Now into our 60's we are looking to complete as many long distance cruise locations as possible before we get too old, we chose the Tahitian Princess Honolulu to Tahiti cruise as it ticked two places which we had never visited before. It was also a very different type of ship from our recent cruises which were on Panamax size ships.

We had booked Princess air and were a bit apprehensive about the short, 75 minute, changeover at Newark. Fortunately our flight from Manchester UK arrived on time and we managed to clear immigration, customs and security with about 15 minutes to spare. We flew with Continental and, for economy, the legroom was very good, and home to Hotel was achieved in 23 hours which, for a total of 18 hours flying time in today's security conscious world, was not too bad. The return was not so good, Princess routed us Papeete (11:30pm 29th June), LA, Heathrow and finally to Manchester (6:30pm 1st July). To add to the misery our luggage missed the Manchester flight, despite a 5 hour wait in Heathrow, and did not turn up until three days later. We had paid the £99pp extra to fly from Manchester and although happy with the outgoing flights we would have been much happier to have our return international flight terminate at Manchester; but Princess seem to enjoy routing us through the Heathrow hell hole.

Our pre-cruise 2 nighter was at the Royal Hawaiian, a luxurious haven right on the beach at Waikiki, and the following morning sitting on the terrace for breakfast with only a small fence between us and the beach made the long flight seem very worthwhile. We found Waikiki to be a delightful resort, nothing at all like the Blackpool, with tropical heat, which I had worried it might resemble. Pearl harbour and the Arizona memorial is an obvious place to visit and remind ourselves of what total World war is like, along with the National War Cemetery of the Pacific in Punchbowl crater. Dukes for dinner and then breakfast the following morning was a less sombre, and very enjoyable experience. Read more