Cruise Vacation

In October we decided it was vacation time for us. What do you do when you live in Paradise? Well we decided to take the NCL Pride of Aloha a 7-day cruise around our beautiful Hawaiian Islands. (Hey, people pay thousands of dollars to come visit the Islands, why should we spend thousands to leave?)

We boarded our ship in Maui on Friday afternoon and spent the night on board even though it was still in Maui's Kahului harbor. We had the day to learn about the ship because it spends two nights and one day here on our island.

On Saturday Caren had an important modeling gig at the annual "Dreams Come True" breast cancer awareness charity event, so we didn't have to delay our trip and got back to the ship for its evening departure.


We sailed for Honolulu on Saturday night and arrived in Honolulu on Sunday a.m. The city was a fast one-day - and Sunday is not the best day to see a lot of things around the big city. But, we did our best.

We first went on shore to make our claims for the ship - "atsa my boat." The beautiful ship is a couple of football fields long and accommodates about 2,500 passengers and over 1,000 crew members.

We hopped a Honolulu Trolley, thinking it would take us to all the spots we wanted to see. Not! We bailed from the noisy, smoky trolley and decided to hoof it around the government buildings in old Honolulu.


But before we abandoned trolley, we did get to see the great statue of Hawaii surfing legend Duke Kahanamoku on Waikiki beach....actually quite nice.



The statue of the revered Kamehameha the Great, the Kingdom of Hawaii's first king, was very impressive and a little awe inspiring. Hawaiians by birth and by choice alike pay homage to the great king through his likeness here in the capitol.

The beautiful statue of Queen Liliuokalani, the Hawaiian monarch at the time of the overthrow by mostly American dissidents in 1843,was also very impressive. The Hawaiians were a proud people before the bloodless coup.

We trekked to Honolulu's famous Chinatown section and had some great Chinese food at one of the hole-in-the-wall restaurants that are everywhere - restaurants and markets filled with vegetables and seafood are about all you see on the streets. It was amazing and delightful.


The evening was spent on board the ship and we went to the top deck - eleven stores up in the sweet-smelling Hawaiian air - and looked at the graceful Aloha Tower that has greeted cruise ships arriving in Honolulu for over 75 years.

We were on the ship for Halloween and had a great time with some of the events on board. Frankly, some of the on board entertainment was a little lame, but we enjoyed some of the jazz and the costume party.



We had a great outside stateroom with a killer lanai and took our breakfasts there. Some of the restaurants were quite nice, but have concluded that our expectations were too high.


We love to dress for dinner out and did get some opportunities to do on the ship.

Other than short trips to various spots on Maui, our next trip will be to Kona on the Big Island. It was a port of call on the cruise and we enjoyed it: We even said if we can’t live Maui, Kona would be our second choice.

We love to dress for dinner out and did get some opportunities to do so on the ship. Some of the restaurants were quite nice, but have concluded that our expectations were too high.
We enjoyed the scenery of the islands although none had weather comparable to Maui's. The impressive Napili Coast on Kauai was gorgeous and seeing Kilauea, our erupting volcano on the Big Island, at night was a once-in-a-lifetime thrill.

It was a good trip - not a great one.


We visited all the islands and while we enjoyed aspects of each we're still happy we live Maui --- in fact, very happy: Maui no ka oi - the very best. We’re glad we did the cruise, but do not need to do it again.