Intentionally Unexpected
We have arrived at our home for the next 10 days.
I wish I had been wearing sunglasses here for more than one reason… The sun is just as much of a death laser as in Texas.
At least Hei Hei isn’t suffering from his agoraphobia if he’s indoors.
Off to grocery shopping!
It took about an hour of sitting on the tarmac to get to our gate. Apparently a small plane crashed and caught fire on the runway this morning and it threw the entire airport into chaos for the day.
It’s very Hawaii though. You get off the plane onto the tarmac, and the “gate” is a series of, well, huts.
A nice welcome really, sets the tone.
Now we get to wait an hour for our bags to be unloaded. It appears that they’ve got 2 guys to do all the baggage handling for the entire airport. Ah well, it’s lovely.
[ confused chicken screaming ]
Apparently a small plane crashed at Kona Airport this morning, so we’re parked on the tarmac for an undetermined amount of time before they can bring us to the gate.
*I* may start the Hei-Hei screaming soon…
What happens when a chicken feels the call of the sky?
It’s not about the destination, it’s about the friends we made along the way…
The journey always begins at gate E11. It is the way.
I’ve gathered up some remaining pictures from the cruise, taken by both Bevin and Brian.
Apparently they both took the same picture from different angles while we were departing. We were standing on the highest available outdoor deck of the ship, available only to suite guests. Has a great view, but a bit windy.
Also very similar pictures looking back at Miami from the top of the stairs up to the suite bar deck.
We didn’t really take a lot of pictures while we were out and about in St. Maarten or St. Thomas. We were having fun poking around and we weren’t really thinking about blogging at the time. Sorry about that. Bevin did manage to capture this shot though, which is actually pretty emblematic of the general state of things.
Bevin took a couple of panorama shots! Click to enlarge for the full experience.
I took this video at the ice show, you can see the projection mapping moving. It was actually pretty cool how they used the effects on the floor as part of the show, and the skaters were able to do some impressive tricks on such a small rink!
I also took a video of the ship rotating while we were docking at Coco Cay. Look at the island in the background to get an idea of how quickly we were spinning. Truly impressive how fast and how smooth such an enormous ship can maneuver.
A slightly longer view of our rotation, showcasing the speed.
Some have been curious about where our room is. Follow the red arrows. (Click to enlarge)
We actually didn’t take pictures of most of the places we ate. One place I sort of wish we’d done so at was the Wonderland restaurant. Themed after Alice in Wonderland, it’s designed to be an experience of imagination, and there were some pretty creative dishes, however we were having more fun just enjoying it, so unfortunately we don’t have any pictures for you. If you’re curious, the web is full of pictures. They weren’t ours, but they’ll be close. (I found this one as a top result)
I will say that the deviled eggs served on a birds nest, under a glass cover filled with smoke was probably my favorite.
Despite the TSA’s best efforts we managed to get home with our luggage.
So of all the things about cruising we expected to blog about, urinals was NOT one of them.
However…
The hamster judges you.
So, it turns out this is a bit of a theme. This lead to one of the strangest scavenger hunts ever…
Turns out it’s not just animals either…
It was nice to find one wasn’t overtly hurtful..
We actually actively avoided this one… Especially since everyone who used in failed to see the black blob as a dog on first look…
At the airport we found an entirely different sort of animals/bathrooms relationship.
So there’s your tour of the urinals of Symphony of the Sea. Betcha didn’t see that coming.
Let’s end this on a happier note. Towel animals!
Still hanging out in the airport awaiting our flights, which are tragically late in the day due to cancelations several months ago as airlines re-planned their routes…
We finally got let off the ship! We think they held us onboard until there was no lightning risk.
It was nice because the passing storm had created cloud cover so we got a couple hours of not getting totally blasted by the sun.
There are fish in the lagoon, of several varieties. Also baby crabs. And we saw a jellyfish, as well as a rather large stingray!
We actually ended up floating out past the lifeguard on the far side of the floating cabanas. No pictures exist, because water, but there are some artificial reefs they’ve made out of concrete blocks. Bunches of fish!
It was really fun to see actual tropical fish in actual tropical water.
We went back to the steakhouse on board because it was so good the first time. All the food we had was amazing, and the staff are fantastic.
And now we’re at the airport. Due to flight changes and such all of us had our flights moved back from our original times, so now we have about 6 hours at the airport. Wheee?
Spent yesterday transiting from St. Thomas to the Bahamas and Royal Caribbean private island Coco Cay.
It’s actually really impressive how precise this GIANT ship can control itself. Watching them parallel park is a thing of beauty. Not a tugboat in sight.
They should let us off the ship any time now!