Sea Day 4 – Almost to Lahania, Maui

Sunrise – Sea Day Four

The sunrise was more spectacular this morning, there was a lot of red color being reflected by some clouds that were low on the horizon. Sunrise this morning was at about 6:50 AM, so after getting some coffee, it was off to photograph the sunrise. Of course, Stephanie was still taking advantage of her sleep time when I was out and about for all of this photo activity. Unfortunately, after all of the caution and precautions of hand washing, using copious amounts of hand sanitizer before and during the meals, I somehow woke up this morning with a scratchy throat. Not the way I wanted my day to begin.

When I returned from the photo excursion on the stern of the ship, I found that Stephanie was out on the balcony enjoying the early morning. I had stopped off at the buffet area and brought a supply of hot coffee back to the room in one of our stainless steel water containers. After some coffee, we both headed to the gym for some exercise on the elliptical machines. Afterward, it was breakfast time once again in the buffet. It is certainly easier to watch how much and what we eat for breakfast at the buffet as compared to a full sit down breakfast at the dining room, at least for us it is.

Once we were finished with breakfast, we went back to the room and put on sunscreen for some time up by the pool in the deck chairs. It was mostly sunny, but occasionally, the ship passed through some showers, sometimes they were very light, sometimes the were quite heavy. At 11:00 AM, we were off to another Ukulele class. I had not missed much yesterday when I was unable to go to the class because of the chef’s dinner orientation. There were still some newcomers, but the instructor spent less time trying to get them up to speed, much to the enjoyment of the rest of the class members who had attended all of the previous sessions. I had not missed anything of substance, so I was able to easily catch up and fit right in.

Passing Rain Showers

After the class, we headed back up to the sun deck by the pool to enjoy the sunshine. It has been nice the past couple of days, the ship and the wind are generally headed in the same direction, so there is very little relative wind up on the open decks. We could see some heavy rain showers approaching, so we decided this was a good opportunity to get a bite to eat for lunch. Unfortunately, a lot of other folks had the same idea, so it was pretty crowded in the buffet area, and especially difficult to find a table to sit at. I am always perplexed to see groups of people in the eating areas that are sitting at a table and playing games, there are so many other areas on the ship where this can be done and not impact the availability of those tables for their intended purpose, eating. Oh well, just people being people.

After lunch, we headed back up to the pool area, and found some entertainment in watching the pool games. The games are a lot different when the average age of the contestants looked to be late 50’s or better, as compared to a Caribbean cruise with a younger crowd. Some of the contestants really struggled with some of the pool games, but you have to give them credit for trying. We thought one man was going to have a heart attack, he was really out of shape.

At 2:00 PM, we headed to the Wheelhouse Bar for a presentation on various types of rum, including a rum tasting. It was interesting, they gave the histories of several of the larger rum distilleries, and explained the differences in the dark and light rums, and how they are made. There was a demonstration on how to make some rum drinks, and then there was the tasting. The tasting cups were small plastic containers similar to what we have seen used at communion at Protestant church services.

Snacks on the Balcony

Once that was completed, we headed up to the buffet area for a snack, they happened to have chips and salsa, so we got a couple of bowls of everything, and headed back to our balcony to enjoy our afternoon snack. The ship passed close by to a few rain showers, and each one of them formed a rainbow off the side of the ship. They seemed so close, and seemed to touch the water nearby.

We decided not to go to dinner in the dining room after looking at the dinner menu posted outside one of the dining rooms earlier in the day, and not seeing anything being served that interested us. Also, there was a comedy show starting at 8:00 PM that we wanted to see, it was a juggler named Dan Bennett. We had seen the very end of his show last night, so we wanted to catch the rest, and he only had one show tonight. If we went to the dining room at 7:00 PM, our normal time, there was no way we would make the show. Actually, we were late to his show last night due to the duration of our dinner in the dining room.

Rainbow From Passing Shower

This gave us a little time to head to the hot tubs in the bow of the ship near to the gym and spa areas. When we arrived, we found we had the entire area to ourselves. It has been interesting to see that the majority of passengers on this cruise like to go to the early traditional seating dinner at 5:15 PM.  The ship almost seems to be a ghost town during that time period. On other cruises, we have experienced a fairly even distribution of passengers going to early and late seating times in the dining room. It seems that on this cruise, at least 75% of passengers are going to the early seating dinner. It also seems like the show times have been moved up accordingly. There used to always be an early show for the early diners, and a late show for the later seating at 8:15 PM. On this cruise, it seems they want the late seating crowd to go the the early show at 6:00 PM, before dinner, and then the early seating passengers to go to the 8:00 show after their dinner. For us, it defeats the purpose of attending  the late seating dinner if you have to get dressed and go to a show first.

The buffet ended up having several of the same dishes as we saw posted on the dinner menu for the dining rooms, and then several other good items. I think we felt that the food choices were better at the buffet tonight. We headed to the show about 30 minutes before it was supposed to start, only to find that the lounge was already full of those early seating passengers, the same issue we had two nights ago for another show. We did eventually find a seat, several folks left after the pre-show band concluded their musical performance. The juggler was excellent, he did some unbelievable things, and we really enjoyed his show.

We decided to make an early evening of it, mainly because we needed to pack some gear and get ready for our first port stop tomorrow in Lahaina on the island of Maui. It is a tender port, so we are sure there will be a line to get onto the tenders. We are planning on getting to the holding area for tender tickets at about 7:30 AM, so our wake up call is at 6:00 AM. Once again, we move the clocks again tonight to get us on Hawaii time, 6 hours earlier than Eastern time.