We normally got up around 8:00AM, so we were able to stand at the rail and watch the island of Maui appear.  As usual, it was a beautiful, sunny day.

We saw many of these kite-surfers all around the Hawaiian Islands.  Lahaina Harbor had a few, with their colorful kites.

The Crystal Symphony had to anchor out at Lahaina, since there is no cruise-ship dock there.  Here’s a picture of the ship, taken from the window of the ship’s tender that ferried passengers back and forth all day, about every 30 minutes.

When we arrived at the dock in Lahaina, we were greeted by the cutest trio of ladies, doing their hula dance to the music of a small band.  They were just throughly delightful.

Aren’t they just precious?  That was the best welcome we could have asked for.

We discovered, to our surprise and delight, that there was an amateur surfing competition going on close to the dock, so we stood with the rest of the spectators and watched the kids go out with their surfboards to compete.  We saw 10-year-old boys, and girls in their competition.  They were marvelous!

After we watched the kids surfing, we took off down the streets to explore the town of Lahaina.  There is a nice city park a short walk from the dock, where we saw a bunch of the big banyan trees that seem to populate most of the Hawaiian islands.  These were especially large, with multiple trunks. It’s too bad the locals can’t keep from carving their initials everywhere they can reach.

Hubby took this one of me, for scale.

Next, it was a walk down Front Street, to find a place to have lunch.  And, boy, did we find a place!  We came upon Mick Fleetwood’s on Front, owned by the rock-and-roll icon, and decided to have lunch there.  We were seated on the upper level, where we had a nice view of the ocean.

Now, for all you environmentalists out there, we here in the Seattle area are in the thick of the “plastic-straw-ban” movement.  Well, Hawaii is ahead of us!  See what we drank our lunch libations with?

How about those nice, colorful paper straws!  Very festive.  And the best was yet to come.  Fleetwood’s has live music, and there was a band playing for our lunch, and another hula dancer.  Very nice lunchtime entertainment.

After lunch, we putzed around downtown Lahaina, and of course I took more pictures.

Across the bay from Lahaina is the island of Lanai, and multiple boats advertised day trips there.

Too soon, it was time to leave for our next stop, the Big Island of Hawaii.  But on the way, we were treated to more beautiful scenery.  In the picture below, that flat area is a big solar farm, situated on the other side of Maui.  I guess you’d expect a tropical island to take advantage of their natural benefits.

Maui is described as the Valley Island, and you can really see that here.

So it was on to the next stop, Hawaii.  Most of the journey was done at night while we slept, and we regretted not being able to see the journey.  But Nature and the ship’s Captain had some interesting experiences in store for us.