We are now well into our next cruise. The day after being in Naples, we went back to our home port in Civitavecchia, and got a fresh batch of passengers for our 11 day Southern mediterranean christmas and new years cruise.  The next two days were sea days, and all of our shows were fun because there are 1000 more passengers on board for this cruise than there was for the last one, bringing the total amount of people on board to 4000 - 1200 crew, and 2800 passengers. It has been hectic but fun, with a lot more people of every age group on board.

On christmas eve we played some jazz christmas arrangements in the atrium at one in the afternoon, and then our usual dixieland jazz set at 9:45pm.
Yesterday was christmas, and most of the day was spent learning and preparing for the christmas show. we worked on in from 10-2:30, then had a break until 5:30. During that time I went out and explored Alanya, Turkey, where we were in port. So far, Alanya is without a doubt the most scenic and beautiful port on this itinerary. It has everything you could want from a mediterranean coastal town - lush palm trees and long beaches, large forested hills surrounding the harbour area, sidewalks filled with patios, lots of shopping, and some spectacular ancient architecture. Alanya was apparently a historically strategic location that was held by many different empires, and half of it is lined with castle walls, guarding a castle on the hill. I walked around for nearly two hours, first in the town area and then up the hill with the walls and the castle, where I took many photos of the amazing view. It was especially nice because it was the warmest day since I have been on the ship, around 18 C, plenty warm for shorts and a t-shirt, and so it was good to take in some sunshine.

That evening we played the christmas show at 7:30 and 9:30, and I was quite pleased with it. It had a nice variety of classic and popular material, and even a segment in the middle where several different carols were sung in the different languages of the passengers on board - spanish, italian, french, and german. After the show was over around 11pm, I skyped home, where it was still just lunchtime. I then went and tried to be somewhat social, but was exhausted from the day and not having slept well the night before and called it a (relatively) early night.

This morning I got excused form a boat drill because we and the cast played two numbers from the christmas show for the captain's meeting, a meeting that happens every so often when the captain addresses the crew and talks about various things.
We are in Limassol, Cypres today, and the weather continues to be nice and warm enough for shorts. The actual city itself is not very impressive; it is relatively industrial and lacking variety in the architecture, but there is at least a bit of rocky beachfront, and also a relatively nice patio strip in the central tourist area, where I have been sitting with a carlsburg catching up on wifi usage and writing this blog.

Tonight we play the first of two sets each cruise that I do not enjoy - Italian music in the italian restaurant. It is long, and the charts we read are poorly written. We do however get a free drink afterwards which makes up for some of the discomfort. Tomorrow we arrive in Israel, which I am excited for.

We are in Naples today, and it is a fantastic city! The architecture is great, there are a lot of cool streets, and I had some delicious plain pizza with nothing but tomato sauce, the traditional Napoli way. Naples' reputation is that it's a dirty town, but I did not see a lot of that. It does have wealthy areas and poor areas right next to each other, but nothing compared to what I was expecting. I went for a walk about half-way across town up the hill, got some good photos in, and am now back at a cafe right next to the ship, across the street from an awesome looking castle. This port might supersede Istanbul as my favourite port of this contract, but because we don't get to stay into the evening I can't really compare it properly.
Tonight we play big band music which should be fun, but until then I plan to nap, eat, and practice.

Dec 20th

We're approaching the end of the first cruise of my contract, after which I have two more cruises before going home.
Since my last blog post we have been to Izmir, Turkey, where I went on a passenger tour to see the ruins of Ephesus. The ruins were pretty amazing, and I was surprised at how much they have unearthed, and how much there still is left underground.

We next spent a day and a half in Istanbul, which was fun although I didn't do a great deal of exploring, since I've already been to the main tourist attractions. Still, it's a fun city just to walk around in which I did, picking up a (working!) secondhand macbook charger in the process. The  evening of the first day there I went with some of the entertainment department to a pretty generic club, which really had absolutely nothing going for it. The next day however I went to see the Hobbit in town, which was great not only because it was an amazing movie, but also the theatre was really cool and we were almost the only ones there. I was surprised when there was an intermission halfway through the movie, but I guess that's how they do it over there.
That evening we played Shout, the second production show that the band plays for, which is easy but relatively uninteresting musically. After that there was an entertainment department christmas party, which was fun, as all department parties tend to be.

Life on the ship continues to be good. Cruise ships are known as places of abundance, and I've been a prime partaker. I've had more sleep, good food, drinks, socializing, and free time since I've been here than I've had for quite awhile. It is definitely a good vacation from regular life, and I'm glad I have two more cruises after this, though I am also glad that my contract is not any longer than that. There is so much routine to living on a cruise ship: hanging out with the same people, eating at the same places, staying in the same cabin, working with the same people, going to the same crew bar, that to do it for more than a month (except for your first contract) gets monotonous. This is true musically too, although the musical repetition is over a longer time, and I will only play any given set three separate times over the course of my contract, which is  a good amount.

We are now on our second sea day since leaving Istanbul, and are on our way back toward Civitavecchia - we passed by Sicily not long ago. Tomorrow we are in Naples, and I really have no plan for what I will do there,  but hopefully some pizza will be involved. My sleep schedule has gotten extremely late, so I will hopefully be able to get up in time to probably explore the place.

We are in Athens today, and this is my first time getting access to free internet since the Frankfurt airport.

Yesterday we were in Katakolon, a tiny town on the west coast of Greece with a population of 600. It is mostly cool because it is a half-hour drive away from Olympia, the original site of the olympic games, the location of the temple of Zeus, and a number of other archeological goodies. Myself, three other members of the showband, and a broadcast technician rented a car and drove there.

Our timing was impeccable because we went quite late in the day due to having had a boat drill in the morning,  so when we arrived we were basically the only people on the site who didn't work there. It was my first opportunity this contract to take lots of touristy photos. I had one photo taken of me doing a headstand in front of the entrance to stadium where the olympic games historically took place, but unfortunately one of the workers there thought it was disrespectful and made me delete it.

Thursday (two days ago) we played Showdown, the Motown production show featuring singers who are voted off by the audience, and I thought it went very well. Thankfully I still remember a lot of it from last time I was here so it didn't take long to relearn it, and I feel like played it better than I could have a year and a half ago.

Yesterday we did our dixieland jazz set in the atrium ( the center of the ship), which also went well. It was a significant set for me to play, because when I was last on the ship we did the same dixieland set, and, at the time, it was my first experience playing that genre of jazz. Since then I've been playing a lot of it in Vancouver, and getting to go back and play that same set a year and a half later was a cool way to track the progress that I've made.

A couple of other general things I've (re)noticed about life on a cruise-ship: the longer you stay, the smaller and smaller your world becomes. Try as I might, it gets more and more difficult to think or care about all the things that I have on the go in Vancouver. The environment here really sucks you in,  and it's very easy to forget that there is an outside world. Having limited access to the internet is a big contributor to this, since I never check the news and have barely been on facebook since I've been here, so I have hardly any idea what's going on in Vancouver or the rest of the world.

Coming back to a cruise-ship after having been off for a year and a half has given me the feeling that I never left and that this is just a continuation of my previous two contracts, so that four days in it feels like I've already been here for months. This feeling is also perpetuated by the fact that, because it's such a contained environment, you see the same people all the time everyday and get to know them very quickly, far more quickly than would be possible at home. As a result, you get the impression that you've known them for a much longer time that you really have.

I forgot how difficult it is to find time to yourself, especially on sea days. Right now I'm on the ship and most of the passengers and a lot of the crew are out in Athens, and I'm savoring how empty the place is. I now remember why I used to go out into each town by myself most of the time instead of with other people.

It's hard to believe that it's christmas in 10 days. So far the ship has played some christmas music over the sound-systems, and there are a few giant gingerbread houses and other decorations, but for the most part the christmas references have been subtle. I expect that the next cruise, which spans Christmas day, will lose all subtlety.

The dates that blogger.com has at the top of my posts doesn't necessarily reflect the actual day that I actually wrote any given blog, as I usually write them mostly one day and then fix them up the next day or so.

With that in mind, I will write down the actual date at the start of each blog.

Dec 13th 2012

Day two on the ship. There are some things that I remember extremely well from last time I did this, and there are also a lot of things I had forgotten about life on a cruise ship.

I can find my way around most of the ship quite easily still, which is a bit of a feat because of the size of the ship and the maze-like layout to some parts, particularly in the crew areas. The food, varied and plenty, is more or less exactly as I remember it being. The smells of the ship, each area distinct from the others, are just as I remembered them.

I had forgotten how closely nit the crew were. Everyone  mostly knows everyone else(or at least the north american and europeans), regardless of department, and are very welcoming to newcomers.

I forgot how nice it felt to have literally no responsibility or obligations beyond playing your instrument. Yesterday, aside from having to go through some silly safety training, my sole work responsibilty was attending a 10 minute sound check, and then playing one 3 minute Mambo tune for the welcome aboard show. 13 minutes. Plus, we apparently get another full day off sometime during each cruise. Most days we play two 45 minute sets, which is ludicrously little work for the trade-off of getting paid to live and hang out on a cruiseship. Life is incredibly uncomplicated.

I forgot how cheesy some of the other entertainment on the ship is. Some of it is quite exceptional, but lots of it caters to the lowest common denomiator type of passenger who is easily entertained by extremely un-profound performances. The phrases that the cruise director uses to address the passengers should only ever be used ironically. 

Thankfully the material that the showband plays usually has musical substance. Having now played once briefly with the band, I am quite looking forward to the rest of the contract. All of the band members are really easy-going people, and also as far as I have heard are all great musicians. I also have the added bonus of replacing a bass player who was quite unpopular in the band for a number of reasons, so just by showing up on time and playing the bandleader is extremely pleased to have me, which is always a good thing.

I am constantly amused by how unused to remotely cold weather people over here are. It's definitely not summer weather, but even when it's cold it doesn't seep into your bones the way that the cold in Vancouver does, and It feels fine to walk around outside in a short-sleeved shirt. Whenever I mention this people will tell me knowingly that it's because I'm Canadian.

Back into the fold..

 My trip started on Monday with a 10 hour afternoon flight  from Vancouver  to Frankfurt airport, which was overall enjoyable and passed quickly, with the exception of the of the tag-team shrieking of two babies.  We arrived in Frankfurt at 9:30 Tuesday morning, and after a relatively short layover I boarded my second flight to Rome, which passed pleasantly in conversation with an older German man.

Arriving in Rome, I was pleasantly surprised not to have lost any luggage. Last time I joined the ship, the airline lost my bass for a week, and I was only able to play because the ship's former bass player was able to leave his instrument on the ship for me to use.
I was greeted by an oily looking Italian man carrying a sign with my name on it, who was to take me to my hotel in Civitavecchia where I would be boarding the ship. He was friendly but spoke little English, so the 30 minute drive to Civitavecchia was passed in silence.

 Civitavecchia is the port city of Rome and is quite beautiful, something that I somehow overlooked last time I was there, likely due to my preoccupation with going to Rome.
The hotel was far nicer than the ones I've been put up at on past contracts, which have been nice but relatively generic looking. The Hotel St George on the other hand felt like almost everything one could want out of an Italian hotel experience, with marble floors, winding staircases, and very tall ceilings. To top it off, the hotel was right in the heart of the city, right in front of the beach, and only a very short distance from the cruise ship terminal.

I dropped my stuff off in my room and met my roommate, one of the broadcasting techs on the ship, who gave me the lowdown on who's in the band, the shows we're playing and some minor changes to the ship. Overall, things are pretty much the same as when I left it a little the ship more than a year and a half ago. As with the last time I did the Mediterranean itinerary, we are being redirected from Egypt, and in place of going to Alexandria and Port Said we will be going to Istanbul and Naples. No complaints there.

Before dinner I took the opportunity to go on a run along the amazing beach front of Civitavecchia, and savoured one of the few moments I will get to be in a port city at night time.

I got back and went to the restaurant to use my dinner voucher. The restaurant was a classic Italian dining experience, with nice floors, round tables and classy servers. I felt surreal sitting on my own in this upscale Italian restaurant in Civitavecchia, and the feeling was exaggerated by my exhaustion from not having slept for over 24 hours. Pretty soon I was joined by my roommate and two other people who would be joining the ship at the same time as me.  I spoke with a Romanian girl who is the guest services manager onboard, who described in detail the different kind of complaints that she has to deal from the different nationalities(it goes without saying that the english are the worst).

After dinner I went straight to bed, and slept decently well for three or four hours until my internal clock started protesting that it was only early evening Vancouver time and thus unacceptable to be sleeping. The rest of the night was spent stubbornly refusing to get up before seven o'clock, when I could get breakfast and then start heading to the ship.

It is now Wednesday, and I have boarded the ship, done some relatively painless safety training, met a bunch of new people, and am about to go see if the passenger buffet has changed at all in a year and a half.

I'm slightly exhausted, but pretty pleased to be back at sea.

Here are a few more updates:

April 4th

Things keep happening too quickly to write it all down, but I'll try and write the best stuff down.

on the 31st where I wrote my last blog, I was in Piraeus again. That was my second and last time in Greece, so I walked around the port area for a while before taking a train into downtown Athens. Unfortunately I didn't have a lot of time to spend there, but it was a cool area, right at the foot of the Acropolis. The area I was at was a shopping district with lots of vendours, but there was also some ruins around the area to check out.

The experience was soured a bit by going to a bar and being ripped off the price of a couple drinks - well, not really since they did charge me the menu price, but the menu price for the two drinks came out to 60$ USD - but I guess that's also part of the Greek experience.

One more day in Izmir was well spent, I walked all through the city to the local Bazaar. I was tempted to buy all sorts of things but ended up just buying a pipe for 40 lyra - less than half the price it would have been back home. 

It was a friday and thus the Islamic holy day, and it was interesting to see Muslims throughout the city kneeling down in groups, listening to a voice coming from loudspeakers throughout the city, presumably a sermon. 

Saturday, the 2nd, we got back to Istanbul again. It was pouring rain and cold that day so I didn't go out during the day. That evening we had a show with a singer, Katy Setterfield, who is a singer from England who won on the british tv show "The One and Only", a show seeking to find the best tribute act in the UK. She performed with us tributes to Dusty Springfield, Annie Lennox, Cher, and Tina Turner, each one progressively better than the previous. It was a really fun show for us to play since as it went on it became more and more rock oriented, and playing 80s and 90s pop is a genre that seems to be lacking on cruise ships, so it was fun to fill in that gap.

After the show a whole bunch of people went out to Taksam square, the night-life district of Istanbul. Between saturday and sunday night, I must have seen at least 15 different musical acts in that area without even trying.

The music scene in Istanbul is extremely inspiring. The way that music is integrated into the culture is very powerful, and there is a huge appreciation for music here. Every performance was profound in a different way, from the haunting solo woodwind player playing middle-eastern sounds in a near deserted street in the dead of night, to the rowdy 3-4 piece bands playing a fusion of middle-eastern and western pop-rock to a a highly energetic and receptive crowd. The open air setting of nearly all of their bars works in the musicians' favour, and in every case the locations with the music were much busier than the other places, to the point where we were turned back a few times before finding places with space. 

I don't believe there is any other city in the world like Istanbul. It has a bit of everything in it, culturally speaking - Middle-eastern, Western, Asian, European, all mixed together into a very unique culture. When walking through the city you are incredibly aware of the depth of history that the city has grown through, and it really transports you away from the rest of the world. 

Yesterday (sunday) I spent most of the day walking through the city, and managed to get lost for a good 40 minutes somewhere on the other side of the Grand Bazaar before finding my way again. I unfortunately discovered the local shoe-shinning scam the hard way. While walking behind a a shoe-shinner I noticed that his brush dropped onto the pavement, and so I called out to him to give it back. He was super appreciative and offered to shine my shoes in a way that strongly suggested it was complimentary, which it obviously turned out not to be. 30 Lyra. Throughout the day I had two other people try the same scam on me, dropping their brush in front, but I learned my lesson and brushed them off.

We are now at sea for two days. Musically speaking, we will have three days in a row of nothing but jazz sets, which is fine by me - we played for two hours last night, today for an hour and a half, and then tomorrow for another hour and a half. Jazz sets are especially fun because not only do we not have to read charts, our bandmaster, Alan, does not play with us, which makes the whole set much more relaxed and pleasant. 

April 9th

My last cruise before going home.

Overall the experience on this ship has been a very different one from the one I had on The Dawn. While this ship has been more satisfying musically, as well as having a cooler itinerary, I was much more emotionally attached to the Dawn, due to it being my first ship, and the length of time that I stayed there. Simply knowing that I won't be on this ship for as long has made me more detached about the entire experience, and less concerned with forming lasting relationships with people. As a result I am more looking forward to going home than I was at the end of my contract on The Dawn, even if I don't exactly know what my immediate future will hold.

Seeing these ports in Europe has given me a much better perspective with which to measure Vancouver, than did any of the ports in the Caribbean. The Caribbean ports were smaller and purely tourist destinations, whereas the places we've been to in the Mediterranean have been larger and tourism has been just one of several industries in the local economies. You have to be away from home to appreciate it, but unfortunately I know that I will cease to appreciate it again the moment I return. Still, it's nice to at least know intellectually that there really is something to appreciate.

Yesterday was my last day to spend in Barcelona outside of the airport, and I spent it walking along La Rambla street, and getting some wifi and americanos at a local restaurant.

Tomorrow will be the first day of my last shows of the Polka set, as well as Shout, the production show. 

April 11th

Yesterday I went on an amazing tour of Casablanca, which gave me a real new perspective and appreciation for the city. Our tour guide was very enthusiastic and informative, and clearly very proud of her country. She took us to an amazing mosque, which is the third biggest in the world, bigger than any of the ones I saw in Istanbul and much more beautiful. It was completed only recently, and so boasts such modern luxuries as a remote operated roof that can open to air it out, heated marble floors for when it is cold, chandeliers that can be lowered remotely in order to clean them, and artistically placed loudspeakers and amplifiers for prayers to be heard.

She also took us to a beach restaurant hub of the city, with some great views and cool looking nightlife. I was very pleased to have my initial bad opinion of Casablanca changed for the better. Last night we played my final dixieland set in the atrium, which was excellent, and a number of passengers who I talked to on the tour earlier on in the day came out to see it, which was nice.

Today we were in Agadir again, but with only limited time because we had a boat drill and entertainment meeting before we could get off. I went off for some quick wifi at the beachfront restaurant I stopped at last time I was here, before returning to the ship in time for rehearsal for tonight's show. 

The show tonight was put on by a singer named Marcus Jefferson, who was singing a tribute to Lionel Richie. Marcus did an amazing job, and it was a great show. I hardly knew Lionel Rihie before, so it was an educational experience, and was definitely one of the most rocking shows that we've played on the ship. An excellent second to last guest entertainer show for me.

Las Palmas tomorrow.