearly 8:30pm when we returned to our cabin and I knew dinner, and tonight’s hula entertainment (we’ve seen them before) were not in the cards. We fell into bed and not even the knowledge that I needed to write a blog post was enough to keep me awake.