Captain Neptune

Crossed the equator yesterday!  Celebrated with champagne and a party on deck. The crew had a great time inaugurating all the polywogs.  Totally silly stuff.  Even threw the captain into the pool!  Another wonderful day at sea -- George and I both got sunburned sitting out on our deck! 

Maui

Here we are at the Grand Wailea where we had a wonderful lunch!  We have such great memories of our times in Wailea -- and it is still so gorgeous.   

We've left the US for the last time for the next several months and we're off to locations that are going to be so new to us.  However, onboard the ship are 342 other World Cruisers -- half of whom have already been on a World Cruise before -- so we're with a lot of people who have done this before!  

Four days at sea heading for Tahiti! Much relaxing to do! 

Aloha from Hawaii!

After docking in the late morning, we hustled over to Pearl Harbor to get some of the last tickets for the day to the Arizona Memorial.  As you can see, the weather was picture perfect, mid 70's, few clouds in the sky (Just wanted to throw that in for the friends and family suffering with the temps in the below zero range -- we drank a Mai Tai for you last night!) 

While we were waiting for our trip over to the Memorial, we went to visit the USS Missouri -- which is positioned not far from the Arizona.  Here's George in front of the ship.   In the background, are the beautiful mountains of Oahu -- What a glorious place on a day like today! The tour of the ship was really something.  Everything in tip top shape! 

Today we're off to Lahaina -- more Mai Tais and a visit to the Grand Wailea!  Maloha!

No More Blackberry

              

Today was the day for the tossing of the blackberry!  Unfortunately, Crystal frowns on tossing things overboard -- and with our luck the darn thing would have blown right back in our faces. So instead George decided to toss his much used machine into the Burnable Garbage trashcan.

No more blackberry -- no more ABM!  Thanks for the memories.

Day 2 Activities

We've established a sea day routine!  Early morning swim in the saltwater pool, breakfast, 10 AM bridge lessons, a sudoko contest (Ann's up 2-0), dancing lessons at 1:30, some social bridge (can't face the hard core duplicate players quite yet), walking the promenade deck (2 miles today), drinks and canapes in our suite before a wonderful dinner.  What a tough life!  George is seen here enjoying a pretty sunset on the bow of the boat after a day of overcast skies, but calm seas!

Los Angeles Departure

After a wonderful gala at the Beverly Hills Hilton the night before,  we were serenaded by the USC Band (We asked for the Stanford Band -- but our LA hosts assured us that the USC band is the best!) It was a special sendoff as we pulled away from the pier at 6 PM with the band onshore with a calm sea and warm breezes.

Thanks to all the good friends that wished us well on our travels.  Pat & Dick and Heidi surprised us with a fond farewell as we left San Francisco on our journey.  The house and our belongings are now under the watchful eye of David Tate with Pat & Dick, Heidi, Susan and John, Ralph and all of our neighbors as we travel for 108 days -- we can hardly believe it!

Bon Voyage!

So we are off on the trip of a lifetime!  But of course we need many things for 4 months at sea. 

We won't publish how many bags we delivered to the ship, but we want to let all of our astonished friends know that we were able to safely stow all of our bags underneath our bed -- and that we have plenty of room in our stateroom to live like a king and queen!