December 29 - Christmas came and then came Boxing Day

Where to begin?  Christmas Eve dawned as another sunny, warm day with moderate seas.  We had the usual sea day activities including lectures, games, and random caroling around the ship.  It  was a formal night and most people got very dressed up, more so than I’ve seen on the other formal nights on this cruise.  I had dinner in Solis, the alternative restaurant, with a friend from Honolulu and a couple who are the parents of my friend’s daughter-in-law.  (She calls them her “Outlaws.”)  We had a lovely dinner topped off with a special anniversary cake for the couple who were celebrating their actual 50th wedding anniversary.  Following dinner we went to a special Christmas show in the Grand Salon.  The onboard cast sang Christmas songs and then the highlight of the evening was the crew choir.  There were members from all the ship’s departments including housekeeping, food & beverage and even a couple from the deck crew. They sang some traditional carols and then they performed two in Tagalog since many are from the Philippines.  And to end it Santa made an appearance.  It was a lovely evening.

The crew choir on Christmas Eve

On Christmas Day we had another galley market lunch, which I’ve written about in the past.  This one was well organized unlike the one earlier on this cruise which was utterly chaotic.  The galley staff outdid themselves in their presentations.  I think we all rolled out of the restaurant.  On Christmas night a couple of friends and I were going to forego dinner and instead  just eat some of the tapas always available in the Observation Bar.  While we sat there we realized that my friend from Honolulu was looking pretty down.  Her husband died on Christmas Day several years ago, so it’s a tough day for her.  We decided to join her for dinner at the outdoor Restaurant, Earth and Ocean.  After we all went to the show which featured a black female singer with a very powerful voice.  Then we headed to the Observation Bar for a nightcap.  It was a nice Christmas.

Scenes from the Galley Market Lunch

Yesterday the 26th was Boxing Day (that’s what the British call it) and I organized a dinner for nine of us.  A British friend arranged with the chef to serve us traditional Boxing Day food.  That’s basically leftovers, but oh, what leftovers they were!  We had Bubble and Squeak which is a dish made with potatoes, cabbage, and any leftovers from Christmas dinner chopped up, mixed up and fried until it has a crisp top and bottom.  We had sausage rolls, coleslaw, turkey and dressing, baked potatoes, and too many more things that I can’t remember them all.  Dessert was a delicious English trifle.  I organized the same game we played on Thanksgiving and we had great fun with people stealing each other’s wrapped and unknown presents.  Everyone got really into it and we laughed so much that I noticed people at the tables around us looked jealous that they weren’t having as much fun.

Boxing Day and more food photos

After dinner we went to the evening’s show which included a very good Irish singer and then we were off to the O Bar for nightcaps.  You may have noticed I’m not writing much about the Club and dancing.  That’s one of the only things about this cruise I haven’t been totally pleased with.  One band is quite good; the other is so-so.  The issue though is in the schedule of their performances.  The Entertainment Manager is new to Seabourn, doesn’t know what he’s doing really, and is, to put it quite bluntly, an idiot. His schedule includes things like a half or full hour of no music in between the two bands performances.  We people who go to the Club to dance don’t want to sit and drink in silence waiting for the music to begin again. So, when one group finishes their set and announces that the next will be coming after whatever break time there is, people leave and don’t come back.  I have a sneaking suspicion that one of the motivations for the scheduling is that if the next band comes and there’s no one there, they can call it a night and get off duty early.  As a result I’ve been gravitating to the Observation Bar where I know friends who don’t like dancing anyway will be and where I like listening to the duo playing there even though it’s not a dance venue.  We have a new cruise director coming on here in Hawaii, so maybe he’ll get things back to the more normal routine.

I’m writing this sitting in the Square as we’re docked in Honolulu harbor. It’s the 29th and tonight my last leg of this voyage will begin.  We’ll have new people boarding in a little while and as usual, many will wander around lost for a day or two. What’s happened in between Boxing Day and now?  We spent our last sea day of our crossing playing our final trivia.  Our team came in 4th, not bad out of 17 teams, but it could have been better.  We played Name that Tune and won.  (Truthfully I think the two New Zealand guys on the team were scoring us pretty liberally; we got to mark our own papers.)  I didn’t go to any hosted tables and instead dined with friends.

Yesterday, the 28th we arrived in Honolulu and since it was Sunday I roused myself from bed early enough to have Sunday Champagne Breakfast in the restaurant with 7 of my friends.  I had forgotten how nice breakfast could be since I hadn’t been getting up early enough to do it for so long.  After breakfast I took a cab to go to the Ala Moana Mall.  It is enormous!  I walked the length of each level and in doing so managed to get in a little over 10,000 steps.  Near the end my feet were killing me and since I was near the Nordstrom I went in and bought a new pair of shoes.  I figured perhaps a new pair would make my feet feel better. What really felt good though was keeping my bare feet on the cool marble floor while the salesman was in the stockroom finding shoes for me to try on. I could have stayed there all afternoon just letting my feet chill.  

Friends and I had arranged to meet and go in the late afternoon to the Halekulani Hotel on Waikiki Beach to sit at the lovely bar called Earl’s at the House without a Key restaurant (isn’t that a neat name for a restaurant?).  I’d been there a couple of times before with Al and Katie to have a drink and watch the sunset.  The place is beautiful and  each evening there is a trio playing traditional Hawaiian music and a lovely young woman performing Hawaiian dance.  I won’t call it hula because that to me evokes images of wildly moving hips and this dancer is gracefully telling a story as she moves and sways.  Unfortunately, the clouds didn’t fully cooperate so we only got fleeting glimpses of the sunset in the west.  To the east we had a wonderful view of Diamond Head.

Scenes from Earl's at the Halekulani

As it darkened we came back to the ship where Carole, one of my friends was scheduled to have a farewell dinner since she left the ship today.  Colleen, my Aussie/Kiwi friend and I first went to one of the bars which has a special cocktail called the Brigitte Bardot.  Since BB just died we had to have one of her namesake drinks in her honor.  We debated what to do about dinner and decided to have what we named C & C;  that stands for Caviar and baked Camembert Cheese with honey pommery mustard.  It may sound odd, but I can assure you it is a meal fit for the gods.  We ended the evening up in the O Bar listening to Barry and Merle, my favorite performers on the ship.  It was a lovely day.

I’ve finally caught up to today.  I was scheduled to go on a tour to the Pearl Harbor Aviation Museum on Ford Island and to the battleship USS Missouri.  The tour was canceled (I’ve no idea why) and so I’m spending the day on board.  I’ve seen most of the other sights on previous visits and I’ve taken tours that went round the island.  My feet are probably grateful for the day of rest.  And this has given me a chance to catch up on things.

Tomorrow we’ll be in Kauai where I’ve rented a car.  Two friends are trusting their lives to me as we see a few places I want to revisit there.  After that we have nothing but sea days until we get to Tokyo.  I think it will be 9 sea days, but I’m not absolutely certain because we’ll cross the International Date Line at some point and lose a day.  Just think of the poor people whose birthday falls on a day that’s lost.  I’m caught up and I can breathe a sigh of relief about that.  So, aloha for now!

December 23 - Day 4 of 8 on our way to Hawaii

It’s been a while since I’ve written because there hasn’t been much to write about.  We made a port stop in Puerto Vallarta, Mexico on the 19th and I think that more than 50 % of the passengers and crew made a beeline to the Walmart which was just a block or two from the cruise terminal.  I think most of us were looking for Christmas related things.  I wanted some Christmas cards for people on the ship.  Let me say this was the most miserable Walmart I’ve ever been in.  It was disorganized and not well-stocked.  There were hardly any Christmas things because the store had a liquidation sale the week before.  I didn’t get my cards and most of us came back disappointed.  I think the only people reasonably happy were some of the crew who came back with bags of snack foods like Doritos and Pringles.

We left Puerto Vallarta and set sail westward to Hawaii.  We have eight sea days to make the trip. There have been lots of activities scheduled every day, but the schedules have been a little chaotic.  The person in charge of scheduling is new to his job and sort of incompetent so there are large gaps sometimes and other times there are overlapping things.  There’s no opportunity to be bored; instead it’s hard to fit in everything I want to do.  We picked up a surprise speaker in PV.  He’s Steve Wozniak, the co-founder of Apple with Steve Jobs.  He’s given one talk already and it was fascinating.

We had a Cook-off one day between the Executive Chef and our Cruise Director, who isn't a chef.  It was pretty funny and fortunately nobody had to taste the CD's food. One of his courses consisted of a single garlic clove on a plate.  That gives you an idea of his culinary skills.  One day we celebrated a friend's 85th birthday after trivia.  Seabourn does things very nicely here.

The cooking competitors

My friend Carol at her birthday celebration

Yesterday I went to what was supposed to be Name that Tune. It turned out the person who knew how to work the sound system was sick and the Cruise Director couldn’t figure it out so instead we had music trivia.  It was hilarious but the questions were so obscure hardly anyone knew the answers.  Oh well, it was still fun.

More and more Christmas things are appearing around the ship.  There are several tables around with all sorts of Christmas cookies and stollen.  Today a bunch of Christmas trees appeared.  Each department on the ship made one and they are so clever.  The other day there was Christmas caroling by passengers and crew around the staircase in the atrium.  Evidently Santa will be coming tomorrow night.  We’re in the middle of the Pacific so who knows how he’ll get here.

It's hard to see but this tree is made of origami cranes and was made by the team that works in the Sushi Restaurant

This and the next were made out of corks by the sommeliers on board

I had one of the most tedious dinner I’ve ever experienced last night. A friend and I were invited to a table hosted by the Staff Chief Engineer (whatever that means).  He’s Bulgarian and while he was fluent in English, he didn’t have lot to say.  One of the other two people at the table was an American man who strangely is moving from Charleston, SC to Da Nang, Vietnam because he doesn’t want to live in the US anymore.  He has never been to Vietnam, or anywhere in Southeast Asia for that matter, he speaks no Vietnamese and he isn’t ethnic Vietnamese.  It seems a pretty drastic move to make under the circumstances, but whatever floats his boat.  His only conversation was just to answer questions.   The other man at the table is the most annoying man on the ship.  He’s German and the world’s greatest expert on most any subject known to man.  He posts selfies of himself in his flamboyant outfits every night on the Seabourn Facebook forum.  I made the mistake of asking the Bulgarian officer if Bulgarian was a Slavic language.  Ulrich, that’s the German’s name, proceeded to give us the history of migration from Asia to Europe covering more than 2000 years of history.  I’m not sure how it all fit together but at some points in his monologue he mentioned an Egyptian queen who couldn’t come and help some Romans because there was a volcano erupting somewhere in Africa.  We heard about the Ottomans being turned back in Vienna in the 15th century and about the results of WWI. My friend Colleen and I were sitting sort of opposite each other and I know we did a lot of eye-rolling.  After dinner we went and had a couple of chocolate martinis to help us recover.  We’ve asked the hostess who arranges hosted tables to please not seat us with Ulrich or the other man again.

Well, it’s time for Name that Tune, hopefully with tunes today, so I’d better go.  Merry Eve of Christmas Eve everyone.

December 17 - The Pacific Ocean

For the last two days the ocean has lived up to its name.  We’ve had calm seas, blue skies and warm (actually hot and humid) temperatures.  Since I last wrote we stopped in Puntarenas, Costa Rica and Puerto Chiapas, Mexico.  I didn’t get off the ship in either port.  I’m becoming like some of the passengers I’ve wondered about in the past who never get off the ship.  In my defense, in Puntarenas I’d been on all the tours offered on previous visits and the town itself is dirty and grubby with the most prominent thing being a Burger King.  Plus it was so hot that I’m surprised soles of shoes didn’t melt on the pavement.  Puerto Chiapas is one of those made-up ports Mexico has created.  Unlike Cancun and Ixtapa which were created to be resorts, Chiapas wasn’t, so it has a big palapa, some palm trees and a little fountain in the middle of a circle spelling out the name of the port.  It was also incredibly hot and humid again.  So I chose to stay on board and pretty much did nothing constructive.

This is Puerto Chiapas. Not much here.

There were some ladies dancing on the dock which was nice, but I wondered how they didn't suffer from heat attacks.

This afternoon I’m meeting the Cruise Director to have a talk with him about the music in the Club.  I’ve written often enough that’s the place I like to go in the evening to listen to live music and dance occasionally.  On this ship there seems to be the most bizarre scheduling of the live groups.  Several times my friends and I have gone down there and the music has ended between 11:15 and 11:30.  When we’ve asked we were told the next group would come at 12:30 AM.  How does that make sense?  A one-hour gap when there’s no music especially when there are two music groups on the ship.  It’s hard to explain if you’re not here, but it’s really bugging us and I hope to find out what’s going on because it’s unlike any other cruise I’ve been on in recent years.

Enough complaining.  Aside from that I’m having a lovely time.  My friends and I have discovered the joys of special ordering of food.  On sea days the restaurant is open for breakfast and lunch and we go there because it’s cooler and more peaceful than the other venues.  (Well, I don’t make it for breakfast because I get up too late.)  We’ve been ordering deviled eggs with caviar as a sort of lunch appetizer and I have to say they are delicious.  It’s very decadent but my excuse is I don’t eat breakfast and I’d never eat them at home.  We’ve had a couple of good guest entertainers including a marvelous Japanese pianist I’ve heard before.  I haven’t been back to art class because they were making something with beads and I have absolutely no interest in that.  I won’t say much about the trivia team because we haven’t been doing too well.  I mean really, the last two days the final questions, which really decided the winner, were yesterday how many US presidents did Queen Elizabeth meet and today how many British Prime Ministers were there during her reign.  We Americans were off by one (but that doesn’t count for anything) on the former but the Brits on our team weren’t able to answer the second question and obviously we had no clue.  After Puerta Vallarta when we have many sea days we’ll begin cumulative trivia again and our day will come.

Trivia update:  Today's trivia questions were all Christmas related and there was nearly a mutiny.  I must explain that the most basic rule of trivia is that the person with the microphone is always right.  Except this time he was absolutely wrong!!! The first controversial question was how many ghosts appear in A Christmas Carol  by Dickens.  The Cruise Director, who is British and should know better, said three.  Anyone who has read the book or seen a movie or tv version of it knows there are four - the ghost of Marley and ghosts of Christmas Past, Present and Yet to Come.  He finally conceded he was mistaken on that one.  The second controversy arose over how many and what were the names of the reindeer pulling Santa's sleigh in Twas the night before Christmas.  He said nine including Rudolph, which is absolutely wrong.  He hasn't conceded on that so we've added him to Santa's naughty list.  Aren't you glad to know all these trivial things we spend our time on here on the ship?

More Christmas decorations have appeared.  There are some really nice gingerbread villages popping up around the ship. This one outside the shop is my favorite.  I love the castle or whatever it is in the middle.

I’ve rambled on enough to prove I’m alive, so I’ll end this for now.  It’s hard to make a leisurely sea day exciting.

December 13 - En route to Puntarenas, Costa Rica

Since I last wrote we transited the Panama Canal, spent a day in Fuerte Amador, the port of Panama City, and are now sailing in the Pacific on our way to Costa Rica.  I’ve made several trips through the Canal now so I don’t feel compelled to stay out on deck to watch the whole passage (a good thing because the air was so hot and humid you could cut it with a knife).  It’s still a marvel to observe though.  I won’t write about the history of the Canal again,  but here are a few facts about it.  The Panama Canal is about 50 miles long.  On the Atlantic(Caribbean) side there are a series of three locks which raise a ship 87 feet to enter Gatun Lake. From the lake ships transit for a little over five miles through the Chagres River until they reach the Culebra Cut, which was the most challenging part of the construction.  The cut is a passage through a mountain ridge crossing the Continental Divide.  It’s nearly 8 miles long and required the excavation of nearly 100 million cubic yards of rock and soil. Approaching the Pacific Ocean ships transit through first the single chamber Pedro Miguel lock lowering the ship 31 feet.  Then traffic goes through the Miraflores locks lowering it a further 54 feet. Along the way ships travel under two bridges, the Centennial Bridge and the Bridge of the Americas. An interesting fact is that the Pacific ocean is approximately 8 inches higher than the Atlantic ocean at the Panama Canal.  Since water seeks its own level that seems illogical to me, but apparently it happens because of variations in ocean currents, the shape and depth of the ocean basins, and tidal conditions.

In the second Miraflores lock

One of the mules keeping the ship in the proper position in the lock

Bridge of the Americas

We stayed overnight at Fuerte Amador alongside a brand new and very large cruise terminal.  In the morning I took a cab to what is apparently the largest shopping mall in Central America.  It was huge and it was also air-conditioned!  I walked around and picked up a couple of things I needed.  The Christmas decorations were interesting.  Santa’s setup didn’t have a North Pole setting; instead he was ensconced by a replica of the Miraflores Lock building.  I’d arranged with my cab driver to pick me up at a designated time and he was promptly there for me.  I was ready to go back to the ship because according to my Apple watch I’d walked nearly five miles in the mall.

Santa's place at the Mall

Unfortunately I was getting cleaned up for dinner when we sailed away because friends told me it was quite pretty.  Panama City in the distance looks like the Miami skyline and it was all lit up.  Added to that we sailed past lots of freighters waiting for their turns to go through the canal. I guess I’ll have to go through again sometime and try to see it.

The Panama City skyline

Our sea day was overcast with a couple of big showers.  It was cooler than the last several days have been which I’m quite happy about.  I expected the temperature to be lower because I have always noticed that the Pacific coastal water is cooler than the Caribbean and Atlantic. I hope the temperatures stay this way for the next few days when we’re in Costa Rica and Mexico. 

We had a trivia game today (we didn’t win) and I listened to a talk about four great canals which have helped to shape history.  I also went to an art class where we did a watercolor painting of a cloud forest.  I can state categorically that any famous watercolorist doesn’t have to worry about competition from me.  Tonight a British friend arranged for seven of us to have dinner together.  We had a wonderful time and laughed a lot.  It was a thoroughly nice day

December 9 - Sweltering Cartagena de Indias, Colombia

We sailed from Willemstad around 10 PM and the town was lit up for Christmas.  My photos didn't come out too well but here are a couple.

After another calm sea day we arrived this morning in Cartagena.  Right now my iPhone is telling me it’s 83° and 79% humidity, but I don’t believe it because it feels like a taste of hell outside.  I’ve been here before, in fact the last time was just over a year ago, so my friend and I decided to take a cab and go into the old city and shop a little.  I’ve copied what I wrote about the history of this place last year mainly to refresh my memory.

The city was founded by the Spanish in 1533 and named after the Spanish city of Cartagena. A little interesting linguistic note is that the original Cartagena in southern Spain was named after Carthage in North Africa because it was founded around 227 BC by a Carthaginian general. The city lies on the Caribbean coast of the South American continent and close to the Isthmus of Panama.  Because of its location it was an important and strategic port for the importation of slaves and the exportation of silver, gold, and other products coming from the New World. The city was sacked and burned several times  by pirates, privateers and enemies of Spain, including Sir Francis Drake.  As a result of the attacks the King of Spain commissioned fortifications to be built and they were finally completed in the 1650’s.  At one time the city was protected by 29 stone forts and walls that were 16 miles long and in places 40 feet high and 50 feet wide. The principal fortress is the Castillo of San Felipe de Barajas which after its completion was the largest one constructed by Spain in the Americas.

This is the Castillo de San Felipe

The fortress system and city have a little interesting historical connection to Virginia.  In 1741 the English under the leadership of Edward Vernon laid siege to Cartagena.  The English had a large armada of ships and more than 25,000 troops, including 2000 American colonial infantry.  Among those was Lawrence Washington, George Washington’s half-brother.  When Lawrence inherited some family property in Virginia along the Potomac he named the house there after his commander, hence the name Mount Vernon.  George kept the name when he inherited the property.  The siege and attack were unsuccessful despite vastly outnumbering the Spanish.  The defender was Don Blas de Lezo whose statue is at the foot of the castle.  He is still considered a hero here.

To go into the city from the port the Colombians have built a little wildlife park attached to the cruise terminal.  The path to go out leads through this place and there are lots of brightly colored parrots and peacocks and other native animals in enclosures.  The birds are free and we wonder if their wings have been clipped or if it’s just that they are very well-fed.  There were lots of watermelons, papayas and mangos around in the various areas.

I couldn't get this peacock to turn so I could fully get his tail, but you can see a little of it.

This and the next two are of a mother and baby anteater.

Our taxicab experience was very strange.  As we exited the terminal area a man approached us wanting to give us a tour.  We told him we weren’t interested and just wanted a taxi to go to the old city to the emerald museum.  He told us it was $50 for a tour and if we just got a taxi it would be $20 each way.  We told him again that was fine; we just wanted a taxi.  He walked with us to where we got in what was supposedly our taxi and he jumped in the front passenger seat.  Okay, that was alright.  When we got into the old town to the museum and got out and paid the taxi driver, he got out too and said the driver would hang around waiting for us.  We told him that was unnecessary and went in the museum.  Of course it had a shop at the end of the tour, but we didn’t see anything of interest so we headed out and walked down some nearby streets where we found another interesting shop and went in.  We were only in there for a few minutes and who appeared but the man from the terminal and taxi.  While we shopped he sat in the store  and appeared to be waiting for us.  We didn’t like that and while we negotiated and then bought something we told the shop ladies we didn’t like him hanging around.  They eventually made him leave the store but I could see him hanging around outside. After we’d made our purchases we decided we didn’t want to wander around anymore with this guy trailing us so the shop people called us a car to take us back to the cruise terminal.  That ride cost us $8 plus a $2 tip.  The man was probably just getting commissions for getting people into inflated taxi rides, but it was a creepy feeling being shadowed, especially when we had no idea we were being followed.  Reading what I’ve written now doesn’t sound so weird, but it really did feel strange.

Some scenes in the old city

Anyway, we got back to the wonderful air-conditioning on the ship.  We had a  salad for lunch and then an afternoon Adult Milk Shake made with Mango sorbet (it was heavenly) and now we’re getting ready to sail.  The Herald, the daily news thing telling us about the day’s events says we’re sailing away from Bermuda;  the Entertainment Manager in charge of printing the thing is slightly confused.  It’s been a good day but the heat and humidity take a lot out of me.  I’m glad tomorrow is a sea day.  Hasta mañana or whenever I write again.