Monday, January 14, 2008: At Sea.
Bob: We were up on deck at dawn and watched the sun rise into a layer of clouds as we ate breakfast on the afterdeck. The Pride of Aloha was chugging along at about an 18 knot pace and producing a surprisingly small wake compared to the Zuiderdam or Jewel and Brilliance of the Seas ships. The Pride of Aloha carried 2,000 passengers, which was about the same as the other three, but it was only 77,000 tons displacement as opposed to 90,000 tons for the Jewel and the Brilliance, so either that difference in displacement or some difference in the underwater hull shape explained the decreased wake turbulence. The was no organized exercise classes aboard ship, so we perforce did our own two mile walk after breakfast, which was seven laps around Deck 6, the promenade deck. We walked early in the day to take advantage of the relatively cool morning, and I did enjoy having a big wide deck to do the walking rather than a narrow 1/6th of a mile jogging path as we did on the Jewel and Brilliance of the Seas. At the front end of the ship there was still room enough for people to easily pass slower walkers, and in fact the outside lane was designated for joggers. There were exactly two joggers that morning, so we made use of the jogging lane to pass the slower walkers and the perfidious scofflaws who persisted in walking in a clockwise direction rather than the specified counter-clockwise direction. We spent the remainder of the morning attending a seminar on humpbacked whales and watching a 30 minute movie on the volcanic eruption of Mount Kilauea in the 1980s. In the whale seminar, I learned about breaching and fluke slaps and tail slaps and male aggression for available females, but the absolute best thing was that the lady said that both Japan and Iceland had clamped a moratorium on their whale hunting. Last I heard a Greenpeace ship and one other ship where trying to stop the Japanese whaling fleet near Antarctica, and I was very glad that had ended without anybody getting injured or killed, at least as far as she knew. Hopefully both countries will stop slaughtering mammals that certainly have brains a whole lot bigger than ours and are very likely quite sentient in their own way. The film on the Mount Kilauea eruption was quite impressive. Some daredevil helicopter pilots had clearly risked themselves and their aircraft to get spectacular shots of rivers, fountains, and lakes of molten lava. The houses destroyed and streets overrun with lava flows were also very vivid examples of nature's wrath, but I could watch in good relatively good conscience as the people had all been evacuated in time to avoid injuries or death, although losing all one's property is certainly traumatic enough. |
Monika: Today we would get the answer to question: How would the Norwegian Cruise Lines entertain their guest on an At Sea day. They did not have the emphasize on physical activities that RCI tried to foster with lots of different activities that allowed us to earn Shipshape Dollars. Instead the emphasis was on nature and culture. In the morning we watched a movie by a team from the Pacific Whale Foundation and in the afternoon we made a Lei with fresh orchids led by the Hawaiian and Polynesian ambassador. She also would interweave stories about Hawaii, so it was very interesting and we ended up with two beautiful leis that we wore in the evening with our formal wear. Very chic, Hawaiian Style. The ship also has a little museum on Hawaiian and Polynesian Culture with several models of typical ships. On a movie screen where they played a movie on the eruption of Kilauwea (Hawaiian spelling alert! Dive! Dive!). All was very interesting. But it did leave us to do our walking without the lure of Shipshape Dollars. The walking/jogging track is on Deck 6, the Promenade deck and we liked it better than being up on the sundeck as we were on the Royal Caribbean ships. |
Bob: We had a good lunch, rested in our room a bit, and then went to our afternoon activity that was a class on how to make a lei or floral necklace from real flowers. The instructor had brought 20,000 orchid blossoms with her, and we used 40 of those each to make our leis under her direction. The lei is essentially the blossoms simply threaded on a string using a blunt needle to punch through the back or base of each orchid blossom in turn. We each made one combining the basic 40 purple and white blossoms with a few pure white blossoms which, although they were not showy, had a very nice scent that most colorful orchids apparently lack. We kept the orchids for use in the evening's "formal" dinner, where I was dressed in black sweater, shirt, pants, and shoes, while Monika wore her black-and-red cocktail dress. The leis certainly added a je ne sais qua (French spelling alert! Dive! Dive!), but at least they let us in the restaurant, which I had not been totally sure of. You see, each of the 3 main restaurants on the Pride of Aloha had a different dress code and I was still trying to unravel what dress code pertained to which restaurant on which days. After dinner we put the leis in the refrigerator in plastic bags provided by our attentive and nice room steward and then read for the rest of the evening until it was time to turn in for the night. |
Monika: In the afternoon, we learned to make leis out of beautiful purple orchids. We ended the day by dressing in our formal attire, with the leis we had made, and getting Formal Pictures taken. We then went to eat in the most formal of the dining rooms. Since we went very early, we got a nice window seat while eating a very nice meal. We weren't interested in the evening entertainment - a singer of popular music, so we just went to bed early and read the books we had snatched from the library. |
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