Whitewash

So home and straight into the old routine, a Friday night fuelled by alcohol, Saturday morning down the pub then into the lady's boudoir known as Rock an Rose for some tucker before going through the thrills and spills of England's mighty effort to beat France by 26 points. They hit the bar but given we beat Wales in Cardiff and finished above them in the table, a win was a win against France and everything pails into insignificance. There wer fourteen of us on parade, so a good weekend was had by all. Luckily SWMBO was on hand to drive home on the Sunday as I was a bit weary.

Monday gave me no rest bite as it was down to the golf club for the first Seniors game of the season, one which I was Chairman for the first time. I was voted in In Absentia on Friday.

We were playing Prenton, one of the closest courses to us, and I was under no pressure being paired with the new club Captain, Chris Kerin. There was an up side though, Chris plays of 5 so any lapse on my part could be more than compensated. Blessedly, my game held together pretty well, and we went round in level par better ball which gave our opponents little chance of a win.

It got even better in the bar when it transpired we had won 8-0, something which the more senior Senior's were struggling to remember doing before. It can, of course, only go one way from there though! My opening speech seems to have gone down well, so it's onto Prestatyn tomorrow and then our second fixture away at Vale Royal Abbey, always a hard place to get anything from.

A few days back and it seems like we have not been away. The twelve bags of washing indicate that we have though!  

walk on the wild side...

I have never seen so many bagpipes as in New York yesterday.  The St Patrick Day parade here differs from San Fran in a lot of ways. For a start there are no vehicles or floats. It’s all one long march from 44^th to 65^th. Our hotel is right near the start so we had a good view early on. Second difference is it’s actually on the day itself and finally, the number of people is huge.

So we walked the route then did the central library which sadly had its two most impressive reading rooms closed and grabbed a cocktail in The Campbell Apartments in Grand Central station. It’s a red velvet and brown chair sort of bar going back the Twenties, hidden away and very pleasant after a route march through mid-town.

Today was freezing at -3 degrees so a trip to Ground Zero should have been heart warming. It is still very much a building site, but the two memorial waterfalls were certainly a fitting tribute to the victims, demonstrating the footprints of the two towers at the same time. The viewing gallery of the new World Trade Centre will open in the next few months, and the views should be spectacular.

We walked most of the way back, and then finished the day with dinner at a training restaurant aptly called L’Ecole. We were joined in SoHo by our good friends Eins and Tina from Blundellsands who were also in New York for yesterday’s parade.

Tomorrow it’s back to Blighty but we do have membership of the Cornell Club for the day so will be dropping in there for WiFi and coffee at some point.

All in all a wide and varied 28 days with much to look back on and smile about….. talking of which did you know the tooth brush was invented in South Dakota? Otherwise it would have been called the teeth brush…….

Food, glorious food....

Mega problems at check-in this morning as we are over weight.....' Its the same luggage came out with' I pleaded. 'Its not the bags sir', she said,' Its you'
I knew those meatballs last night were a meal too far!! Ah well five hours in the air feeling like an American!

Bridge over troubled water

It was going to be jailhouse rock, but the first available tickets for Alcatraz were for Tuesday. The fallback was the open topped tour bus. It was a good choice.

We took in most of the major sights including Haight/Astbury, the hippy center of the sixties, the Victorian sector which survived the 1906 earthquake, and, best of all, got ride over the Golden Gate bridge. That was a tad windy but provided some great views.

We saw some very appealing art but the girl did not ship international, so its off to Little Italy for some tucker before an early start tomorrow for New York. I wonder what the strap line will for that?

climbing the stairway to heaven.

We left God's waiting room this morning after catching the first half of the England rugby, and I was pleased to see, when we got to our San Fran hotel, that the chances they squandered did not cost them the game. All to play for next week then.

So then cruise has ended and we now have San Fran and New York before returning home on Friday. For all the highs and lows of the last two weeks, nothing could compare with SWMBO dragging me away from the stage as I went to volunteer as a standup comic in the passenger variety show.....I think I would have got a laugh but she disagreed! Funnily one of the acts was a blind chap from Cheshire telling jokes....exit signs, are they on the way out?

We have been out to see the St Patrick's Day parade this afternoon and we are shortly off to tour some old world architecture and some stunning hotel reception area's. Then it will be Guiness and steak before retiring. Our hotel restaurant is one of the best around and is a converted 1950's ballroom, so it should be good.

Trouser belt still on same notch so here's hoping it will survive another week!

Riiiiba.....

We are in Encelada on the US/Mexican border. It is a typical cruiser town. It has one long street which is arty and designer and then behind that sprawls the rest of the town, run down and dusty. It could easily be a setting for a Clint Eastwood movie.

The second week of the cruise has been better. The sea has been calmer and we have had a few days when we could get some sun on deck.

Princess seem to have upped their game too. The entertainment has been better and the food has improved. A cynic might say this is so we remember it as a positive experience but people on the ship who have done the trip several times have said how bad it has been.

It seems the rough weather going out may have been the edge of the cyclone which hit the South Pacific today, just suffice to say the ship could not cope with an aged passenger population who were unable to get on deck, and in many cases out of their cabin.

If you are under 70 this cruise is not for you. If you want to see Hawaii then fly there and take a week to do some island hopping.

The Captain did not see to be concerned we had not had a cruise of the quality expected, it seemed to be all about them, not about us, the customers.

Look out TripAdvisor there's another storm brewing!

Lai lady lai

So, final day on the islands with a visit to the Hawaii volcano national park. the Kilauea Caldera which we primarily visited is active and was steaming. It last erupted in 1986 and is one of four active volcano's on Hawaii. Mauna Kea is the tallest at about 14000 feet above sea level, but from its ocean base it is higher then Mount Everest.

We also went through a lava tube and visited a couple of craters in the caldera. All interesting and good to see.

The town of Hilo where the ship moored is a throw back in time to the 1950's. It has many art deco buildings most of which are run down, and there is the usual passenger oriented craft market.  All in all a slow old place.

So now we are off into the Pacific for four days, hoping for fine weather and some better entertainment than was the case coming over. While the ship cannot legislate for the weather it can for the entertainment. the comedian and hypnotist were second rate, the piano singer can play but not sing and the Machida band are well liked by the Japanese but there are more Brits on board than them.
The sports bar is a smoking bar and is disgusting, more so now that such an environment is a rarity at home. Still ESPN show rugby and footie as well as the cricket world cup in the cabin so all not gloom and doom.

We now have our sea legs screwed back on and it's off we go back to San Fran.

Love me tender,love me true...

We were tendered into port today at Maui. Usually it’s a calm 10 minute ride in. Today some shuttles took 45 minutes. We were lucky to only take 15 and a decision was taken just afterwards to suspend transfers. We queued two hours to get a tender back, the weather on this trip is just not working for us.

Still, it’s a holiday and we are trying to make the most of it. We saw a school of humpback whales this morning, and a leatherback turtle popped in to our snorkelling cove this afternoon. Even the snorkelling was terminated due to poor visibility and strong under currents.

Maui, or the town of Lahaina where we were based, was a beautiful place, very similar to the Cayman Islands, Bermuda or Aruba. It was voted the worlds most beautiful island by National Geographic magazine.

With the large whale population it is no surprise that this was a major whaling colony with some right goings on before European missionaries came there and sanitised the place. The main bar and bordello of the time, still stands though and is now a very elegant Best Western hotel.

Back on board it was love boat disco night on the top deck. Bit breezy but good fun. I am still waiting for the Zimmer frame race round the deck though.

Today we are landing at Hilo on what is called the big island. We are off to see some volcano's, one of which is still active. Hopefully an update on that before our second week at sea when we will be offline again.

Book him Dano

 On dry land at last, as we moored up successfully in Honolulu, the capital of Hawaii. It is on the island of Oahu, a mountainous region constructed from erupting volcano’s all of which are now extinct.

This holiday has been planned as a pilgrimage for SWIMBO. She had planned to meet her brother here in Hawaii for his 50^th anniversary party, but he was sadly taken from us a few years ago, so the rendezvous will never happen.

We started the day at the USS Arizona war grave and memorial in Pearl Harbour, a place which has been a pilgrimage for many American and Japanese citizens for over seventy years. We saw the statistics, the names of the fallen, and oil still leaking to the surface after all this time. We visited the memorial to the 50 or so submarines lost in the conflict, and then visited ‘mighty Mo’ the USS Missouri on which the Japanese surrendered.

The below decks tour was fascinating given we are on a pretty large ship ourselves. It makes one understand the conditions some of our crew will be experiencing.

We finally went down to Waikiki for spot or sun bathing, and then brought a Lei in Liverpool colours, which will be placed on Martin’s grave on our return. We toasted his memory in a local bar and are now set fair for tomorrow on Maui.

The ship is quite cosmopolitan and that embraces both crew and passengers. In one bar a Latino band called the Emmanuelle Blanco band is proving popular with the Japanese. Last night they got adventurous and banged out a song by Dire Straits called ‘Butterfly’. Never heard of it said I to SWMBO, when suddenly the riff kicked in……. dada dadadadada dada….. and it tlanflormed into ‘Walk of Life’ silly me !

All at sea

Not  the strap line I was going to use, but the cruising part of the trip has not quite gone to plan. We left San Francisco with the words of captain Nash ringing in our ears. It’s going to be rough he said in his Cornish burr, so he could have added ‘me lovers’ or ‘proper job’ at the end of the sentence.

Well, rough it was, and for three days most of the 3000 passengers were confined to barracks, with the demand for the full English in short supply. SWMBO is not good with motion but she had been a martyr to the cause and we have represented the UK with fortitude. We were rewarded on day 4 with a calmer sea and sunbathing weather which put everybody in a good frame of mind for our first landfall on Wednesday.

Seems something upset Poseidon though as we awoke to the news than the winds were too strong to allow the ship to dock at Nawiliwili on the Hawaiian island of Kuala. Instead we spent the day circling it before starting out for Honolulu. We did see several silverback whales on our travels and are promised many more when we get to Maui on Friday. Up to 10000 come down from Alaska to sporn ever Winter so that should be exciting.

The ship has very little to occupy us as most of its clientele are overweight slothful Americans. We have probably brought the average age down somewhat. Nonetheless we are battling on with a trip to Pearl Harbour on schedule for tomorrow. Then its snorkelling and a volcano tour before we head back with another four days at sea. Our course back is further South so should miss the wind and be set fair to top up our tan.

If not it will be bingo, play your cards right, and ballroom dancing, can’t wait!