Hawaii, Day 2

Day 1 here.
Day 2, May 8, 2010 started off mellowly - well, for me. Ray got a jetlagged baby wake up at some ridiculous hour and kindly left me to sleep. Ray and Eamon went out and harasses various shops until they got someone to sell them coffee and donuts, probably after Ray had been up for two hours. And he still brought me donuts, the saint.

I started my morning (post donuts) with a good chunk of the family at Waikiki beach. We thought Eamon would enjoy having the sea nip his toes. The sea was angry, apparently, and decided to eat his shorts instead. It was cold, and surprising, and WAAAAH. So... Eamon wasn't so into the whole ocean thing. Too bad we didn't get a shot of that. But Ray's mom did figure out his iphone, so we bring you these instead:




After the beach, I ran the car back to the airport, circling about the Waikiki one way streets several times in the process, with a sidestop to tour the Seamans and a trip back via city bus. Ray and the family loaded up our bajillion pieces of luggage and got themselves on the boat nice and early, only to find out that they couldn't get into the rooms until 3.

Ray's siblings waited out in the heat for me, because I didn't have any paperwork to get on. They at least got to watch all of the people who posed with boarding passengers in traditional Hawaiian getup meander about. One of those people would eventually refuse to pose with us because Steve was "too tall" - stated in a sulkly lilt that got this phrase repeated for the whole week.

Meanwhile, Ray and Eamon entertained each other.
Mom is over there....
I'm on a boat!
On the bus, I got into a discussion with the bus driver and passengers because they wanted me to get off at dock 10 (Aloha Tower) and I knew I wanted dock 2. The bus driver realized I was on NCL and quickly sided with me. Because he sees this every Saturday:
The big fin by the right-hand stop light, that's our boat. From six blocks away. In downtown.
It's kind of hard to miss. (Cue Jaws theme here).
That's Aloha Tower over there on the left. A bit of a way away! This would be a bit of a theme - the Pride of America is so big, she doesn't fit in a lot of the "normal" ports, so we got to see a slightly different side of Hawaii.
Obviously, we eventually made it into our rooms and set about building a cave for Eamon and touring the boat (I think it took about 3 days for me to feel like I'd seen every place we could go). I could post the pictures taken during the lifeboat drill, but to protect the innocent (and avoid reminding Ray about the man making drill announcements when we finally got E to nap), I'll post these - we did a mini drill putting Eamon into his lifevest the next morning. He seems to... um... not like it.



WHEW. Can't you people see that blaze orange is NOT my color?