Here is a picture of the Sapphire Princess.
Sapphire Princess
Here is a French Polynesia History Website Link that has some of the history of the French Polynesian Islands. The islands we are visiting are in the group called the Society Islands, and includes our stops at Moorea, Tahiti, and Bora Bora.
We have also added some links on the sidebar at the right to a couple of Hawaii Volcano Websites that provide information on the status of the volcanic activity on the island of Hawaii. The Daily Report website is most current, providing updates every 24 hours (I guess that is why it is called Daily Updates). The other site is from the Volcanoes National Park, but lags a few days in reporting updates.
All is proceeding well with the travel plans, our credit card banks are being called to avoid disruptions in card usage for the trip, as well as banks for our ATM Cards.
We have begun to set out items that we intend to pack, and the initial packing effort will happen this weekend. We always do a “trial” packing just to see where we think we are on actually fitting what we want to take in the suitcases, both from a space requirement, and from a weight restriction perspective. We have to be under 50 lbs in our main suitcases to meet airlines restrictions. Luckily, we will have some overflow capability in the carry-on bags we each are taking, although these are being reserved mainly for some shoes and other light items. Our plan is to leave the carry on bags mostly empty so that we can load them with some provisions in San Pedro, California, before we board the ship.
Our plan is to only pack enough clothes for about 7 days, then just do some laundry on the ship on some of the sea days. We should be able to easily pack amount of clothing since it is all lighter weight summer clothes, shorts and T-shirts, with a few colder weather items for the days in and out of Los Angeles. Added to that will be some long pants, nicer shirts and dresses for casual dinner nights, plus our formal wear for the four formal nights during the cruise.
With proper folding and distribution of our clothes between our two main suitcases (you never know when a bag might be delayed), we will most likely run out of weight allocation before space allocation. The nice thing is that we can actually expand the large suitcases once we get to the hotel in San Pedro, and since weight is not an issue for the cruise line, we can easily add and redistribute items once we are in the hotel in California. We don’t have to worry about keeping our bags light and small like we did on our last land trip where we were having to get on and off of trains every couple of days. Once we are on the ship, the bags are unpacked and stowed for the duration. No more re-packing as the weather changes, or completely repacking after digging deep for that missing pair of socks.
We have been seeing some information posted on cruise critic, from passengers in the Los Angeles area, and from passengers on other Hawaiian cruises, that some early whale sightings are being made near Los Angeles, and in the waters off of Hawaii. It is earlier in the season than normal for whale sightings, but apparently not unheard of. Hopefully, we will be able to see some whales ourselves. Some were reported to be Blue Whales, which are the largest species of whales.