Dining Room Turns Into Lesson in Culture and History

Last year, I had the pleasure and opportunity to take a lovely 7 day Scrapmap Scrapbooking cruise with Lisa Bearnson around the Hawaiian Islands with some of my friends. It was the first time I had ever gone on vacation without my husband. Granted, I traveled quite a lot in my former life/career, but nothing like this. No business meetings. No contract negotiations to be concerned with. The only things on my to do list was meet Lisa, absorb as much of her creativity as I could, not get sea sick, and oh, yes, have fun.

This post is not entirely about the cruise itself, rather the beautiful murals in the main dining room aboard the Norwegian Cruise Ship Pride of America.

I found these murals quite mesmerizing. Each one was approximately 12' x 8' in size. There colors so brilliant. The stokes of the brush invisible to the eye at first but upon closer inspection so delicate.

The Hawaiian Islands remained unknown to Europeans until he late 1700s. For nearly a decade, Englishman James Cook had systematically traversed and recorded much of the Southern Hemisphere attempting to find a sea passage between the Atlantic and Pacific oceans. On his third voyage, Cook's ships — the HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery — spent almost a year in the South Pacific before sailing northward via a previously uncharted route. On January 18, 1778, the expedition sighted the westernmost three landforms (O'ahu, Kaua'i, and Ni'ihau) of the volcanic chain known today as the Hawaiian Islands.

The people of Hawaii are warm and friendly. I have been lucky to visit the Islands three times and never once have I met a Hawaiian who was genuine at heart. It's in this mural that I see the character of Hawaii.

We can all be grateful to William McKinley who in signed the Newlands Resolution which provided for the official annexation of Hawaiʻi on July 7, 1898 making the islands officially became territory of the United States on February 22, 1900.Now, there have been five King Kamehamehas and I wish I knew who was depicted in this mural, but I couldn't reference this. What I do love about this mural is the warmth that exudes from it. The Hawaiian people are very spiritual people, who love the land but more importantly, respect it immensely.

As I think back upon this cruise, I realized that I didn't dine in this room very often, perhaps once. Had it not been for the class held by ScrapMap, I may have missed it all together which would have been upsetting.

The thought that ran through my mind as I snapped these murals was to create a quilt like layout via stiching, digitally, the photos together. I'll just put it on my to do list!