Hawaiian holiday cruise

We've been to Hawaii many times, but this was our second assignment as a presenter on an Hawaiian cruise. Click on this link for Hawaii 2017 to see that adventure. This time we flew to Los Angeles and the preparation time was much less because I'd already done the work for the previous assignment.

 
Holland America put us up in a luxury hotel with a huge central atrium with Chihuly glass sculptures. Sweet! (In 2007 we toured a large Chihuly installation in Miami, so click this link for more examples.) The problem with this arrangement was that other incoming crew were housed somewhere else, so there was no HAL transport to the ship and we had to catch a taxi to the port. Well, there are two ports in LA, the driver went to the wrong one, so it was an extra long ride.

 
The ship was our home-away-from-home, the Amsterdam. After the world cruise in 2018, she was headed off to a two-week dry dock refurbishing, so we were interested to see the changes. Two of the most obvious upgrades were the new blue color scheme around the Lido pool and there was new seating in the showroom at sea. There was also a lot of new carpet.

 
Decked out for my book signing outside the shops. We had squeexed 16 copies of "Climate-Wise Landscaping" into our luggage and most of them were sold. We'd never been in a porthole room before. This was a handicapped room and with the beds pushed together, we ended up with a nice alcove off to the side.

The ship was decked out for Christmas with an amazing real gingerbread village with a model train track going around the edge. There were 100 kids on board, which unusual for a HAL cruise.

It was Christmas on the way out to Hawaii, and Santa displaced one of my presentations. On the way back, the captain took one of my time slots, so in the end, I only got to give 8 of my 10 presentations.

Honolulu

We were docked here for two days. The second day we were escorts on ships excursions. For our best previous Hawaiian photos, check out our 2009 trip to Hawaii which included a 7-day cruise: only the second cruise we'd been on. At that point, we never would have guessed how much cruising was in our future.

A huge rainbow from the back deck as we approached Honolulu on Oahu.

 
We docked right next to the Aloha Tower, so here it is as we sailed in and then again from land as the sun was hitting its top. Now most the buildings around the tower are used as a university.

 
Here I reprised the pose from our very first excellent adventure in 2003.

 
Still more views from around the base of elegant the Aloha Tower.

A tourist submarine...

and another.

For scale, because this was a huge mural.

We took a bus to the road and it was a steep climb to this trail head to Manoa Falls.

 
It was a nice waterfall, but there were a lot of people on the trail.

Just another beautiful day in paradise...

After the Manola Falls trail, we continued further up the road to the Lyon Arboretum where there was another waterfall trail.

  
The falls were not as impressive, but it was a nice property and the trails were much less crowded.

 
There were some dangerously large fruits including breadfruits and double large coconuts that could fall on you. Not that a warning would do any good, but the sign may protect the arboretum from lawsuits.

 
A glimose of the view between the trees...

 
A family photographic session. Love their matching leis.

 
A beautiful spot for our lunch! A Red-Vented Bulbul introduced from India in the 1950s.

A Red-crested Cardinal or Brazilian Cardinal from South America. It was introduced to Hawaii around 1930.