• Day 5: Let the Cruising Begin!

    CathyOur ship would be setting sail later in the evening, so we still had a few last moments to explore Hong Kong.

    Lissa We split up—you and Kara went to Stanley Market—

    CathyYeah, where you could buy anything from T-shirts to—

    Lissa Souvenirs—

    CathyDefinitely a tourist trap, let’s put it that way!

    Lissa You guys had to do what everybody does, buy the Chinese hats! You had to get into character.

    CathyWhen in Rome…

    Lissa Do as the tourists do!


    CathyI don’t know who was the first to find those hats, but Keri tried it on, and guess what, it even fit Darrell!

    So while the rest of us were at Stanley Market, Lissa went along with my parents—

    Lissa To the Aberdeen. The famous floating restaurant. Kara had told me what a great dim sum lunch this was, so I was looking forward to eating some good Hong Kong dim sum!

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    So we take a cab to the Aberdeen and ride a little sampan to the floating restaurant. And of course, since I wanted to go there, I ordered all the food.

    CathyYou always picked the food!

    Lissa That’s because you guys don’t know how to order. Oh my gosh, that was a great dim sum lunch—even your mom loved it! What’s different is they don’t have the carts coming around, you have to order it off the menu. And unlike the States, they serve it 24/7.

     

    I don’t even know how to pronounce some of these things because they don’t have the same names as in Hawaii, except for the char siu bao. And it was well worth eating! I was worried we wouldn’t be able to finish it, but we did justice and we ate every single thing. There was no leftover.

    CathyOK. I don’t want to hear about the food you had that I didn’t. We were going to set sail at 5:00 that evening. Before we set sail we had to muster. What does muster mean?

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    So basically mustering means we had to grab our life jackets (they even had pint-sized ones for the kids) and we all had to meet out at a certain station close by our assigned lifeboat and do a drill. Somehow our silly group even managed to make that time fun! Then we had to whip off those life vests and get dressed for dinner, because we would be setting sail shortly, and we decided to all meet up at the The Palm Court.

    The Palm Court’s at the back of the ship so we could have our last view of Hong Kong as we sailed away. Lissa, do you remember? One of the traditions of Crystal is whenever they set sail from port, they play Louis Armstrong’s What a Wonderful World. And now, whenever I hear that song on the radio, it just brings back good memories of different places around the world that I’ve enjoyed vacations with my family. It’s such an appropriate song.

    They played that song, they had cocktails—

    Lissa The girls had a great time dancing!

    CathyIt was so cute, the girls went up to the dads and said may I have this dance? Somehow they can turn us wives down when we want to go dancing, but they couldn’t turn down their girls! So they gave them a twirl on the dance floor as Louis Armstrong crooned away—very sweet way to set sail.

    Next: The fabulous facets of Crystal—and Konnichiwa Japan!