Day 27 - At Sea Coffee Chat The Knights were the “Coffee Chat” guests this morning. Simon is the leader of the group which he created as a concept back when he was a cast performer on a cruise ship a few years back. There are now 6 Knights, including 3 women. The...
Day 26, January 30th - At Sea Crossing the dateline Early this morning we crossed the International Date Line. We skipped January 29th and advanced all clocks 24 hours. During the World Cruise we will cross 24 time zones. Since we travel westbound that means that...
Day 25, – Alofi, Niue Planning for a port visit Niue is an island that isn’t visited very often by cruise ships and there isn’t a lot of tourist infrastructure. This is the only port of the entire cruise where HAL didn’t offer a single shore excursion. When planning...
Day 24 – At Sea - 27 January Sea Day Another sea day was welcome after our long day ashore yesterday. Coffee Chat I went down to the Explorer’s lounge around 9 AM to watch Hyperion Knight practice before his interview with Hamish at the 9:30 Coffee Chat. One of the...
Day 23 - Cook Island When the Captain came across the public-address system this morning, I fully expected him to announce that we would be skipping Cook Island due to the current sea state. However, I was pleasantly surprised when he explained that he would be...
Day 22 - At Sea It was nice to have a sea day after 4 straight port days. This was the longest stretch of port days for the entire cruise. For the remainder of the cruise, our longest stretch will be 3 in a row. If you have any inkling that you may be bored on sea...
Day 21, Bora Bora Bora-Bora is our final port of our four day stretch. We are scheduled to arrive at 8 AM and not depart until 10:30 PM. I never did understand why we were staying so late as there weren’t any evening tours and there wasn’t any nightlife that I was...
Mooera Today was day three of our four consecutive port days, and this will be another tender port, which requires us to get a tender ticket. I had arranged for a rental car from Albert Transport Tours. They would meet us at 9 AM at the tender landing. When I made...
Papeete The Amsterdam arrived in Papeete, Tahiti around 7 AM. We took advantage of our extended port visiting hours to sleep-in and relax in our cabin. The ship will remain overnight and leave for Moorea at 4:30 AM tomorrow. It was nice to be tied up to a pier,...
Rangiroa We arrived at Avatoru, Rangiroa, French Polynesia around 7 AM. Rangiroa is one of the largest atolls in the world stretching over 50 miles and comprised of over 400 smaller islands, only two of which are inhabited. To get to the protected interior our ship...