02.26.2020 Kauai

Hello all,

Our cabin stewards name is Tsvetomir, but he told us to call him Steward.  Maybe he has some experience as to how we pronounce his name. 

Princess ships have started using what they call Medallion internet and it is really fast.  As fast as at home.  John has unlimited internet on his phone and that is sooo nice.  Colleen has 250 minutes of internet and that is plenty for the small things that need to be done on the laptop.  For example: this blog post.

Reminiscing about our first cruise post-transplant in 2016.  We were nervous and had made a deal with the cardiac team that we would eat in our stateroom rather than the dining room for safety reasons.  Colleen contacted Princess who contacted the ship with our request.  A woman named Sandra that was the head of Food and Beverages emailed us all of the dining room menus so that we could have regular meals, not just room service meals.  It worked and they would even bring in a tablecloth to cover our tiny table for our meals.  We were treated so well.  On that trip we met Sandra at a ship function and spent a good amount of time with her.  We talked about the transplant with her and her co-worker Yolanda.  Well, yesterday we were at the Most Traveled Passenger luncheon again and Sandra was there, but at a different table.  At the end of the meal, she came over to our table at our request.  It was sweet.  She remembered it all and got quite emotional remembering it.  As did we!  She was so happy that John is doing well.

We had planned, John had planned, that we would walk into Lihue town today.  6,500 people and 1.5 miles according to GPS, so we started out on foot.  There was a little shopping area not too far from the ship.  There was a nice sidewalk leading to it.  We walked through a huge Marriott Hotel property along the way.  Basically, we walked through it three times.  We asked for directions to Lihue, and were discouraged from the walk.  “It’s too long to walk.”  “It’s too dangerous, I wouldn’t walk it.”  “There are no sidewalks”.  Yup, all were true, so we walked back to the ship and took a shuttle to Hilo Hattie’s, a shop on all of the Hawaiian Islands.  There was a great shirt on the wall, a size 200 XL Hawaiian shirt.   The shuttle driver did give us a tour of the downtown area on the way back.  Showed us the Texaco station and the bank which concluded the downtown tour.  Seriously.  Well, the was a Walmart a bit in the other direction.

Chickens are everywhere on Kauai: they are protected here.  You can be fined for killing one on the highway.  True free-range chickens, and they are everywhere.

Honolulu tomorrow.

Colleen and John