World Cruise--Day One In Paradise

Sunrises. Sunsets. Blue skies. Warm breezes. It doesn’t get much better than that. Our two days in Honolulu couldn’t have been more perfect where the weather was concerned. We had arranged through Viator for a whale watching tour with Majestic by Atlantis Cruises. I love the options you get by booking through Viator. Not only is it usually less expensive than a ship’s excursion but they don’t charge your credit card until 48 hours before the tour and it gives you the option to cancel without penalty before that which allows for flexibility if the ship’s itinerary should change or the weather looks to be bad that day.

The whale watching boat was only an eight minute walk from our ship. We had a leisurely breakfast and then walked to the boat and beyond to the Aloha Tower. There was a marketplace there where we thought we might grab a coffee and look in the shops. We didn’t count on it being Sunday and since the area was associated with the Hawaiian Pacific University, there were no students around for classes and the shops were closed. We found one lone coffee café open and purchased some drinks then sat down to call our AT&T service who had shut down our data usage.

Long story but the crux of it was that in order to avoid charges for Cellular at Sea, we had to place our phones in airplane mode on the ship to shut down any data roaming even if data roaming was turned off which was our usual procedure for a cruise (a hundred cruises and this was a first). Something had obviously changed either with our service or with the way Cellular at Sea works. It was a costly discovery but thankfully AT&T shut it down until we figured it out.

Our data problem worked out, we wandered around a bit and then received a message that we could board the Majestic at 10:45 for our 11:30 tour. We headed to the boat, showed our voucher for our tickets and boarded a very large three decker boat with an open deck on top. The lower decks had inside tables, the first deck set up for kids’ activities and the second with a bar and snack food including sandwiches. We made note of that and decided we would have lunch a bit later.

By the time we made it out of the harbor, the sea was a little choppier but not too bad. Our naturalist told us that we would head for Diamond Head as there were whales reported to be seen there. We did not expect to see a lot here in Honolulu since most of the whales made their way to Maui where there was a larger and more protected area for them to calve their babies.

Actually we told ourselves we didn’t care if we saw whales or not. It was such a pleasant day and the views of Honolulu and the mountains behind it were lovely. I had a Hallmark moment when I saw the pink hotel from one of their movies.

Suddenly fingers pointed and our naturalist directed our attention to a spout where a whale had surfaced. We moved closer and I think the whales moved a bit closer to us as well. 

We floated around for about an hour, moving once in a while to get closer to the small pod of whales that surfaced on occasion. Several times we saw a tail flip into the air as one would dive. There were no breaches and in all our times whale watching we have never seen one. We were surprised however years ago when we were boating out to a dive spot near Maui and suddenly one breached straight into the air next to our small dive boat. We all sat stunned by the suddenness and wonder of it all.

Our whale watching over, we started back to the ship. There was a shuttle that would take us to the Ala Moana shopping mall. A huge mall (several football fields long/wide), we thought it was sure to have a nail salon and a barber to meet our needs. When we started roaming the mall, I realized there was little chance that what we would find would be anywhere near our comfort zone in pricing. The stores were all upscale, Nieman Marcus, Bloomingdales, Rolex, Gucci, etc. Sure enough the nail salon and barber shop we found were just as expensive as the ship’s offerings.

It wasn’t a wasted trip though. We found a Cinnabon and had two good coffees and some small bons before walking a mile to find the shuttle stop again. The mall was really confusing and was three floors as well. We made it though and were dropped off at the cruise terminal in time to shower and dress for dinner and watch a glorious sunset.