While I have downloaded all the pictures from my camera, I still have yet to actually go through and edit any of them and make them more presentable for viewing. In the meantime, however, I shall relate my random impressions of the cruise and the various islands (hopefully in not TOO verbose a manner).

• I mentioned my paleness prior to this trip—I fully expected to get burned. While I was not outside all day every day, there were a couple days where I was outside in my bathing suit for several hours between 10am and 5pm, which of course includes all of the peak UV/burning hours. I used my SPF 30, since that’s all I had, but I did not reapply. With perhaps the exception of my nose being a little redder than usual, I don’t really look like I was outside too long. Very strange. All I can think is that perhaps my sunscreen gets more potent with age or something—maybe I should’ve used my sister’s SPF 4!
• We took several tours—one going through the scenery of Kauai, and on the big island one each in Hilo and Kona. Each of these tours was an all day affair, which seems like a good idea when you are booking them and determining the value of how much the excursion costs and how much you get to see. However, after 7 hours every day on a bus, sitting there, waiting on people who can’t tell time, etc, the days seem a bit long—especially when you take a tour of Kona and the final destination winds up being half-way around the island, not too far from Hilo!
• Luckily, we had already seen Maui at our leisure 2 years ago, so we didn’t do any tours during our 2 days there. I think Maui is still my favorite island—though that may be because of the leisurely aspect of it. I like the fact that it has nice beaches where you can just hang out on the sand or float around in ocean and not worry about being pummeled by huge waves. I would’ve liked to have seen more of Oahu to get an opinion, but we only wound up seeing Honolulu for a short time before our ship left to begin its week-long journey.
• While there was some neat stuff on the Big Island, I’m not sure I’d pick that one as my favorite, since it was the coldest of the islands. I actually put on pants and a zippered hoodie to stay warm and was still a bit chilly. If I am going to visit a tropical island in summer, I think I prefer them to feel warm and tropical.
• Despite the presence of a little internet cafe aboard the ship, I actually did not go in there at all. For one thing, I don’t think it was that cheap, but for another, there wasn’t much that I needed to do on there. Also combined with the fact that we were on those all-day tours, I didn’t have much time for internet anyway. However, I did make pretty good use of my phone, racking up a sizeable number of minutes (though I didn’t exceed my allotted amount!)
• As far as the ship goes, it was nice enough, although I think the other cruise ships I’ve been on were better. I think they were bigger and also offered a wider variety of activities. I think in part this may be because we were in port every day, so there were fewer activities because they expect that most people will be off the boat. The other cruises we had several days at sea, so there was a greater need for onboard entertainment.
• The funny thing about these ships though, is that even though they tell you there are like 2,000 people onboard, you only seem to see the same few dozen. Perhaps it is because these people do something that catches your attention, or they have a unique look to them that makes them stand out. For example, we kept seeing this large family from Louisiana all over the ship—they were pretty weird looking and obnoxious and strange in general and they seemed to follow us wherever we went. If we were at dinner—they were at the same restaurant (despite there being like 7 choices), whatever floor we were on, there they were, whatever tour we took, they took the same one. Of course, they weren’t stalking us or anything, but seeing as how they were kind of annoying, we were less than thrilled to see them every time we turned around!

Overall though, the trip was fun, and it was nice to get to see the various islands. They really are quite pretty, and hopefully my pictures will do them justice once I get a chance to edit them a bit. Hopefully I will have a few up soon. As I go through the various locations, perhaps I will go into more detail about the things that I saw, but for now it is just the random stream of consciousness remembrance of the overall trip.

Posted at 10:39 PM |