Maui Hawaii - Pride of America
Much of this morning's notes are in the storm surge notes. It was a gorgeous sunrise this morning, and then a VERY windy ride into the harbor. But we made it, and it is MUCH smoother today than yesterday, sitting here at the dock. yesterday the ship was moving a lot and the engines were running hard, pressing us into the dock. Today we're pretty much just sitting here, although I can hear the wind whistling. The waves are impressive but not nearly as big as they were yesterday.Bob has gone off to play golf at "the Dunes" and I am curled up in bed recuperating from my cold. It is gorgeous looking out the aft balcony windows at the beautiful slanted hills of Maui with their ripples, and the shadows of clouds drifting across them. A little tugboat is out in the harbor. The waves are crashing against the sea wall. If I have to have a cold and be curled up somewhere, this will do quite nicely :)
Now to pull those chocolate covered strawberries out of the fridge ... and have them with some port ... it's medicinal, I believe :) I ordered some chicken soup from room service, too. I did try to eat the leftovers from the Jefferson Bistro, and the tuna was so stringy that I literally couldn't cut through it with a knife. A bit odd. I folded a bunch of origami.
When Bob got back from golf, he was hungry. It was after 3pm, so the Aloha Cafe (i.e. the main buffet) was closed. This left the Cadillac Diner and the Key West Bar & Grill as being the 2 choices. We'd tried the Cadillac already, so we went up to Key West. This is really just a bar-side mini buffet with burgers, fries and one or two other items. That being said, they had pulled pork out and it was very tasty. So not a wide selection, but a reasonable option. It was very loud here as a band was playing rock classics and a few people were dancing. The band was quite good, although they seemed to play the songs at double speed :)
Once we finished with food, we went on a quest to take photos of whatever we had missed. We went up and down all the stairwells to take photos of the murals along each one. The photos were all of gorgeous areas of the US and some like Monument Valley were quite pretty! We got a photo of the Hollywood Theater, and up at the Lanai Bar where the VIP reception was held. Oddly, staff told us that the Lanai is open during the summer because people drink heavily then - but not in the winter because it's not needed. We did notice a heavy number of elderly people on board right now.
We found the ping pong tables, in the middle of a tournament, and the Gold Rush Saloon - i.e. their sports bar. They have a popcorn machine in here and normally I love popcorn, but I found it had a quite funky flavor to it that I actually found unpleasant. Odd. They do have two dart boards, and you can borrow darts from the bar! Bob loves darts and plays on a dart team but apparently they don't do any dart activities on board. That's a shame, that would be fun. I wonder how it is throwing darts on a moving boat, though. With the winds and waves we've been having, the boat has not been "Flat".
We got back to our room and took a short nap before it became time to go to dinner. Now we *thought* the TV had said we were staying here until 8pm because of our short stay yesterday, but I didn't get a photo of that to confirm. They made announcements as we approached 6 saying that we were leaving at the normal time of 6. The captain came on the intercom shortly after 6 saying everybody was on board - so apparently there was no confusion about that - and he apologized again about the situation from yesterday, explaining that it was necessary for the safety of the ship and everybody on board. He hoped that everybody who had remained on shore had been treated very well. He also explained that due to high winds we would have to delay leaving the harbor - maybe until the container ship which was in here with us left so that it was safer for us to move around.
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