January 16th, 2024

Sorry that we haven’t posted in awhile. Sea days can get pretty routine and hard to post something every day. I will say we have never crossed the Pacific before and it was a rough crossing. We have a sister ship, the Viking Star doing the same itinerary just 3 days before us and they said it was so rough that no one was allowed on the open deck for 3 days so we defiantly did not have it that bad.

We did do a private dinner on one of the sea days for the 5 couples that we knew were going to be on board from 21/22 and the 2 of us. it was a way for people to meet people and put a name to the face since we will be on for almost another 4 months. Below is the 12 of its and then we have Hemmi, one of our favorite wine stewards photo bombing the picture.

We arrived in Honolulu at midnight on January 16th. We were supposed to arrive at 8am on the 16th but it was going to get pretty windy so the Captain took us in early. We were not allowed to get off early but at least we avoided another bumpy night. That is Diamond Head as we approach Honolulu.

We did the included tour of Honolulu in the morning on January 16th and it included a drive around town, past the only palace on American soil

After the drive around town we were dropped off at Peal Harbor for a few hours. It was not to crowded and we had been before but it was years ago so we do not remember much.

Kathy and I with the memorial in the background. It was a windy day and as you can tell the weather was not the best but the rain held out.

The view from our balcony with Diamond Head visible in the back ground.

After Pearl harbor we came back to the ship and got some lunch and then we took the shuttle into Waikiki to walk around. We headed down to the beach but again the weather was not the best. We passed a small shop and decided to indulge in some true Hawaiian shaved ice.

These were huge but after about 10 minutes they started melting so fast you could not keep up.

We had made reservations at a restaurant called Merrimans which we had eaten at before on Maui. So instead of taking the shuttle back to the boat we walked along the main drag of Oahu and shopped in some of the stores and made it to the restaurant for our 7pm reservation. We have been joking about how the boat does not know how to make true southern biscuits and that was listed as an appetizer, Bag of Biscuits, so of course we had to get that and we got 4 of them and they were hot and flaky and fresh out of the oven with butter. They were great and I guess it is a good thing the boat does not have them on board. We both got Macadamian crusted Mahi Mahi and it was excellent. So much better than boat food.

Kathy got a smoked Manhattan and you can still see a little of the smoke in it and I got the 50 shades of green drink. Everything was excellent.

We walked back to the ship after dinner and ended up walking 9 miles in total between Pearl Harbor and walking from where the shuttle drops you off to the ship. Hopefully we burned off the biscuits and Hawaiian Shaved ice drinks. We are spending the night in Oahu and leave port at 2pm on January 17th at 2pm. I have made arrangements to go scuba diving with 2 other people from the boat bright and early in the am.