We were up fairly early (though it is so tempting to sleep in when the ship is docked and stable) and had breakfast on the Terrace Deck to enjoy the sunshine. We had sunshine!! I texted my younger bother about seeing Todd Fournier in the Princess Theater the night before and he knew all about him. In fact, he knew all about his nine(!) brothers and sisters too, and said there were three of them at CCHS at the same time my brother was there, and his dad was a good friend of my aunt and worked for the same company where I met G and on and on…
Our view at breakfast
We priced an Uber and Lyft (half the price of Uber) to the Hale Koa and arrived there before noon, where we settled into a beach view table at the Barefoot Bar…and didn’t move until after sunset. It was a beautiful day, warm, not hot, a bit of a breeze. We always feel so comfortable there and spend half our time reminiscing about past stays. We really need to return for an extended visit!
Our view for the day
That grassy park area makes it the best spot on Waikiki Beach
Round 1: Experimentation 😆
We had planned to walk down the beach as far as the Sheraton but, in a delightful turn of events, a lady came up to me and asked if I was YellowFish, which really threw me, because we weren’t even on the ship, but it turns out Mary and her daughter have been long time readers, and she was also cruising on the Emerald Princess with her husband Ed who was retired Coast Guard, and, well, seven hours later we were still talking (and, yes, doing some minor drinking and snacking and generally having a fun and frivolous time). At the end of it all, we felt like we had known them forever, and Mary heard some of the life deets that will never make it into this blog, and I never anticipated we’d make such wonderful new friends during our day in Honolulu.
In the midst of it all, I had to take a time out to watch McGee race at a meet in Seattle. This was his first indoor track meet this season. He’d told me he was putting all his eggs in this basket, wanting to save his body to do well here. I had already subscribed to RunnerSpace and had the website queued up on my phone to watch it but the men’s Elite 5K race started nearly an hour late so I continued to chat with Mary and Ed and had one AirPod in and one eye on my phone while I waited.
Simply stated, McGee was a star. In an exciting finish I’ve re-watched at least ten times, he pulled into first, dropped back to second, and, in the last 150 meters, through sheer grit fought back into a first place finish. And his excitement at the end was on full display (and documented forever on YouTube). My excitement was audible (Mary and Ed can attest). Then I was texting him and his mom was texting me and, best of all was McGuy texting me, so excited for his brother. I love seeing that.
We stayed for sunset about 6:30pm and had fully intended to stay for Friday night fireworks, but they were starting until 7:45pm and we were fading fast. It was also packed on the beach and we knew that getting out of there and finding an Uber would be tough after fireworks.
So we all shared an Uber back to the ship and at 7:45pm were having a light buffet dinner on the Terrace Deck when we heard the fireworks and, leaning off the back of the ship could see the high ones. They lasted less than four minutes.
I’m glad we didn’t stick around.
We fell into bed shortly afterwards where I re-watched McGee’s race in its 13:46 entirety and the last five minutes of it several more times.
New friends, a beautiful beach, sunshine and a win.
Life is good. :-)
