SO HOW WAS OUR CRUISE ON THE PRIDE OF AMERICA?

 We returned yesterday to Honolulu after one week on the Norwegian Pride of America.  Departing Kauai.

A Liberty dinner with Abraham Lincoln.

The best wine on this cruise was Conundrum.

Dinner.

Goodbye Abe.

Saturday morning, arrival in Honolulu.

A rainbow greeted us.

Before departing the ship, had our first breakfast.

All in all it was worth the money and enjoyable.  On the other hand, there were issues that make me want to say I won't again board this ship until certain improvements occur.  For one, the WiFi was terrible.  When we asked a staff member, they uniformly said all is fine.  But I guess that this what they are told to say in that nothing was wrong because this is the way it is on this ship.  It typically took me several minutes to download a photo when it should have been two seconds.  What made it worse was that we not that long ago returned on a 53-day cruise on the Seabourn Odyssey, and in the most remote portions of the South Pacific, the worst it got was the best that the Pride of American had to offer.

The Pride of America first sailed in 2005, and began the Hawaiian inter-island itinerary that year.  It is the ONLY large-scale cruise ship in the world that can legally sail this route because of some congressional action.  The crew has to be 60% Americans.  For that reason, the cost of running this ship is higher.  It also seemed that other cruise lines, with mostly foreign staffing, were friendlier.  More:

Norwegian Cruise Line runs a U.S.-flagged ship — Pride of America — which sails around the Hawaiian Islands round-trip from Honolulu. When this ship (which was only partially built in the United States) launched in 2005, it was the first cruise ship in 50 years to fly the American flag while sailing on an ocean — and the only to sail Hawaii cruises without visiting a non-U.S. port.

A few more observations:

• There was only one scotch, Dewar's White Label, available within our $15/drink max package.  Normally costs $25/bottle in a liquor store.  Sure you could ask for Glenmorangie, but had to pay $5 more, or $10 extra for Glenfiddich and Chivas Regal.  However, various bars kept running out of Dewar's.
• The luau Hawaiian dinner offered was an embarrassment.  After all these years, you would have thought they would have nailed this assortment by now.
• A particularly egregious omission is that the best part of the trip, the Friday cruise from port to the other side of Kauai, was skipped.  Here is a typical scene from our cruise last year.
• I would guess most of the passengers were American, and many of them were too fat, morbidly so.

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  On the plus side:
• The weather was Hawaiian beautiful throughout the week.
• The food was good, particularly the escargot and Steak Rossini, with that large piece of foie gras.  But no caviar.
• For tourists unfamiliar with Hawaii, this is a good way to see all the islands in one week.

Even if improvements were made to the PoA only a couple of years ago, it would be nice if Norwegian replaces the PoA with a Prima class ship, shown above. Holds 3250 passengers, versus 2186 on the PoA.  Certainly, the WiFi interface equipment would not be 20 years old.

Since WiFi was such a pain, here is a summary of what all cruise lines offer:

• Azamara
• Carnival Cruise Line
• Celebrity Cruises
• Crystal Cruises
• Cunard Line
• Disney Cruise Line
• Holland America Line
• MSC Cruises
• Norwegian Cruise Line
• Oceania Cruises
• Princess Cruises
• Regent Seven Seas Cruises
• Royal Caribbean International
• Seabourn Cruise Line
• Silversea Cruises
• Viking Ocean Cruises
• Windstar Cruises

Might add that Coco Grauff won her first tennis major by beating Aryana Sabalenka, who will some time next week be named the top-ranked player in the world this year.  Why?  Because this ranking based on a 52-week cumulative period.

To close, you can watch greenish Comet Nishimura tomorrow morning.  It will come as close as 78 million miles of Earth.  The Moon is 239 million miles away.  Nishimura is moving along at 240,000 MPH, and was only discovered a month ago by Hideo Nishimura, an amateur Japanese astronomer.  

It should be observable with binoculars just before sunrise.  The comet will also be briefly viewable in the evening sky in mid September, maybe even with the naked eye.  In any case, this will be your last chance, for Nishimura will not return for another 400 years.

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