I was awakened on the morning that we arrived in Maui with the oh so soothing (not) sound of the little “Tender” boats being lowered down into the water.  As y’all know, our room was situated toward the aft of the ship, port side, and they chose to lower the Tenders right under our room down to be utilized to transport folks to shore.  Of course, I didn’t mind being woken up, after all, we were in Maui!  I will admit though, a wave of sadness came over me for a few minutes when I remembered that we were at our last port of call.  I wasn’t going to think about that right then though, I’d think about that tomorrow when we were bob-bob-bobbing along heading back to Vancouver. That morning, I needed to get up and get ready for our day. 🙂

The stupid saga of my feet continues, grrrrr, we again had to cancel a day long excursion that we had had planned because my feet just weren’t recovering very well, stupid feet!

Honestly, we didn’t mind too, too much.  Taking a little ride on a Tender boat, walking around town, shopping a bit, and having a nice lunch by the sea sounded really pretty perfect to us–we had been go-go-going for the last 3 days. We were content to have a bit of a more relaxing day planned. 🙂

***(BTW–My feet recovered completely after this day because the hubby pretty much wouldn’t let me stand, propped my feet up on a chair, and made me drink a copious amount of water for our 1st day back ‘at sea’..AND that did the trick, I haven’t had a problem since…thank goodness)***

Okay, so my outfit for the day…

Yes, I did wear those flip-flops, the next best thing to those pretty pink shoes. 🙂

And here is the Princess Patter for that day:

In the Patter there were instructions as to how one was to go about disembarking, we simply needed to head down to the Capri Dining room when we were ready to leave the ship, they’d give us a “Tender Ticket”, and we’d wait for our number to be called.  All in all, it was a very smooth operation–not surprising because Princess has this stuff down pat.  So off to the Capri Dining room we trekked…

And we were handed our Tender Ticket:

And then we sat down to wait:

It wasn’t long before our number was called (about 30 minutes), we were directed to go down a couple of decks (via stairs of course) to where we’d be loaded onto our sweet little **rocking** Tender boat…We saw this on our way:

Here the pictures will stop for a few minutes…That little Tender was rocking and rolling let me tell you…LOL…I took a look at it and then I looked at my hubby and grabbed onto him for dear life. It was going to be interesting getting ole “not so steady on her swollen, fat feet, bad knees, Arlynn” onto that ever moving Tender boat…

But, by the grace of all that is holy and with the help of the hubby and every Princess person’s hand that I could grab, I managed to step right onto that Tender.  It was then that I saw the hubby climbing the LADDER to go up onto the top deck…OH JOY JOY…Okay, I was determined and I managed to climb right up (slowly) and pretty much fell right onto the little bench seat and proceeded to slide my rear to where it needed to sit. Whew, that was a little harrowing, but, dag nab it, I did IT!! Woohoo!!!

It was a lovely little ride to shore, and because I had managed to haul my ever so cumbersome self up that ladder, my vantage point was awesome.  My favorite part was being able to see the Star Princess from the outside up close!

The view heading to shore was nothing to sneeze at either….

It was much less wavy when we pulled into the dock and I was able to climb right on off of that Tender with ease…The first thing that happened was that my hubby bought me a beautiful Lei…OMGosh, it smelled delightful!! AND the lady who made the Lei sweetly gave me a flower for my hair…BUT, it blew away within about 10 seconds of it being seeded not so securely into my hair (she had secured the flower onto a toothpick…now how in the world was I supposed to stick that in my hair and have it stay put with the gale force winds that were warmly blowing)? **Just asking…Silly of me I know…*** 😉 ANYway, here is that pretty Lei:

Windy?  Yeppers, VERY windy! lol…

The hubby and I set off to do a bit of exploring and shopping, really nothing too astronomically interesting to tell you about that.  We did see this school sign, it made me think of our daughter the teacher whose attitude is this almost every day of her life. 🙂

We were successful at buying some gifts for our girls on this day, we found some Vans shoes for a pretty decent price and they were really cute! We got the cupcake ones for one of our daughters…

And these spiffy tropical ones for the other daughter:

We also got each girl some pretty jewelry a necklace for one and earrings and a bracelet for the other. 🙂 My hubby treated me to some pretty jewelry too, he got me this pretty Plumeria flower necklace:

And then this necklace, earrings, and bracelet; a white plumeria flower just like the pink one up there…

After we had shopped for a little while, we stopped into a lovely, open and airy restaurant named Koa’s.  It sat right on the ocean and upon entering, we, of course, climbed the ***stairs*** to the top outdoor deck.  By this point, ***stairs*** and I were ‘one’. 😉

Here is the Menu for Koa’s:

And this was my lunch…OH goodness was it good, fattening yes, but delicious!  That pasta salad was to die for!

This was our view in one direction…

And check out what was over my head in the background …I actually moved to the other side of the table after I took this silly selfie so that I could look out over the water…

After lunch, we started to head back toward where we would catch the Tender boat that would take us back to the Star…I clicked off a few pictures along the way…

Check out these two ladies…I would have LOVED to do that, but there was a line…Next time!

AND the gorgeous palm trees, blue sky, and puffy white clouds…Exactly how I’ve always pictured Hawaii…

Getting a Tender ride back to the ship was as easy as could be, we just walked right up and climbed on (literally, because we climbed to the upper deck again…haha…BUT, I was able to take this little video—Well part of the video is of them lowering the Tender down in the morning, but then the rest of it is of our little ride back…

I’m such a goober, I was taking selfies right and left, but, how many times are you sitting on a Tender boat with a HUGE cruise ship in the background?

We were back to the ship…AND maneuvering OFF of that Tender was NO easier than the harrowing trip was ONTO the Tender…LOL…I’m lucky I’m alive to tell the tale…<~~~ Just kidding of course, but, it was really rocky and I again grabbed onto my hubby, any available Princess person, strangers, poles, the roof of the Tender… once I got DOWN the devil ladder, and well, I’m betting y’all can picture it. 😉  I was happy to have my feet back on that solid ship <~~~ Uh huh, that made good sense…LOL…Relative to the Tender, that big ship was like the Rock of Gibraltar! 😉

The rest of the day/evening was spent r-e-l-a-x-i-n-g and hanging out on our balcony watching the Tenders come and go—Scintillating entertainment huh?  Well, maybe not, but, we were happy to just sit and bask in the sunlight that Maui was providing on this gorgeous day in April 2016.

Here is the last Tender returning to the ship:

The sun went down over the western sky and our Hawaiian Islands experience had come to a conclusion.  The cruise was far from over, but, we had seen all we were going to see of the Islands…Kinda sad really, but, I do feel as if we will return again…Lord willing anyway. 🙂  Many thanks to the gorgeous Hilo and her waterfalls, to Honolulu for allowing us to pay our respects to all of our brave, fallen soldiers, to Kauai for her beautiful crater and gorgeous views, and to Maui for finishing off our experience with a calm, very sweet, warm, sunny day.  Hawaii will never be forgotten and we will hold all of the memories that we made while visiting her close to our hearts and ever in our minds.  ❤

I’m not quite done with this blog series yet…Next up, I’ll take you on a tour of the Star Princess–Via pictures of course.  I’ll show you how we enjoyed “The Crab Shack” & “The Crown Grill”, and..wait for it…THE LAUNDRY ROOM  <~~~ exciting stuff! 😉 I’ll also share with you some of the gifts that I brought home for my family, among other things I’m sure. 🙂  Then in my last entry in this series, I will give you a short synopsis of my all-over thoughts about this cruise.

Here is a sneak peek at the tour and link:

Hawaiian Cruise: Picture Tour of the Star Princess

Until next time, y’all take good care! ❤

~Arlynn ❤

***One more thing. 🙂  Here is a video that I created of our day in Maui after I had finished writing my Hawaii Blog—I also have a YouTube Travel Channel (Arlynn’s Travels):