The holidays...part one

Day One
After getting off the plane in Honolulu, Hawaii we come to realize how humid it really is. The airport is all outside; it’s covered but still outside. So it’s about 80 plus degrees and mind you we just left Alaska 12 hours prior and it was snowing so let’s just say we weren’t wearing outfits for 80 plus degrees. After gathering our luggage, we grabbed a ‘greyhound’ hotel bus and get to our hotel about an hour later. We had to stop about 10 times for other passengers before arrving at our hotel.
The hotel was simi-desent; great for the price. We had a balcony and could see the ocean from there. The only bad thing is we had to pay for the wireless interent so we decided against it. We unpacked, took a shower and walked around the area where the hotel was. We ate at a cute lil’ diner and there was a ton of street entertainment. My favorite was the guy with all the parriots. I had to get a picture with the parrots!

Day two
I set the alarm for 7am. We got up and had breakfast at the hotel. While enjoying the pancakes and eggs, I looked at the clock on the wall and it states 6:45am. The alarm in the room was an hour fast!! Since we were already up, we packed up and called for a cab to the port. We got there and there was a cute lil’ outdoor shopping center next door to the ship. So we checked our bags at this bag storage area and walked around. Of course I find a starbucks and then got really sad! It was Christmas Day, and it was closed!! So we had some Bad Ass Coffee instead but I sat infront of Starbucks and drank it. Now remember Christmas Day was when Dallas played Philly and my husband is a big fan of Dallas. So I was trying to get onboard first for his sake. We were first in line to check our luggage for the ship and first in line to check onto the boat but our rooms weren’t ready as of noon. The game started at 12:15pm. We get on board and a crew member informs my husband that we will not be having NBC on board so he of course was devasted. His brother had to keep calling him to inform him of the score. Unforunately Dallas lost so I think it was a good thing that he missed the game. The rooms weren’t ready until around 3pm. We walked around the ship and looked at all the public areas such as the resturantes, the pool, and other faclities. We checked into our room and found out that we got upgraded! From room 49545 to room 8090. We even have a window…the view is of a lifeboat! At least we can see through a lil’ bit. Better than nothing and the room is pretty large in my opinion. So we have lunch at a buffect type resturante on the 12th floor where the entrance to the pool is at. The food is good but seating is limited. You can take your food else where though such as outside. Dinner we had it in a more fancier environment. The waiter was really nice and the food was delicious! We took a strol around the ship and watched it cast off. Then we went to bed.

Day three
This was the first day of our ecursions. We took the trip to the volcanoes and rainbow waterfall. Unfortantely both were a disappointment. The volcanoe I didn’t even know it was it until we stopped, got out and she said, look there is steam, this is it. It was a large crater with a lot of steam coming out of it. The whole place looked completely dead and black. It looked like what you would picture the moon to look like. We then traveled to the museum up at the top of where the crater was and you could see how large the ‘hole’ was. The bus driver stated that in two years the volcanoe will explode and take the whole city of Hilo with it. I guess we will wait and see on that one. We stopped at a Macadamia Nut factory and sampled some nuts and I got some macadamia nut chocolate kisses. Those were really good and now I wish I had gotten some more. We stopped for lunch and I had some Mai Mai for the first time and it was delicious! We didn’t have much time to eat though b/c the line was long for the food and our time was short. We stopped at a botanical garden and the flowers were gorgeous! The main flower that I see all the time are the hiabiscus and in all sorts of colors! They are beautiful flowers. The last stop was the Rainbow Falls and it was very disappointing. The waterfall was very small and it had started to rain so we were only there for a couple of minutes and then left. No rainbow either. So that was our ecurison for the day. We got back on the boat around 4-ish and took a nap. I had a screaming headache. At 6pm we went to the Mexican style restaurant and Kevin and I loved everything we ordered. It’s hard to get in though b/c they said they were all booked. So after dinner we went to a show called Iullisons. It was terrible but at least it was something to do. The guy wasn’t very good and he was begging for applais when he didn’t deserve them. Most of the magic he tried pulling off were easy to figure out too. After the show we went to the top outside to see the volcanoe’s lava spilling into the ocean. It was actually pretty cool. My pictures of it didn’t come out really well though. After that we headed for bed.

Day four
We arrived in Maui in the morning. We had room service for breakfast and was exetremely slow but once we got the food it was good. We took a bus to a city in Maui called Lahaina. The ‘excurision’ was called Lahaina on your own so the bus dropped us off and we were literally on our own in a huge outdoor shopping complex. It was nice. We ate lunch at Hard Rock Café and Kevin had his “J.D. Appletini”. We got some soviners and had a great time strolling around. We got back to the ship around 3pm and dropped off our stuff and got ready for the luau. We boarded the bus and it drove us to a hotel called Maui Prince Hotel. It was a gorgeous area! The hotel was right on the beach and the ocean and sand was great. The whole scene itself was breathtaking. They served free acholoic drinks and so Kevin and I partook in some Blue Hawaiians. I think I took a million pictures of the whole area. We ate dinner and watched hawaiian hula dancing. I thought we were going to see some better dancing than what we got but all in all it was a nice evening. We came home and went right to bed around 1030pm.

Day Five
We didn’t have anything planned for today so we pretty much winged it. We got up around 9-ish and went down to the pier and caught a ride on a free trolley to the mall that was a couple of minutes away. The mall was nice and I had a starbucks mocha frap immediately. The weather was windy and rainy and cold all day and it got Kevin pretty sick by the end of the day. We got a ride back from the mall on the trolley and then walked to a outdoor type mall place. It wasn’t really nice and had nothing there so we continued to walk down the street. I know I saw a starbucks on the way back so I figure we could walk to it and ended up back at the mall. So we took the trolley back to the boat. Before getting on I wanted to go by the ocean for a lil’ bit and I think that did Kevin in. It was really windy. So we came back to the room and Kevin past out on the bed and I decided to type out all the days leading up until this moment. But since I don’t have the internet connected to the laptop I can’t really post this as of yet. Tomorrow’s excursion is to hang out on the beach and we are able to use all these types of beach toys and eat a light lunch while hanging out there. I hope it will be fun and pray the weather changes for the good. (Continuing the rest of the night)- After Kevin woke up, a crew member knocked on our door and brought us our hor’darves from the anniversary package. We quickly scarf them down and decided to get another small snack before our 9:30pm reservations at the French restaurant. We grabbed some chocolate chip cookies! On the way to the restaurant, the waters had been choppy all day into the evening, but it got really bad to where we had to hold on to the side. At one point, the plates fell over in the buffet area.
The dinner at the French style restaurant was amazing! The entries were soo delicious! We got mussels, shrimp cocktails, mushrooms, duck, scallops, and a chocolate soufflé! The waitress even gave us a free cake and sang an ‘anniversary’ type song (Won’t you call me sweetheart) in celebration. After dinner, we came back and crashed out.

Day Six
We woke up and got ready to go to the beach. We had breakfast at Alizar’s, a fancy place on the sixth deck and it was amazing! The selections were soo good! I had croissants, pancakes, eggs, beacon, and coffee. Kevin had waffles, and hash browns. The journey alone to the shore was a new experience. So far up till this point, we would dock onto a port on the shore. Today was a little different. We had to take these mini motor lifeboat thing. I would compare it to a Coast Guard rescue boat inclosed. The waters were soo choppy this boat would bounce on the waves. It was awesome though! We arrived on shore and boarded a bus. It took about an hour to get to the other side of the island. The beach we used, was the same beach shared by the Hilton Hotel and the Marriot. You may think that it was a grand place but there was soo much construction going on and the sand was so grainy that it wasn’t the best. The sand wasn’t really sand at all and there were tons of lava rocks everywhere. To me, this island (Kona) had just had a volcano explode and it was just never cleaned up or something. In Alaska we have mudflats that surround the parts that the ocean touches that make it impossible to get near the ocean water without a port; In Kona they have lava rocks. We didn’t do much at the beach. Kevin attempted snurkling, while I took a thousand pictures of it. I posed with some snorkeling gear but chickened out in attempting to snorkel. At least I got a picture! We grabbed the ‘light’ lunch which included chips, drink and hogie turkey sandwich and ate at the outdoor restaurant that the Marriott had since it was covered in shade. After lunch, we went exploring at climbed some lava rock along the coast and found tons of little crabs. We came to the conclusion that so far Hawaii has an abundance of three things: Starbucks (Thank God!), crabs, and ABC stores. An ABC store is a type of CVS or Wallgreens, just not as fancy. We headed back to the bus around 1:45pm and took the long journey back to the port. We arrived at 3pm and saw a long line to get back on the ship so instead, we walked to a local Starbucks that was a couple blocks away…uphill! After a nice calf burning workout I was rewarded with a nice cool Mocha Frap! We walked around for a little while and realized there was no other stores worth walking into. So we got in line to get back on the ship. It took about an hour to get back onboard! But of course, what do you expect with about 2,500 people? At five pm, we had our cake and champagne party and it was actually pretty fun. There were about 6 couples that arrived and we talked about how we met, fell in love, and got married. It was pretty nice. The champagne was awesome and so was the cake. After the lil’ party, we attempted to get into one of the booked resturants. We got into the steak place and it was great except for the minor part of our waiter being too busy to wait on us. The food was excellent, the other parts of the staff were great but for some reason the main waiter was too pre-occupied with two other tables than our own. I had to go run out and get my soda after the waiter grabbed it and didn’t come back ever. I was steamed! Neways, off my soapbox; we left and went to one of the shows called, the weakest link! That’s right; we had the fun excitement to watch some crew guests play the weakest link and it was absolutely hillarous! The people that volunteered were a riot! The ‘host’ himself was super funny and he looked like Kooleeoo (sp?). After the show, we came home, compared tan lines and hit the hay.