shave ice and chickens

Sadly, today is the last full day at sea.  We dock at Honolulu early tomorrow morning, and will be on the plane home tomorrow evening.  I'm told it's snowing in Ottawa - so I'm not looking forward to the change in the weather.

Today was day 2 at Kaua'i.  It was a short day as we were leaving port at 2pm.  Bridie was booked on a zip line tour, but being scared of heights I chose not to join her.  I started the day out in the library/internet room doing a post about last night's luau.  I must have been spending too much time in that room because people keep coming up and asking me questions as though I'm a member of the staff. Yesterday I had a couple asking me how to print out their boarding passes.  Today I had one guy wanting me to show him where the printer was and another couple came in and asked me if it was OK to "wait" in there. I'm not quite sure what they were waiting for, or why they thought I would have any authority to tell them where they could or could not "wait" for anything.

Having the morning to myself, I walked into town - which was not far at all from Nawiliwili Harbor where Pride of America was docked.  I wandered around the small mall and checked out all the gift shops, doing some last minute present buying.  Then I headed across the road to "restaurant row" where there was an ice-cream shop called Skinny Mikes. All through the vacation I've been seeing signs for "shave ice"  which is apparently a Hawaiian "thing" - sort of like a gigantic snow cone.  I'd decided I really had to try it before the end of the vacation, so for breakfast this morning I had a pineapple shave ice.  As the photo shows - I ordered a small one. I cannot imagine what size a large one would be.  Skinny Mike himself was a nice bloke - and yes he was very skinny.  I asked him how he managed to stay so thin when he's surrounded by ice-cream, sorbets, milk shakes, smoothies, etc.  He told me he'd always been that way -  doesn't it make you mad when you meet people like this?

After breakfast I went down to the beach and had a paddle.  And I couldn't leave Kaua'i without offering up at least one photo of the ubiquitous chickens.  In most places you go to a park and it's full of pigeons. But here the parks are full of chickens.  I had a strong urge to run around after them shouting "gravy gravy!", but managed to contain myself.

Back on the ship by 11am I then hung out by the pool and spent an hour in the hot tub talking to a couple from Maryland.  The guy was yet another Donald Trump supporter.  There seem to be a lot of them on this cruise.  Although I guess if you've got enough money to go cruising all the time you're more likely to be a republican.  All the poor people who can't afford to come on a cruise are probably democrats. 

Bridie was back by 2pm and we went up to a very windy top deck to watch the ship leave port.

At about 5pm we'll be making a special  pass close to the Napali coast which National Geographic reckons is one of the 50 most beautiful places in the world.   I will take a photo and let you know.