Hawaii trip - final sea day

Today is our last sea day and, while we’re looking forward to getting to Hawaii and seeing the sights, it’s sad to know that the truly relaxing part of the trip is almost over. We did make it to the passenger talent show last night, and even went to watch karaoke before- hand. Andrew was horrified that I knew all the words to every song the over-60 crowd got up to sing; including a three-song tribute to Loretta Lynn. “It’ll be over my dead body, so get out while you can. ‘Cause you ain’t woman enough to take my man.”

After the show ended we did what seemed completely rational at the time – headed up to the Lido deck for a cheeseburger at 11:30 at night. That was likely a mistake in many regards. Not only did I sleep terribly, but I continued the punishment by doing an extra two miles on the elliptical this morning!

We did a couple of loads of laundry first thing this morning. Laundry seemed to be on the agenda of every other passenger on the ship so I would recommend to others that you not wait until the last sea day before a long string of ports. The laundry room is just outside of our cabin and there was a line of at least 2 people pretty much all day long.

There was a period of a few hours today that were finally warm enough to sit out on the balcony in shorts and a t-shirt – hooray! However, as the day progressed the sky darkened and the wind reappeared; gusting to over 30 knots by late afternoon. As I type this, the waves are probably 15 feet plus. They must have put out the stabilizers though, as there is not as much rocking as the first few days when the waves were closer to 12 feet.

Just before dinner we had a visit from a lovely couple that Andrew has been talking about on Cruise Critic. They were celebrating their 50th anniversary and were interested to see our suite and aft-wrap balcony so Andrew invited them down for a tour. They were very sweet and brought us a “Happy 40th” sign for our cabin door, as well as a little bag of treats. Andrew has become quite the celebrity on Cruise Critic – known by “Gar” for his user name “Gargoyle”. He spends a lot of time researching cruises and reading the cruise boards so is able to answer a lot of questions and others have begun to look to him as a fledgling “expert”.

Ok, off to dinner. More tomorrow after our first port day in Hilo!