The Royal Princess, christened by the then HRH Duches of Cambridge, now HRH Princess Katherine of Wales. 3600 passengers could be dumped onto the streets of little Kona. Good day to stay at the pool!

And the next day, we saw 4 whales traveling together, surfacing and diving together in the area between where this shop is moored and our pool area! I love watching the whales!

Well, while we are enjoying the sun in Hawaii, we are planning 2024 travel! Just a quick preview.

We have a couple Viking cruises in March and April, planned while we were in Antarctica…. we are going to see the northern lights in March and possibly making a pre cruise stop in Iceland. Then we fly to Portugal for the Duoro River trip and seeing the country and maybe northern Spain.

Today we added 2 singing tours with our Chorale, Washington DC on the 4th of July weekend to sing at Kennedy Center. In October s we are singing at Ryman Center in Nashville with some sightseeing and family visits while we are there.

We also added another week in Kauai in 2024, now 2 weeks at the point at Poipu before we return to Kona and our favorite there, the Royal Sea Cliff for another stay of we hope at least 3 weeks!
Retirement is good!

Jen And Steve McCloskey

Henry Ratz

We visited a Vanilleria today.  The daughter of our new friends,  Jen and Steve, works her cultivating,  pollinating,  propagating, harvesting and marketing vanilla! 

We visited the Kona coast church, on the lawn behind the Kona Inn today. They have met here for 40 years. The original Pastor was back preaching today.

We visited the Salt water pool, a remnant from an old hotel destroyed by a hurricane years ago. When the waves are big, the kids love to stand on its outer wall and be knocked into the pool by the waves. Great place to watch the sunset too! We enjoyed visiting with new friends Jen and Steve.

The volcano Hualālai is directly to the east of Kona and as the sun rises over it, it illuminates the clouds over the ocean to our west and reflects on the sea this golden color. The birds wake us up as the sun rises. Most days we don’t miss we sunrise or Sunset!