We woke up on Thursday, August 14 to cloudy skies, but it wasn’t raining and we were finally in Iceland, so we didn’t really care! We were both ready for the first of five days in Iceland, which was the reason we chose the cruise. Little did we know our trip to Iceland was going to end up looking very different than what we had planned.

We met our guide, Helga of Tinna Adventures at the port in Djupivogur and we were off for a day of seeing the hidden valleys and waterfalls of east Iceland.

East Iceland is remote and rugged. We made our way on narrow roads through grassy valleys surrounded by jagged, rocky peaks, stopping occasionally to admire a waterfall or just the amazing scenery.

Our third stop was in an area with a dry riverbed and a hidden waterfall. We walked on a path towards the waterfall, and as we were walking down a slight slope towards the riverbed I decided to step aside to let someone pass when “it” happened. My feet went out from under me on the damp, loose gravel, and I found myself sitting when I didn’t want to be! Even worse, my right leg had cooperated and gone down the slope foot first, but my left leg was awkwardly pinned underneath me. Our fantastic guide Helga tried to help me get up, but when she did we realized my left foot was in a position it shouldn’t have been in and vacation was probably over. That was it…after all the careful planning and preparation my Iceland vacation lasted two hours.😢

 

That split-second event was the first in what would prove to be a VERY long day. Thankfully Helga is an EMT and part of the local remote rescue team and she knew exactly what to do. I’m not going to give you a blow-by-blow account of the rest of the day, but here are the highlights:

• I fell around 11:00. The ambulance arrived about 45 minutes after I fell. They immobilized my ankle and took me by ATV down the riverbed to the waiting ambulance.
• Jim rode in front and saw amazing sights during the hour and a half ride to hospital #1 in Neskaupstadur. I had a lovely view of the frosted glass and the back doors of the ambulance.
• They took x-rays and the on-duty physician told me my ankle was broken in three places (not true) and I needed surgery. He added that he was a surgeon but only worked on the esophagus😳 so I would need to go elsewhere.
• It was determined that I needed to be transported to the hospital in Akureyri where I could be seen by an orthopedic doctor. Before we left Neskaupstadur they communicated by phone and text with the doctor in Akureyri and managed (with a great deal of difficulty and mess!) to push my dislocated ankle bones back to something resembling normal and put me in a plaster cast.
• While all this was going on Jim was busy on the phone and e-mail with our travel insurance company, our credit card company, and the ship.
• Thankfully they decided to transport me by air ambulance instead of making the 4 and a half hour trip to Akureyri by road ambulance. Again, Jim had spectacular views and I could see some clouds and the ceiling of the plane.🙄
• In Akureyri more x-rays were taken, and the physician on-call came in and told me they would operate in the morning. Alarm bells went off. What do you mean you will operate in the morning? After a discussion with Jim, we decided (well, I decided and he agreed) that our best course of action would be to have the surgery at home. There were several reasons why we made the decision. My primary reason was I hadn’t met the surgeon, I wouldn’t be able to speak to the surgeon until he or she arrived in the morning, and nobody could or would tell me exactly what surgery would be performed. Other considerations were the length of time I would need to stay in Iceland before we could go home, what I would do for follow-up care and rehab if I had surgery in Iceland, and finally what the costs would be since we would have to put the surgery on our credit card and then get reimbursed by our travel insurance company.
• The decision to go home started a whole chain of events. The hospital staff were very unhappy with our decision and really pushed back. Once they realized we had made up our minds their tone changed and they pretty much washed their hands of us. We were told we had to leave and to make sure we paid on the way out! We tried to borrow or purchase a wheelchair but the best they could do was a flimsy pair of crutches which I was incapable of using. I can’t count how many times I almost fell which probably would have resulted in me annihilating the rest of my limbs!
• We managed (with no help from the hospital) to find a hotel. The room was on the 4^th floor but thankfully was very close to the elevator and had an accessible bathroom. By this time it was about 11:30. We were hungry, dirty, and utterly exhausted. We spent the next few hours attempting to sleep but it was hard to get comfortable and there were too many ifs, ands, or buts that kept us awake.
• Fortunately our ship was in Akureyri on Friday, and we got cleared to reboard the ship to sail to Reykjavik to disembark and fly home. I was happy to be reunited with my passport, my cash, and my clothes!
• I learned quickly that a cruise ship is a difficult place to be when you can only use one leg and you’re confined to a wheelchair in a non-accessible cabin. I used our bathroom once to shower and it was SCARY getting in and out! For the rest of the time we were on the ship I used accessible public facilities and/or a commode chair.
• We were very naïve about what it would take to get us home. Our first thought was we would call United and change our flight so we could fly home from Reykjavik instead of Amsterdam. Well, it really doesn’t work like that. As we found out, it’s complicated. I had to get a “Fit to Fly” clearance from the ship’s doctor, and once I had that our travel insurance handled all the arrangements. They were not able to use our existing tickets to make acceptable arrangements (more on that later) and booked us on Lufthansa through Frankfurt with a nurse. At first I thought the nurse was overkill, but when presented with the alternative of getting catheterized for the trip I thought the nurse was a great idea! Actually, the nurse was a Godsend. He made all the arrangements and eased the way at every step of the 26 hour trip! He even accompanied us all the way to Bryan before turning around and heading back to his home near Milan.

There are a lot of details I left out because they really aren’t that exciting. The staff on the ship were wonderful, and our fantastic neighbors took great care of us before we got home and in the weeks after surgery. Needless to say I think good travel insurance is one of the most important things to pack for a foreign trip. Even if you don’t mind eating the cost of an interrupted trip or a last minute cancellation, you need the foreign medical and repatriation coverage. Our insurance paid out tens of thousands of dollars, but if we hadn’t been able to fly commercial the number would have been in the hundreds of thousands.

 

Two days after we got home I had an appointment at Central Texas Sports Medicine and Orthopaedics where they verified I did indeed need surgery to repair the ligaments in my ankle. Notice that I had zero broken bones in my ankle, not three as I was told at hospital #1! My Fibula was broken near my knee which nobody was very concerned about because they said it would heal itself (it has).

 

I had “Tight Rope” surgery on August 22, during which they drilled through the Fibula and Tibia and anchored 2 “ropes” to the desired tension to pull everything back in place while my ligaments healed. Jim was very enthusiastic when he read this was the surgery Tua Tagliavoa had when he got hurt in the SEC Championship Game in 2019 and managed to come back and play in the National Championship Game. Alas, I am neither in my 20s nor an elite athlete, so it took me much longer to get back to normal than Tua! Recovery time aside, the nice thing about the surgery I had is I don’t have metal that may one day need to come out, and the tight ropes are supposed to have a better long-term outcome with less chance of osteoarthritis. I have one very small metal “button” to reattach an outside ligament to the bone, and I don’t even set off metal detectors!

 

So that’s it! That’s my Iceland story. I just haven’t felt like writing it until now, 261 days after I slid down a gravelly, damp slope in remote East Iceland. Why today? Well, we’re sitting on a flight waiting to take off from Houston, and we’re headed to Rome for a Mediterranean cruise! I feel like today ends the “ankle injury” chapter of my life story, and so I thought it would be a great time to wrap up my blog that’s been in limbo for the better part of the last eight months.

 

Later today I’ll start my next blog with a happier post. I’ll even tell you about how this trip came to be. Here’s a sneak peek…it involved United and Travel Vouchers, and what we learned about using airline credit!

Monday was a perfect and perfectly relaxing sea day. Unfortunately our perfect and perfectly relaxing sea day was over five months ago, so the details are sketchy! I know our activities involved coffee, food, getting things organized for our two week cruise, meeting on-line friends, tour companions, and dining companions in real life, food, relaxing, food, a show, and sleep.

For dinner on Monday we went to Tamarind. It may be my new favorite specialty restaurant! Everything we had was delicious, and I was happy we planned to eat there again during the cruise.

Tuesday didn’t look too promising at first, but we were in Norway so it was half expected and it wasn’t going to slow us down! We had a late morning arrival, so we took advantage of the open morning to attend a class in the gym (we had purchased an unlimited class pass) and have breakfast in Club Orange before we disembarked. I had the traditional American breakfast and wasn’t impressed (my eggs were overcooked), but Jim’s Full English breakfast was great!

By the time we got to Alesund the weather was perfect! We couldn’t have asked for better…brilliant blue skies, plenty of sunshine, and not too cold! We arrived on time and reported to the theater to disembark for our tour.

We thought the disembarkation system the Nieuw Statendam uses was very modern and efficient. They make announcements, but the whole process is streamlined by the use of a departures board. The only problem we saw was the people who simply refuse to follow directions because they have to be first.

Once our Hjorundfjord Cruise group was called we quickly disembarked and found the excursion boat for a three-hour tour. Thankfully our three-hour tour was better than Gilligan’s! We chose a corner upstairs and we were off to see our first Norwegian fjords.

At first I was disappointed there was so little seating, but honestly it was much easier to see both sides this way. It didn’t take long for us to realize Norway needed to go to the top of the “must go back” list. I’m going to let the pictures from the excursion do the explaining.

Our fjord cruise had originally been scheduled for the afternoon and we learned it was moved to the morning after we boarded the ship. At first we were disappointed, but it ended up working perfectly since the weather in the morning was bright and sunny but it clouded over as we got towards the afternoon.

We grabbed a quick lunch at the restaurant on the pier…it was good but predictably overpriced, and set off to see the town.

Of course, we didn’t have a map and went completely in the wrong direction! We didn’t mind the walk, and we eventually made it to our destination.

It was a great day, but we were ready to go when we returned to the ship. Only one more sea day stood between us and the reason for the trip…Iceland!

I woke up predictably early on Sunday with that excited “we’re going on a cruise today” feeling keeping me from sleep. We finished getting our bags ready for the ship and then went down for one last breakfast at the world’s most amazing buffet.

I had arranged transportation with Pedro Pinduko who I read about on Facebook. We were going to make a leisurely drive to Rotterdam with a stop in Kinderdijk to see the windmills.

I’m so glad I found Pedro and cancelled our other transportation! Our trip to Rotterdam was very enjoyable! Pedro was personable and knowledgeable about the things we were seeing. He took us “off the beaten path” through some delightful towns instead of taking the highway all the way to Kinderdijk.

Kinderdijk was crowded but not unmanageable. We decided not to get admission tickets, and instead we just walked the paths and saw the windmills from the outside. It was a beautiful day, and we actually got hot and had to shed layers!

It was such a pleasant trip to Rotterdam! We plan to use Pedro as a guide the next time we cruise from Rotterdam!

Before we knew it we were in Rotterdam dropping luggage. The port handles checked bags a little differently than others I’ve sailed from. Instead of handing bags over to a porter you line up and they are sent up a conveyor belt directly onto the ship! It was super easy, as was check-in. Everything is done with facial recognition now, so aside from checking passports and taking the ID pictures there really isn’t anything to do. I noticed there is no longer a health questionnaire to complete during boarding. About 10 minutes after we dropped our bags we were walking onto the ship! At last we’re cruising again!

One thing I really appreciate about Holland America is the cabins are ready when you board. We went straight to our room, a Neptune Suite on Deck 7 very close to the lounge. Almost immediately we met our cabin stewards, Mash and Nyomen. They were fantastic — attentive and eager without being intrusive or annoying. As a bonus, they actually brought our luggage with them!

We went down to the Neptune Lounge and met our phenomenal concierge Kristine (more about her later), and decided to go to the Lido for lunch.

Lunch was OK. Nothing special, but we try to avoid the buffet as much as possible and it’s always crowded on the first day. After lunch we made a quick trip to check in at our muster station, we went to the gym to check out the group fitness schedule, and then went back to our cabin to get everything unpacked and put away for two weeks! Part of unpacking was also sending out our first batch of laundry. It’s a great perk of being in a suite, and Holland America does a fantastic job with guest laundry.

We sailed on time at 4:00. It was a beautiful afternoon and we had clear views of Rotterdam and the surrounding area as we left.

We enjoyed dinner in Club Orange the first night of the cruise. We had followed our next door neighbors down to Club Orange and ended up sitting with them at dinner, as well as some other meals during the cruise.

That was it for our first day. I stopped in the casino to make a small deposit, and we were happy to be rocked to sleep on a ship headed for new to us territory!

Saturday was a beautiful day! We spent it walking miles through Amsterdam with our fantastic guide, Marten Koerse. Marten has an incredible knowledge of art and history, and we’re glad we chose him to guide us through the day.

Marten met us in the lobby of our hotel at 9:00, and we set off on a leisurely stroll to the Rijksmuseum.

Marten is a gifted storyteller, and I repeatedly saw us gathering a crowd inside the exhibit areas! I probably should have passed the hat to let those people pay their share of our tour!😂

The Night Watch is currently being restored. It sits behind giant sheets of thick glass which provide soundproofing so the experts working on the painting aren’t startled by noise from the museum guests.

As we were leaving the museum, Marten pointed out a long metal plate in the ceiling of the porte cochere. It is an emergency escape to lower the priceless masterpiece to safety in case of fire.

After we left the museum we made our way over to the Albert Cuyp Market for samplings of some of Marten’s Dutch favorites!

We started at the fish market, although both Jim and I politely declined the Pickled Herring!

By this time we were stuffed and tired, so we decided to head back to our hotel to freshen up before dinner. We were going to take the tram, but unfortunately there was a service interruption due to a large demonstration in Dam Square. Thankfully Marten was able to navigate a different way back using the Metro, and we got back to the hotel about 4:00.

Our day with Marten was exceptional, and we would love to tour with him again when/if we return to Amsterdam.

Dinner Saturday was something new to us…we arranged dinner in a private home using the “Eat With” website (https://www.eatwith.com). What a fantastic experience! We chose an Italian meal in Luca’s canal home, and are so glad we did that instead of going to a restaurant. Luca was a gracious host and an excellent cook. We enjoyed the meal, watching the chef in action, and Luca’s personal story of growing up in southern Italy and how he came to settle in Amsterdam. I highly recommend Eat With to anyone who likes to explore a different culture and get a taste of what life is like for the locals!

We didn’t have much energy left by the time we finished dinner. We knew we still needed to get back to the hotel and get packed up to leave in the morning. We were finally cruising the next day, and we couldn’t wait for 2 weeks on a ship exploring new places!

How often do we hear the words “Never Forget!” after a tragedy, either a man-made terror act or a natural disaster? Sadly, it seems like it’s frequently these days. Inevitably the hurt and shock of an event fade with time, yet I think it’s important to always remember, both to honor those who died as well as learn from the lessons of the past.

The bulk of our day Friday was spent learning about and remembering the Amsterdam Holocaust victims as well as those who tried to save as many as they could through their resistance activities. Amsterdam has a historic Jewish quarter that houses several locations of significance. We visited two of them on Friday — The Resistance Museum and the National Holocaust Museum.

Before the start of WWII Amsterdam had a thriving Jewish population of about 75,000-80,000. Drawn by Amsterdam’s history of religious tolerance, the Jewish population flourished economically and socially. There was never a Jewish ghetto in Amsterdam as in so many other European cities. That all changed virtually overnight with the German occupation in 1940.

I really can’t describe the range of emotions I felt as we toured the museums and other important sites. It’s one thing to read accounts or visit a museum here in the states, but it’s another to walk the halls of the school that was used to smuggle children to safety or the theater that was used as a deportation center.

Both museums were excellent, and extremely thought provoking in different ways. The Holocaust Museum left me wondering how and why such evil could exist, and the Resistance Museum made me question what I would have done. I always thought the answer to what I would have done was simple, but when you read the first hand accounts and learn of the terror of living through the Nazi occupation the answer isn’t that simple. I found the visits left me with a lot of questions with no straightforward answers.

Would I have been willing to risk my life, my home, my loved ones? Jim’s grandmother was a German Jew by heritage, who later married a Catholic and converted. Thankfully she had been born in the US, but if she had been in Germany would she have survived? Would Jim have been murdered because of a Jewish grandparent?

I thought it was a profound and sad sign of our times that entry into the Holocaust Museum was heavily guarded. There was an outdoor bag check, followed by entry into an outer chamber, and finally entry into the building. The safety precautions were brought home on Saturday when several tram stops near our hotel were shut down because of a Palestinian protest in Dam Square. We later learned that is an almost daily occurrence.

I also learned that the few Amsterdam Jews who survived the Holocaust weren’t welcome back with open arms after the war. The ill and traumatized victims returned to a hostile environment to find their homes occupied and their businesses gone. At one point the government even tried to get returning victims to pay back taxes for the time they had been imprisoned!

It is estimated that only 5,000-6,000 Jews returned to Amsterdam from the concentration camps or hiding places. The rest were murdered by the Nazi regime. Never forget.

We knew we would be up unreasonably early on Friday, so we planned to get out and take advantage of the sleeping city on an early morning canal cruise.

Our day started with the hotel’s excellent breakfast buffet. What a spread! I’ve never seen anything like it.

After a quick breakfast we were off to our early morning canal cruise on Captain Dave’s Royal Jonckvrouw. We chose the cruise specifically because it departed at 8:00 and was on a small boat/in a small group. It was perfect for us…relaxing and quiet. We enjoyed sitting outside and being one of a very few boats on the canals.

I’m going to deviate a bit from my normal chronological blog posts today, and skip to lunch and dinner before I fill in the hours in between.

We had lunch at a delightful little cafe in the Jewish Cultural District. It was an adventure because we really weren’t sure what we were getting! I thought my flatbread was close to what I thought I would be served, but Jim’s Louman Meatball with Amsterdam Pickles (they’re actually onions) was a surprise!

Dinner on Friday was a delight! We ate at Restaurant D’Vjiff Vlieghen, or The Five Flies. Thankfully we didn’t see any flies during our meal! The restaurant is the oldest in Amsterdam, and is located in a series of canal houses that date back to the early 1600s. (The street has been filled in, but it was once a canal.)

Walking through the door to the restaurant is taking a step back in time to an era of low ceilings and exposed beams. The building was fascinating and we thought the food and service was excellent.

After many miles, smiles, thoughts, and delicacies we were happy to go back to our hotel and fall into bed!

The ride into Central Amsterdam from Schiphol was relatively fast, and that was a good thing. At that point we were exhausted and dirty/sweaty from travel and two hours in the immigration line. We were hopeful that a room would be available early and we could check-in and catch a quick nap before our 3:00 walking tour.

It wasn’t meant to be. In fact, we heard words one never wants to hear at the end of an overnight flight, “Your room type is oversold.”

Ugh! I couldn’t even think straight to tell the hotel what we wanted to do. We had booked a Junior Suite because it had a separate “living room” and I thought that would be perfect for extra luggage and also a place to sit when one of us (that would be me🙄) couldn’t sleep. We went to lunch in the hotel cafe and took time to discuss our options.

Ultimately we decided a room with extra space was more important to us than an upgrade to a room with a terrace, so that’s what we settled on. The hotel added the amenities we would have gotten with the Junior Suite, and really bent over backwards to make up for the overbooking. Despite the mistake, we loved the hotel and thought the hotel staff was terrific.

We found out our room wouldn’t be ready until later so we retrieved our carry-ons and used the public restrooms to change clothes and freshen up before our afternoon walking tour Amsterdam in World War II.

Our guide was great and we walked all over town, but honestly at that point all I really wanted to do was put my pajamas on and relax. I thought the tour was a good prequel for our plans to visit the Resistance and Holocaust Museums on Friday, but ultimately we ended up cutting our time short so we could go back to the hotel and have some down time.

Back at the hotel we finally got in our room🎉 and ventured out one more time to the local grocery store for a dinner of cheese, meat, crackers, and cold vegetables. We saw some other interesting stores along the way!

The answer is yes, but we came close!

All good things must come to an end, even trips that were over three years in the making. Getting off the ship was uneventful, and Kirk was there to pick us up for our last day of sightseeing before heading to the airport.

I thought touring the last day was a good way to handle our late flight. We knew there was plenty we hadn’t seen, and doing it this way allowed our luggage to stay with us. The other option would have been a day use room at one of the resorts, but we would rather be out exploring so off to the North Shore it was!

We saw so much the last day I’m not sure I remember all of it. Honestly, it was a bit much even for us. We had been going non-stop for 11 days and we were at the point where we really needed some down time. Nevertheless, we weren’t getting any down time until we got on the plane, so off we went!

Our first stop was at Wailua Coffee for — wait for it — coffee (and chocolate)! We had an interesting tour of the facility and saw how the coffee and cacao gets from plant to product. I got excited when Jim bought four bags of chocolate, then I found out they were for him to take into the office!🙄

Our next stop was at Turtle Bay Resort.

Believe it or not it was time to eat (again) so we went to Lei Lei’s on the golf course at the resort. The food was pretty good, but it was super hot and super expensive (for what it was).

After lunch, we were off to the beach, and we got lucky! Not only did we see our second Monk Seal of the trip, it was also the first day the waves were big enough for surfing!

We started slowly working our way back to Honolulu. One of the stops was at the rock arch at Laie Point. The coast here is beautiful, and is a popular spot for filmmakers. Sounds like most of Hawaii!

I have to admit by this time we were both getting tired. Kirk got us as close as we could get to Marine Corps Base Hawaii so I could snap a couple pictures. Remember my nephew the USNA Plebe who was one of the reasons we started planning this trip? He’s graduating and commissioning in May, and he will be a Marine Pilot!

From the Marine Corps base we stopped at Kailua Beach Park, but we didn’t stay long. One thing I saw posted at the beach entrance was this sign, which I thought was a great idea!

Our next stop was at the Byodo-In Buddhist Temple.

Hoʻomaluhia Botanical Garden

The road to Honolulu (H-3) and the airport was fantastic, especially in Kirk’s great car. The highway is cut through the mountains and a tunnel takes you from one climate to another (wet to dry). This isn’t my picture, but it gives you a great idea of what the road is like.

Before we knew it we were back in Honolulu at the airport.😢 It seemed hard to believe that after all the waiting and planning it was over in a flash!

We packed a lot into our time, and think we saw as much of Hawaii as it’s possible to see in the time we had. We were on the go almost every minute — just how we like it!

We were thankful for the United Club as a place to wait for the flight. It had comfortable seating, TVs showing college football, and most importantly, bathrooms big enough and clean enough to change our clothes and clean up before the long flight.

Fortunately we had an equipment change for the flight home. Ordinarily I would have been annoyed, but not this time! Hallelujah, we were put on an updated plane with pods! I moved us both to window pods which meant we weren’t sitting together but we really didn’t care. We don’t talk much on planes anyway, and our objective on the red-eye flight was to sleep!

We were about an hour late leaving, but had a nice clear view of Honolulu as we ascended.

The flight was uneventful, and after an unmemorable dinner of some kind of Panko crusted chicken I managed to sleep for about 3 hours. When I woke up people were already stirring getting ready for breakfast and our arrival in Houston.

We had a great trip…it was worth the wait! Almost everything went according to plan, and all but one excursion was everything we hoped for and more. It’s always nice when things you chose from reading reviews and looking at pictures end up meeting or exceeding expectations!

That said, I’m not sure we would go back. We saw almost everything we wanted to see, and (just my opinion) there are a lot of other places we want to go before we would return to Hawaii.

Next up? Commissioning Week in Annapolis with my whole family. Planning is underway and I can’t wait!

Much like Thursday, on Friday we were blessed with (mostly) cooperative weather for some flight-seeing and some cruise-seeing!

We chose a flight with Wings Over Kauai for a Friday morning excursion. https://www.wingsoverkauai.com/ Wings Over Kauai was another tour provider we had been booked with several times in the years it took for us to finally get to go on this cruise. I found them exceptionally easy to work with, understanding about cancellations, and committed to keeping prices reasonable. The only change from our first booking in April of 2020 to our flight on October 7, 2022 was that Wings Over Kauai wasn’t able to provide transportation to and from the airport as they had in the past. That wasn’t a problem, and the added expense was minimal in the whole scheme of things. We took a taxi from the port in the morning, and used Uber to get back to the ship. Easy!

If you’re even thinking about a flight tour, I highly recommend Kauai and this company. The sights are simply breathtaking, and Wings Over Kauai provided an excellent flight. The experience is a little different than a helicopter tour in that the plane does fly a bit higher, but I didn’t feel like I missed out on anything in the plane (I’ve done a helicopter tour before). The tour we chose (Air Van) has the advantage of being considerably less expensive than a helicopter, and everyone gets a window in the Air Van! Wings Over Kauai makes a recording of each flight using a GoPro strapped to the wing strut. The video is narrated and set to music — well worth the extra $50 we paid for a copy.

Words can’t do this excursion justice! I’m not sure pictures can either, but I’m going to let them do the talking. Most of the pictures are mine, but I did include a few screenshots from the video where my pictures had too much reflection from the window.

The colors were absolutely stunning…the bluest blues and the greenest greens. I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

We were back at the ship in time for a relaxing lunch followed by plenty of time for me to pack😢 as we cruised to the NaPali coast. When we left the weather was still decent, but we could see rain in the mountains and I began mentally preparing myself for a rainy sail-by of the Napali coast.

Sure enough, it got foggy and started misting not long after we left port. On the bright side, that meant packing was faster because I wasn’t distracted by what I was missing on the balcony.

We rounded the northeast point of the island about 5:00, and at first it didn’t look too promising.

There were patches of blue, but mostly low clouds.

We decided to go downstairs and get our picture taken with the rugged coast in the background. We had waited three years for this, and I was determined to get a Christmas card picture for my persistence!

There was more and more sun peeking through so we went back up to our balcony to enjoy the show! The views just got better and better — sun and clouds, interesting shadows, the setting sun glowing orange-yellow on the rocks, and finally an intense, magnificent sunset.

The sun was setting quickly, and just as we turned to head back to Honolulu Mother Nature put on a display.

Kauai was the island that most intrigued me when I was planning our trip. I knew the least about it, and the pictures I saw were stunning. Kauai seemed to have it all — cliffs, beaches, mountains, a canyon, and a blowhole!

I booked with Noah’s Ark Kauai—https://www.noahsarkkauai.com/#tours—for our cancelled trip in 2020, and never wavered from my plan to spend our first day in Kauai touring with Noah. We anticipated a fun day going to the mountains (mauka) and towards the sea (makai).

I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me back up a couple days. On Monday afternoon when we got back to the ship from our excursion to Haleakala, I had an urgent e-mail from Noah. He had just tested positive for Covid and had to cancel our tour on Thursday.😢

This was bad news for many reasons! Most importantly, I hated that Noah had gotten sick. I hated that Covid was impacting a trip that had been cancelled and postponed so many times. I hated that my “best laid plans” had to be scrapped. Finally, I was worried because I felt responsible for salvaging not just our plans…we had several others from our Facebook group joining us on the tour.

Thankfully when I got the e-mail I had most of the afternoon to spare before we sailed. I called every recommendation Noah had made in his e-mail, and of course nobody had availability on such short notice. I asked everyone I called for recommendations and then called those people. None of them had availability either. I was starting to panic when I reached out to the ship concierge and got a name and number. Several phone calls back and forth with Casey and we had a reservation to tour Kauai on Thursday. Phew!

Do I think our day was the same experience we would have had with Noah? Unfortunately, the answer is definitely not. Noah is a guide, and we anticipated a day filled with stories, planned stops/activities, a lunch break, and being entertained by Noah on his ukulele. What we got was a driver who was very nice and knowledgeable about the island. Casey took us everywhere we wanted to go, but lacked the polish and professionalism of a true guide. That said, we had a pleasant day and we saw a lot. Casey threw in some nice touches and put his personal stamp on our day.

For the most part I’m going to let the pictures do the talking. We were very lucky, and our weather was picture perfect as you will see.

We went searching for turtles in Poipu. They were out there, but it was virtually impossible to get a picture at our first stop.

I finally saw Hawaiian Sea Turtles soaking up the sun at Poipu Beach Park!

After we saw the turtles I thought it would be a good idea to get a picture of me and Jim in our beach attire!😂😂😂

When we left Poipu Beach we went to Spouting Horn, a fabulous blowhole. It was mesmerizing…I could have watched it for hours!

On the way to Waimea Canyon we stopped in a small town — I think it was Hanapepe — and walked around for a while. This was where I think it would have been helpful to have a guide to plan a place to stop for lunch, make suggestions, and set some times to keep us on track. We got to see a lot of things, but I didn’t feel like there was any real plan or itinerary for the day.

Waimea Canyon lived up to its reputation! One nice thing Casey did was take us off the beaten path to see the canyon instead of going to the very crowded visitor’s center.

It was a pretty long drive back to Lihue from Waimea Canyon, and we made two more stops before we went back to the ship.

The first was at the Koa Store in Lihue. https://thekoastore.com

They carry a great assortment of handcrafted Koa wood products made by local artisans. We are in the habit of bringing home one nice souvenir from each trip and we look for something that represents the local culture. I rule out things that are mass-produced, stamped “Made in China,” or that I could pick up on Amazon. I know those criteria don’t always guarantee authenticity, but I think they improve my chances!

After our stop at the Koa Store we went over to Wailua Falls. I’m only going to share one picture of the falls now, because I got MUCH better pictures on Friday.

We were tired when we returned to the ship, but our day wasn’t over! We walked to Duke’s for dinner. It was delicious and a nice change of pace.

I can’t remember what we had for dinner, but our drinks were fantastic! I had a Lava Flow…

…and Jim had a Mai Tai!

Of course, no meal at Duke’s is complete without a “slice” of Hula Pie! The dessert was delicious and enormous! We were both pretty full by the time we left.

We had seen about as much of Kauai as we could pack into a single day and were excited about seeing it from two different perspectives on Friday!