Didn't plan on the barf

Greetings from cabin 5158 on Holland America’s MS Noordam . We are presently on day 2.5 of 31 days floating somewhere out in the ocean near absolutely nothing at all! We left Honolulu on October 5 after spending  2 nights lazing about in Waikiki. It’s been interesting – Jason and I have both been to Waikiki but many years ago. In fact, Jason said the horrifying words, “It’s been 30 years since…” before we both had to stop and fake barf at how old we are.  Anyway, back in the summer of 1994, my family and I ventured to Hawaii for an islands cruise in celebration of my graduation from high school. We stayed at the Outrigger Reef right on the beach in Waikiki. It’s forever burned into my brain because immediately upon stepping out onto our glorious oceanfront balcony, I saw a exceptionally large, older gentleman who was glistening in the sun with suntan oil which lit up his golden, hairy, speedo covered body. Oh, my eyes.

Anyway, I wanted to walk over and see if I recognized it (the hotel, not the oily man) Off we walked. Toured around and nothing was familiar. Later, I realized we were at the wrong hotel. So, there you go I’ve proven that I’m not yet old enough to declare remembering places I’ve never been. Bam!

Waikiki was just a distraction while we waited to get on the boat. I always like to arrive plenty of early because I’m excessively familiar with my flights being cancelled Had we more time, we would have preferred to stay in another area Jason hasn’t been to Maui and I adored Maui Maybe another time

That said, the restaurant in the Waikiki Hilton was insanely delicious Our jet lagged butts woke up at 1:45 am the first night – after having gone to bed at 7PM, local time. We waited till about 5 and then went down to breakfast where you can get anything on the menu, anytime! Chicken and waffles – dude, straight up best we’ve ever had by a clear mile. Plus, we got to meet Mona, our awesome waitress who gave us plenty of awesome tips, Hawaiian recipes, and generally just loved all over us/

Editor’s note – my keyboard doesn’t want to use periods \ I can’t describe how annoying this is, but we’ll just have to carry on and type in code/ From hence forth, the / is the new period/ Also, it could be \ Cause I can’t be bothered to remember the new code/

All that to say, we were happy to be boarding the ship on the 5th! We went super early hoping they’d let us on, and they did It took very little time and there we were! We didn’t even have to wait to get into our cabin! The boat had plenty already on ship – some since Vancouver, some since San Francisco, some since San Diego\ All of them are approximately 80 years young and seem happy to be alive\ I can live with that\

The first couple of hours aboard, we wandered around checking everything out\ It was surreal in that there was quite literally no one in any of the bars or little nooks around the boat\ Where were the people? We finally ran into a crew member who asked us if we needed any help and we said, “YES!” where can we get a drink? Good heavens! Crisis averted up at the pool bar\ There were about 7 people around the pool and most of them were crew\ Never seen anything like it—had the entire ship to ourselves \

Jason had champagne and roses delivered to the room with a sweet card welcoming me to my sabbatical! We enjoyed the champagne on our balcony as we casted off around sunset/

Dinner the first night in the dining room was delicious\ We both had the macadamia crusted ono (Hawaiian white fish)\ Man was that good\ I oddly felt like dessert – got a scoop of coconut ice cream and it was AMAZING\ We met the wine steward and have become fast friends;) We prepurchsed a wine package that gave us 14 bottles to select from a list of reds and whites\ We started with Wild Horse Chardonnay and it was really nice with the fish\

We turned in early that night because we were still a bit jet lagged\ As we left the dining room, I noticed that the crew had put barf bags out in some holders by the elevators \ I didn’t think anything of it, until the next morning when I was in need of one myself\ The seas were quite rough the entire night and throughout the morning\ I have certainly been sea sick before, but I am not a barfer, so that was an unpleasant shock\ Jason was a trooper and brought saltines, ice water, barf bags, etc\ I was able to continue on semi normal by lunch time but just felt a bit off all day A bummer for a day one, but what can you do?

The first of 5 gala dinners was last night (day 2, and the day of the unfortunate barf)/ I’m so glad I was able to eat because there was filet mignon, lobster ravioli, crab legs\ Delicious/ The wine steward found us and we ordered a petit sirah from Spellbound Winery in California Really good! No dessert \ We looked quite cute in our dress clothes – there was a broad selection of dress from mumus with scarves to tuxedos/  We were pretty low on the fancy scale \ Just enough to be allowed in
This morning brings a whole different ballgame/ We’re both feeling well and spent about 2 hours working out/ It’s raining today so we caught a mile outside walking and then went to the gym/ We did various things for about 45 minutes and then took a 30 minute stretching class with a bunch of old people/ What a hoot! At one point, I started laughing at Jason at got “shushed” by a woman/ There’s no laughing in stretching, apparently;)

This afternoon, I think we’re going to a wine tasting We ordered a movie\ There’s an America’s test Kitchen on board so maybe we’ll learn to make chocolate/ There’s a ton of live music\ Oh, last night we listened to a lovely quartet and enjoyed watching elderly couples dancing like young kids/ Very sweet \  If we can shake off jet lag and motion sickness and stay up late enough, I’m anxious to go see the Blues and Jazz club/ Things are looking up for tonight!

Much more to come, but wanted to capture all this before too much time goes by/

Oh, one interesting thing from the stretching class – Jason was shocked when he was able to touch his toes \ He’s always been incredibly inflexible—but there he was, leaned over and grabbing his toes\ Farming – it works wonders for a man in all kinds of ways <3