This is from yesterday:

October 27th

Sunday we were in Samana again, where I just went off very briefly to get some free internet at a local restaurant. 

On Monday we went to Tortolla Island, which is one of the British Virgin Islands. Since it is a bigger and wealthier place were were able to dock right at a pier instead of having to take tender boats, which made it much less of a headache going ashore.

Compared to Samana, Tortolla quite a wealthy island, and it obviously gets a lot of tourism. It is situated in a beautiful cove of a small valley surrounded by mountains lush with greenery, and the water is a piercing shade of blue. Immediately outside the ship is a row of vendor stalls selling clothing, souvenirs, jewelery, sunglasses, hats, and various other accessories at inflated tourist prices.  As you kept walking in you approached a main street which is full principally of clothing stores. Tortolla is under Britain's jurisdiction but nonetheless it uses the american dollar for it's local currency. One of the principal clues that it is under British rule is that people drive on the left side of the street there, which is surprisingly disorienting. Tortolla, like most of the islands in the Carribean, has a history that is very much entwined with the slave trade, and as such a vast majority of the locals are descendants of African slaves, with an extremely small minority of white people who's principal role seems to be to run a few English style restaurants for tourist appeal. My overall opinion of Tortolla as a tourist was that it's greatest asset is it's natural beauty, cleanliness of the city and a some interesting looking buildings. However, it is quite a small town with pretty limited retail outlets, and I found it to be eerily empty of pedestrians relative to every other Caribbean port. A more positive way of looking at it is that it is less of a tourist trap and has other means of making money.

Next, on Tuesday, we were in Antigua. While not having quite the same degree of natural beauty as Tortolla, Antigua is a much bigger and denser town, filled with shops of very kind. The streets are narrow and bustling with pedestrians which I always find comforting in a place. I found it to be most reminiscent of Coracao as far as the layout of the city. It is clearly too intriguing a place to take in one short visit so after walking around for a little under an hour I settled down for a Pina Colada and some free wifi usage. It will be an interesting port to explore each week. My main criticism of Antigua is that it is surprisingly expensive, but I expect that if you know where to look you can find most things, and if you are patient and walk further in I wouldn't be surprised to find some much better prices.

Today (Wednesday), we were in Barbados. Barbados I believe is the most well developed country in the Caribbean, and one of the largest. We docked in Bridgetown which is it's capital, which is an extremely popular cruise ship destination. As such, the port is large and a little bit removed from the downtown core. Still, it is a pleasurable 20 minute waterfront walk into town and if you go just a little bit further there is a beautiful scenic beach overlooked by restaurant patios. I went to one, The Boat Yard, which is the local hangout area for crew, with a 5$ admission which includes a drink, access to their waterfront facilities, internet access, and a shuttle back to the ship afterwards. In the future I intend to do some biking around Barbados to so as to see further into the downtown area. 

After going into Barbados I came back and played a jazz set with the ship's comedian as well as our Tina Turner Tribute set. It was rock knight for the ship's cover band who were playing outside by the pool, so I checked that out for awhile before coming down to get some food and do some writing.

Tomorrow we are in St. Kitt, which is the final port of the nine day cruise, before we make our two day journey back into Miami. The showband will be supporting a guest singer tomorrow night for two shows in the Stardust Theatre, so that will be nice to look at some fresh material. 

Time for another update. 

After Roatan we went to Cozumel, Mexico, which is so far my favourite port of the Carribean. It has a lot of good gift shops and things to buy for cheap, a lot of great looking restaurants with nice patios, and best of all there's a hotel right next to the port with a waterfront restaurant called "No-name Bar" which is a bar designed for ship crew by ship crew, with wireless internet access, amazing waterfront access, good drinks and a picture-perfect patio atmosphere. I look forward to being able to return to Cozumel every second week.

We arrived in Miami on friday, which was a bit of a pain since we had a US cost guard inspection and boat drill, which left us with only 1 hour to get off the ship. I walked around the port area a little bit and found a wifi hotspot not far away, but it wasn't enough time to get into downtown Miami and properly explore it - I will hopefully get a chance to do so at the end of this cruise.

Today is our first sea day of our first nine-day cruise out of our new home port of Miami. The nine-day cruises look like they will be a pretty relaxing itinerary for the showband (not that the 7-day cruises weren't already), as we are essentially playing all of the same shows but spread out over the whole nine days. As such, today, which would have ordinarily been extremely busy (with a big band brunch, two production shows and a casino show) was pretty light with just the two production shows (band on the run). Today was my first day running the show without any sheet music to fall back on, which was a little intimidating and was not helped by the fact that the sound guys got a new mixing board which in short has completely changed the sound that the band hears on stage. All of this is just a convoluted excuse for why I came in early on my bass line for "YMCA". Luckily I fixed it pretty quick and everyone else on stage caught on and kept it smooth, and hopefully the audience didn't notice. At any rate, I will definitely not make that mistake again.

Afterwards I played in the Gatsby's Lounge with Ariel the piano player, and am currently hanging out in the 24-hour comfort-food place, which has become my favourite late-night hang spot and has somehow been the spot where I've had the best conversations on the ship.

Tomorrow we are back in Samana, where if I am organized and motivated enough in the morning I might sneak onto a shore excursion, but if not I will go into town for some free internet and whatever else I can find.

Today we are in Roatan, Honduras, which is a very poor place, not unlike Samana. 

Yesterday we backed up a Celine Dion tribute singer, which surprisingly to me turned out to be a fantastic show with great energy. It turns out that Celine Dion's songs actually are pretty fun to play on stage, and everyone appreciated the humour of playing "My Heart Will Go On" on a cruise ship in the atlantic.

The last three days of this repo cruise are extremely relaxed for the showband with very few shows and a lot of free time, which is nice although also means having to find ways to entertain myself. 

I've been noticing a lot lately how important it is to find time to be away from crowds of people, which can be difficult on these ships. I really love being around all of the people here, but being an introvert at heart, I really need to have quite a few hours in a day to myself to just relax and recharge. 

That's enough musing for now. I have posted a number of Caribbean photos and will continue to post more as I accumulate worthwhile amounts.

Here is another post from two days ago:

October 17th

Today was a sea day. This morning we had a soundcheck at 12:30 for our Neil Diamond tribute shows tonight. I spent the day doing laundry, playing ping-pong, sleeping, watching tv, eating and reading - very relaxing.

 One of the guest performers on the ship during our repositioning cruise is a hypnotist named Brenda Kaye, and she put on three shows tonight - two passenger shows, and then a special crew show at 11:30. I checked out part of one of the passenger shows before going to play my two Neil Diamond tribute shows. 

The passenger show was pretty funny, but the crew show was absolutely hysterical. Brenda had a group of volunteers (for someone to be hypnotized they have to be completely willing and wanting) come on stage and slowly put them into a trance, which was ultimately effective on all but two out of about eight people. She had them playing imaginary pianos and guitars to start, and then got progressively more ridiculous as the night went on. She had one person shouting "man overboard" whenever the acronym "NCL" was said (Norwegian Cruise Line), which in turn would trigger two other people to feel that someone had pinched their butts. 

One girl was convinced that her belly button had disappeared, while two others were given imaginary m & m s which would pleasure them. One guy was made into the laughter police and he started to get quite upset with the audience whenever they would laugh. Another guy was speaking in his perception of a martian dialect while another girl was told she could translate it, which she did. She had them believing a number of other hilarious things, before snapping them out of it, with a parting shot to one guy of having him convinced that he was stuck to his chair until the cruise director came up and shook his hand, which he did. Another was told that she couldn't leave the stage before doing three jumping jacks, which she performed, and finally another girl was told to bark three times whenever she went through a doorway on her way back to her cabin, which I found out later that she did.

I've never seen anything like it - I spoke to several of the hypnotees about it afterwards and they said they felt extremely relaxed, and most of them remembered everything and felt conscious during but also said that they felt compulsed to do what the hypnotist asked or said. It was fascinating and really good-natured fun for everyone involved, and they all enjoyed themselves immensely. I spoke to the hypnotist about it later and she said that people who are hypnotized will not do anything they feel completely uncomfortable or unethical doing, and that they still ultimately can prevent themselves from doing things if they are very much against them. She also spoke of how it can be used to help people quit smoking, help with weight loss, and a number of other things. She is doing  a few seminars on it this week which I will try to check out if I get the chance. 

Afterwards I went out on deck to check out a a thunderstorm. Lightning looks amazing from the deck of a ship in the middle of the night, since you are surrounded by complete darkness, and when a sheet of lightning darts across the sky the entire world around you is illuminated in an awesome bright light and you see everything up to the horizon for many miles. It is a spectacular sight. 

October 16th

You can't leave Samana without a feeling of ambivalence. On the one hand, it is a beautiful Caribbean island with many kodak opportunities, lots of nice shops to check out, beautiful beaches and some good cheap food and beer.

At the same time, just past the fancy tourist spots is a poverty-stricken town, where you will be approached by small kids no more than 8 years old trying to sell you sea shells. Still, the local people seemed happy enough, and the very fact of being on my first Caribbean island made the experience enchanting. I walked around the town, and then settled in a restaurant where I ordered a 4$ beer which turned out to be a full litre, as I took advantage of the free wifi. After Samana, me and the rest of the showband got to eat at the Japanese Teppanyaki restaurant, in which the chefs cook your food in front of you while doing tricks with their knives and telling jokes. It was an entertaining and satiating experience. I had the seafood diablo, which is Lobster, Scallops and Calamari. The food was spectacular but a little bit overwhelming as just one of six courses.

Thursday was a sea day, and on that day we accompanied our guest pianist, Juan Pablo, once again, playing a mixture of classical and latin tunes. That evening we played a big band set which went over very well.

Yesterday (Friday), we were the city of Willemstad in Coracao, which is a colony of the Netherlands. It is an amazing place in that it is an island with Dutch architecture right in the middle of the Caribbean, which seems bizarre yet somehow looks perfectly natural when you get there. The local languages were English, Dutch, and Spanish, but most of the signs of restaurants and stores were in English to accommodate the majority American tourists who visit. It is a very picturesque place, and unfortunately we will not be returning there in our Caribbean itinerary.

Today, we were in Oranjestad, Aruba, which is another colony of the Netherlands. I signed up for a crew excursion to a remote resort island, De Palm island. The resort featured unlimited food and drinks, a water park, snorkerling, a banana shaped-boat that you can ride on as you are toed by a motor boat driver who will try and knock you off, volleyball equipment, and more. Snorkeling was very cool as it was my first swim in Caribbean water which is very pleasantly warm, and it was amazing to see all of the different coloured fish from so close. I went on a banana boat ride, ate food, played volleyball and basked in the sun, and with all that somehow managed to not get burned. After the resort, we went back to the downtown area in which our ship was docked, and I had a Marguerita on a nice patio. I then went to a dunkin' donuts for a coffee and some free internet to skype and upload photos.

When I got back to the ship we had a South Beach Rave production show, and after that there was a crew and passenger party up on the deck by the swimming pool, with the cover band playing, free alcohol for the crew, and a barbecue. It was a cool party, and the timing was superb since it started just before we left Aruba so we got to watch the city lights as we sailed away.

I then went down to our local fast-food restaurant, Blue Lagoon, and proceeded to gorge myself on two orders of fish and chips, while chatting with Anton the showband pianist as well as several passengers. I just finished talking to one fellow who is from Vancouver and works for Air Canada, and am getting ready to go to bed.

We are at see for the next two days and then we arrive in Honduras and then Mexico for two quick stops before our last voyage to Miami where this cruise ends. I am continuing to enjoy life on board, and I can't believe that it's only been three weeks that I've been gone. In two more weeks my parents will come on board which I very much look forward to. 

October 13th

Today we have just arrived in Samana, Dominican Republic.

I last updated on saturday. Sunday was my last time in New York, and so I spent a lot of time trying to take in the city as much as I could one last time. I spent the first few hours just wandering the streets as different things caught my attention. I could never get bored doing that in New York, since there's always another street, another statue, another park, another major attraction. In addition there are some places that no matter how many times I see I will not get over, like Time Square. Of all the New England ports, there is none that will take your breath away the same way as New York. 

I topped of my New York expedition with a trip to the top of The Rockefeller Centre - The NBC studio building. 

The view from the top is spectacular. the building is situated just a few blocks from the souther end of Central Park, which is in the centre of Manhattan itself. You can see the entire city as well as into New Jersey and Brooklyn and elsewhere from the top, and just taking it in all at once is pretty amazing. I took a good many pictures from the top, and as usual they are going to be posted on facebook shortly. 

Afterwards I returned to the ship. There was a very energetic vibe on the ship as all of the new passengers had arrived and were excited about their upcoming cruise. It was also a significant moment for the ship itself, as this will be it's last time departing from New York - next year when the ship returns to the New England - Canada route, it will be departing out of Boston instead.

The new batch of passengers includes a larger proportion of younger people, who put a lot of energy into the shows which is great for all of the performers. This cruise is also quite busy as it's a one time repositioning cruise to Miami, after which we will do the same two cruise itineraries for many months.

Also on sunday our new drummer arrived as our old drummer departed. His name is Bartosz (Bart) from Poland, and he's a very solid drummer who's been on the ship before and so already knew a lot of the shows which made for a very smooth transition. He's a nice guy but I feel badly for him as he has really young kids back home who he is away from for four months, which is hard on him. 

Monday was our first sea day sailing down towards the Caribbean. I got a chance to check out the new Caribbean band, called Caribbean Wave, who are from Jamaica and have been on the ship before. They are a good band and create a great summer atmosphere at the pool deck, lively but not overbearing. 

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Monday night we accompanied the first guest performer, a Cuban pianist named Juan Pablo. It was a mixture of Latin American and Classical styles, and we played the show twice. It was a fun show and he's a very talented performer - we will accompany him one last time tomorrow (thursday) for a matinee show. 

Yesterday was our second sea day, and was the exact itinerary of what used to happen on mondays on the New England cruise: big band brunch 11-1, Band on the Run production shows at 7pm and 9pm, Viva Las Vegas show at 10:15. Except this time everything was even better attended and our audiences were especially receptive and made the atmosphere a lot more fun for everyone.

Here in Samana I am still on the ship and am going to disembark probably in a couple of hours. We have just arrived, and it is a port with no pier we can dock at, so instead a group of smaller boats will ferry us to and from the shore. Passengers of course get priority, so I expect I won't be able to get off until around 1:30. That is fine with me however as we are at this port until relatively late (8pm), so that should still allow ample time to get acquainted with the place. 

I am in Newport today, and I have 20 minutes to kill as I upload photos, so thought I would write a brief update.

Yesterday was our last visit to Boston and I had a lot of ground to cover by bike. I left at nine in the morning, and started by heading straight to Harvard, in Cambridge.

Harvard is a really cool little area of Cambridge with some amazing buildings, and a sprawling campus reminiscent of UBC but with older architecture. I visited Harvard Yard and found the dorm where my dad stayed in his first year at Harvard (Hollis), and just took pictures of whatever looked significant.

After Harvard, I biked back into Boston to the south-western area, to check out Berkley School of Music. It was a pretty cool area, with obviously much more money than Capilano University, and taking a quick glance inside it looked like they had some really good quality computer facilities for music production and scoring. I then biked to Fenway Park which is just near there, and then biked through downtown and back to the ship.

We played our two variety show sets and our Frank Sinatra tribute, and then I headed to the spa. I did two cycles of heating up in the sauna/steam room then plunging myself into the very cold plunge bath, and topped it off with the jacuzzi. All of my biking aches vanished.

Today is the last day of our New England - Canada itinerary, so to celebrate we went into Newport and ate some lobster on a restaurant patio in the harbour. I am now a in starbucks uploading a number of photos from Boston, and having just skyped for a half-hour am going to head back to the ship.

 Final stop in New York is tomorrow, and I am thinking of going to the top of the empire states building, but we'll see what happens. Tomorrow evening we start our 12 day trip south to Miami.

One other thing - here is a website that has my ship's full itinerary so you can keep track of where I will be when:

http://cruisett.com/ships.php?ShipID=1&date=26

As of yesterday (wednesday), I will not be in Canada until February 11th. Today we were in Bar Harbour, and we now slowly make our way back down to New York for Sunday, before beginning our 12 day repositioning cruise down to Miami.

I spent the day yesterday in St John mostly just trying to take it whatever ounce of Canadiana I could from the city, before before leaving Canadian soil until next year. The rest of the day was predictable for a Wednesday, with two South Beach Rave production shows and a Tina Turner tribute which went very well. That was followed by hanging out late night at the ship's 24 hour Americana comfort-food semi-fast-food restaurant with a passenger from New York who is accompanying the ship's cover band for the two weeks that he is onboard. 

Today I didn't have any time to get off the ship because of a badly timed sound check, as well as a training session on crowd control, which sounds a lot more horrendous than it actually was. The safety instructor who trained us was an intense but hilarious English guy who actually made some sense of why we're required to do all of this training, with the perfectly valid point that since we're crew we would be required to take on certain leadership duties in the events of an emergency, which was given more credibility by a couple videos from the last couple decades of ship based disasters which could have been averted with the proper crew training.

With all of my free time on the ship, i've decided to start giving the gym a serious go for probably the first time ever, and as a musician I am allowed to use the high-end passenger gym. I went on tuesday, hopping on the treadmill for a bit (fully equipped with it's own personal tv) before hitting the weights, with the help of one one of the ship's personal trainers. I went again this afternoon doing the same things, and after that I played some ping-pong in the crew gym with Anton, the showband's Ukrainian piano player. I now feel like I've had a pretty productive day and have since eaten and showered and am basically killing time until our two Neil Diamond tribute shows tonight. 

Last time in Boston tomorrow, so I will hopefully be able to hit harvard square and berklee school of music.

This is from yesterday. Today I am out at sea but felt like splurging a bit on internet. Nothing new really to report, except that I am confirmed to stay on for one more month until February 11th!

read on about yesterday in New York...

October 3rd

Today we were in New York again, and this time I explored it on my own, by bike. Generally speaking, my route took me south-east through Greenwich Village, all the way down to the financial district, Wall St, and the southern tip of Manhattan, then back north and a little east up to the Empire States Building and Time Square, then back west again to the cruise ship terminal. I saw the Village Vanguard in Greenwich, the jazz club where many of my favourite jazz records were recorded. It was cool to see, although having anticipated it so much I was surprised by how small it is on the outside - it is a basement club so all you see from the outside is the sign and a door which opens to a staircase down. Unfortunately it doesn't open until 8pm, so that was all I got to see. 

There was a random parade for Poland happening in the middle of the city, with dance bands and lots of people with flags. I asked an NYPD officer about it, and he told me that countries like to do this in New York - pick a random day, and make a ruckus - I was amused by his lack of parade spirit.

There are a number of specific details to remember about New York which I will try to write down before I forget.

-You will often hear and even feel the passing of the underground subway when you walk down the street, even through what feels like a pretty thick layer of cement underneath you.

-Biking is a great way to experience New York. Not only are there lots of bike lanes, but since nobody obeys traffic rules, no one will ever honk at you or even give you a dirty look for darting in and out of traffic, crossing multiple lanes and other such biking antics that would work a Vancouver driver into a rage. Rules of the road in a nutshell seem to state that so long as the means don't kill anyone, the ends will justify them.

-In addition to Central Park, New York has a number of small but very well tended parks scattered through-out the city, some with a fountain and/or statue in the middle, or in at least one case a chapel.

-I am constantly surprised by just how conspicuously clean a city New York is . I am told this is quite a recent development, more or less since 9/11.

-The amount of tourists in every part of New York at any given time is mind-boggling. I naively assumed that because I was going to be visiting it during the fall that most people would be back to work or school or some such place, but the tourism in New York seems to ignore the changing of the seasons; to see it this busy at this time of year makes it difficult to imagine what the summer season must be like.

-New York is so filled with significant and picturesque buildings, signs, statues, streets, parks, people and everything else, that as a camera trigger-happy tourist, you have to raise the standard of what you consider photographic, because really just about everything there is, at least by the standard of any other city.

-When going into a tourist shop, leave your polite Canadianism at the door. I entered one such shop and expressed a vague interest in a t-shirt, the clerk instantly zeroed-in on me and would not leave me alone. I, having only expressed the interest out of politeness as a way to try and justify my window-shopping, had no real desire to get this t-shirt, and when I hinted at this fact the clerk asked me if I thought it was too expensive (which it was), and offered to mark off a couple dollars. When I insisted that I just didn't want it, he persisted and kept asking what I wanted to pay for it. This cycle repeated itself quite a number of times, and eventually he just asked me why I didn't want it. By this time one or two other clerks had joined the first in an attempt to make me buy this t-shirt by sheer force of will. Eventually I saw that I was getting nowhere and that there really was no polite mutually acceptable way of me getting out without buying the t-shirt, so I I gave up on tact, turned my back, ignored their parting shouts of "Sir! Sir!" and walked out as quickly as I could. Lesson learned.

-There are a lot of cool and cheap items for sale in these tourist areas, and I came close to buying some a couple times for fear that I would not be able to find another store that sold those items. As it turns out every tourist-spot in New York seems to sell all of the same things, so that concern was ungrounded. One cool tourist attraction was that all over New York are artists who will draw a caricature of you for only $5. I have never seen these people elsewhere, but in New York they are a dime a dozen. 

-There technically are a lot of Starbucks' in New York, but because the city is so full of other far more interesting places they didn't seem particularly noticeable to my Vancouver eyes;  Starbucks' are far easier to find (or rather harder to avoid) in Vancouver.

-American Macdonalds' all seem to have free wifi, which makes my internet-less life at sea a great deal easier.

I still have a lot more of New York to experience and I know that I can't cover it all in just one more visit (next weekend being our last cruise out of New York), but I would at least like to explore the north and east ends a bit, as well as ride to the top of either the Empire States Building or the Rockefeller Centre for a view of the entire city.

After getting back to this ship, we had a sound check and then two Welcome Aboard shows for the new set of passengers. The Groundhog Day effect of working on a cruise ship is starting to set in - every day it feels like it was just the day before that we last played that show, when it was in fact a week ago. So it was tonight, and it definitely didn't feel like a full week ago that we last played these shows.

 the days are starting to pass very quickly. It really is strange how the cruise ship lifestyle warps your sense of the passage of time. 

Tomorrow is our busiest day and also one of my favourites, with the big band brunch, two production shows of Band on the Run, and the Viva Las Vegas show. 

This is from yesterday:

October 2nd

Yesterday, me and a couple other of the musicians biked through Boston, which was great fun. The weather was mostly warm and overcast. When it did start to rain later on, it was too warm to really matter.

Boston, I maintain, is a fantastic city, and is superb for biking. It is perhaps slightly on the dangerous side what with all of the stops and starts, weirdly curving streets, pedestrian and car traffic, and lack of bike lanes, but there is so much to see and explore in Boston and biking takes you through it at the perfect pace with the greatest amount of flexibility.

We started by biking from the cruise terminal to downtown Boston. We had some coffee, then biked through to Cambridge, which is just to the west. We hung out in the mall there for awhile, before going back downtown, heading to a clothing store for a bit, stopping by Quincy Market, and then finally biking back to the ship. Having biked Boston once, my goal for next week (my last time there) will be to bike to Harvard Square and also to Berkley School of Music.  Having done those two things I will be able to leave Boston without any regrets.

Last night was "busy", which for us only added up to two and a half hours of playing, spread over two short variety show sets, the Frank Sinatra tribute set, and supporting the ship's comedian with some jazz standards during his late night comedy set. After that we were offered some free drinks at the bar by the cruise director in compensation. I tell you that some people on ships (white people..) seem to very quickly lose perspective of what amounts to a lot of work, and anything and everything I've done here so far does not come even close to it.

As if yesterday was too much of a burden, it turned out that we had the entire day off today, which while was not really needed was still kind of liberating. I got offered an opportunity to go on a shore excursion into Newport to visit mansions from the late 1800s. It was mind-blowing.

I have never before seen so much wealth. These mansions were built by the wealthiest people of the gilded age, with French and Italian influenced architecture. The first one we visited was called Marble House, which was a French-style mansion made, as one would assume, principally out of marble. The second, The Breakers, was of an Italian style, with a Roman look to it, with massive pillars and arches everywhere, and a powerful fortress look to it. The interior of both mansions was magnificent, filled with beautiful statues, stone carvings, gold plating, lavish paintings that filled the ceilings, chandeliers and more. The sheer size and ornamentation of the rooms was almost absurd, and to my eyes could have passed for castles.   I don't have the architectural or artistic vocabulary to describe what I saw, and unfortunately no picture taking was allowed inside for the unbelievably obtuse reason that it would somehow INTERFERE with preserving the site, which is so ludicrously dense that I will have to leave it at that. I did take many picture of the outside, however, which as usual will be posted on my facebook account. The Breakers was so named because it (like the Marble House) is situated right on the water, and the waves crash quite violently upon the shore below. It is a magnificent view. There is a path whose name escapes me that travels right along the water, separated from the mansions by a metal gate, and walking the path is apparently on the list for things you should do before you die. I hope I will get a chance to walk it next week in Newport.

I am happy to say that this excursion absolutely changed my impression of Newport for the better. Seeing the history, the cool old buildings that you start to see only as you get a little further in from the dock, and also just getting a second chance to look at the marina itself has made me feel much better about it, and I can now say that I would recommend it to most people. If you do go to visit Newport however you'd better make sure you check out the inside of the mansions, or at least walk  along the path along the water next to them.

We have just arrived back from the excursion and I have just eaten dinner and am debating how to finish off my evening. I will probably sit in on Ariel's lounge piano set, and then maybe watch a movie before trying to get to bed in relatively decent time - tomorrow we are in New York again, and this time I am going to bike it with some friends, and hopefully cover a lot more ground.

One more point of note is that I have been asked if I would like to stay on for one more month, up until February 11th, rather than January 14th. The bass player whom they have lined up for after me cannot make it until February, and it would be difficult for them to get someone in for just one month. I think I will most likely do it, but I want to confirm first that I don't have any other obligations scheduled for that time period, and as far as I can recall I do not. Also I need to give thought to the fact that by then, lots of people I know now will be gone, lots of new people will be here, I will be on a different itinerary, and I may feel very different about the cruise ship experience by then. I would like to give an answer in the next day or so though, and I think I will likely take it. I will mention it again when whatever I end up deciding is confirmed. 

here's yesterday's post:

September 30

It's been a few days now since my last blog, and while I'm now repeating the same itinerary this week, as I will again next week, I feel it's time to give an update on my perspective on things.

First of all let me cover a few more things about the places we've visited. I posted my last blog from Newport, which was relatively boring and so I will skip over that for now and maybe write more about it when we visit it again next week. 

On Sunday, after much anticipation, I finally got to check out New York City. As you can imagine, it is an incredibly overwhelming city to try and make sense of in a few short hours, and it feels premature to really say anything about it having spent so little time there, but I'll at least give my initial impressions.

The Showband drummer, Jay, showed me around the city, for which I was extremely grateful, having been intimidated by the prospect of trying to navigate the city myself. We walked from the cruise ship terminal (12th avenue and 48th street, I believe, on the west side of Manhattan), and walked to and through Central Park, Time Square, Carnegie Hall, as well as several other landmarks. It's difficult to do justice to everything I saw by writing about it, being as there was such a huge amount to take in. It might be helpful to check out my photos on facebook , the album titled "Norwegian Dawn 2".

New York is a great city to walk through. It is very straight forward to navigate through since it's on a strict grid system, with avenues going north-south and streets going east-west, all numbered. The best best word to describe the architecture as a whole would be overbearing. It's not just the presence of a lot of really tall buildings, but more so the distinct lack of any buildings that are NOT tall. There is a relative uniformity to the buildings, although there were quite a few distinctive older buildings mixed in as well. Having just come from Boston two days before however, I didn't think it had quite as much character as Boston's architecture and general city layout. Remember that these are very superficial first impressions, which I'm sure will be amended as I get to experience more.

New Yorkers have the same affinity with Fitness as Vancouverites, and the marathon that was being run at the edge of Central Park felt quite like the Vancouver Sun Run. The people are generally quite good looking and very diverse culturally, and for the most part quite friendly.

I was shocked and pleased by the prices of things in New York. I bought a hat in Time Square for a couple of the shows we're playing. It cost 10$, and am quite sure that the same hat would have cost $40 in Vancouver. They were selling "I Love NY" t-shirts for  2$ each, and Jay informed me you could find them even cheaper than that. No wonder everyone in the world seems to have one. For myself I decided that I needed to actually see enough NY to decide whether or not I loved it before buying one, and even then it will probably be somewhat reluctantly.

I've gone on enough about NYC for now and will talk about it more after my next visit. I plan bike around it next time now that I understand the layout. I should probably try to make a list of things to see before I get there next so as to better organize my time, but I quite doubt I will be that organized.

Monday was another at-sea day, as well as my birthday away from home. It was a very busy day of playing, as mondays always are, but I still enjoy all of the music we are playing so it was a good way to spend a birthday, and it was nice to end it at the casino where we get free drinks. Tuesday in Halifax I got to go on to facebook and email and read numerous birthday greetings from home which was very nice. I didn't spend much more time there other than to check out a notable tugboat in the harbour ("Theodore Too"), and to check out a few other landmarks.

Yesterday  (wednesday) we were back in Saint John. Last week I was not especially impressed with the city, probably due to having been pressed for time while there. This week, I had a lot of time to walk around, and I was very impressed with the amazing old buildings and atmosphere. It was an extremely foggy day, and that combined with the relatively deserted streets and old architecture made it feel like a ghost town, which I thought was great. Most of the buildings there are red brick, but there are a few much older looking ones, in particular churches, with a gothic castle look to them. 

That night, we played the South Beach Rave production show again, which was a lot of fun. Since I have memorized most of the show, I was made to walk around the stage a bit while playing, choreographed and timed with the dancers and other musicians so as not to run into them. It was very rock and roll. As a bass player this kind of thing is extremely rare and unfamiliar (at least for me),as I usually never stray far from my post next to the drums and keyboard towards the back of the stage. I enjoyed my brief moments of stardom. After the Rave show we played our Tina Turner tribute show, which was a blast and I enjoyed it more this week now that I know my parts better. The singer from the duo that we support for the tribute is extremely charismatic and energetic, and it's really fun to be a part of the show.

Today we were in Bar Harbo(u)r again. In town I had a sample of some beers from the local brewery, including a blueberry fruit beer, which was surprisingly good. Unlike some other fruit beers, it was not overpoweringly sweet or syrupy, and the blueberry flavour was subtle but significant. Afterwards I went for a walk along a coastal path which kept our cruise ship in view for the entirety, and showcased some pretty amazing looking mansions. I'm afraid I went a bit overboard with pictures on that walk, but it was just one of those places. Bar Harbour has to be one of the most enchantingly idyllic places that I have yet visited, and I've seen my fair share of friendly coastal towns. Even the prevalence of noisy tourists does nothing to destroy the serenity that pervades. It put me in an extremely good and reflective mood. I still can't believe that I get paid to go visit such amazing places. Someone told me that as a crew member, if I go to the shore excursions desk on the ship at the last minute I might be able to get a free spot in one of the numerous excursions for free, which would be pretty cool. A bunch of people went on a river rafting expedition yesterday in Saint John which I unfortunately missed out on due to a rehearsal, but I might see if I can swing it next week.

Onward to some general thoughts about life on the ship. I feel like I have now settled into the routine here, having been to every port on this part of our itinerary at least once. A big thing to think about as a musician on these boats is what to do with all of your free time when onboard. I have been taking every opportunity I have to sit in with other musicians who have solo lounge sets, although that is not until later in the evening. There are video games, gyms, books, dvd movies and tv shows, endless food places, napping time, an art gallery, and of course a few thousand people to talk with. I've started to take a lot of pleasure in talking to passengers. They are all very excited to hear about what it is I do and where I'm from. I've getting accustomed to being watched by smiling, knowing grandmotherly faces, elderly passengers to whom I probably bring to mind their own children or grandchildren. I've even had a couple passengers want to take pictures of me. I find the tiny amount of celebrity that I acquire when people find out that I'm the bass player for the showband quite amusing, since in any other context the bass player is entirely overlooked.

The only other subgroup that has the same kind of empty schedule as the musicians is the singers and dancers, who are together part of the Jean Anne Ryan Company. because of our matching schedules I've gotten to meet a number of them who,  and they are all very cool and talented people, mostly from the US and other commonwealth countries. 

A few other miscellaneous thoughts:

- I've started to notice that every single hallway in this ship seems to have it's own private little music station of various different styles, and so far I haven't run into any bad music, which is refreshing. 

-It is very peculiar with this run that we change our clocks twice a week to accommodate the time change from New York to Halifax. After it happened the first time I've become used to it, but it does add an extra random factor to the week.

-Today was my first pay-day, and it felt so good. I like being paid in cash, though it requires more effort to save. And yes, even though they don't deduct any money for tax, it is still unfortunately my responsibility as a Canadian citizen to declare it on my tax return. Oh well.

-Tonight we are going to play two Neil Diamond Tribute shows. Last week we did only one and had a number of people complain that they couldn't get into the room due to its popularity. Tomorrow will be a day in Boston again which will be great - I plan to try and bike through it this time round, weather permitting.

-I also just realized that tomorrow is two weeks from my first day here. The first week felt long but the second one has gone by extremely fast, which I guess must mean that I'm enjoying myself.

I was going to start trying to write this blog a little less often now that my initial rush of familiarization has mostly passed, but  as I write this I am finding that if I leave it too long I amass to many thoughts that I want to write down and then it takes me twice as long just to remember and organize them, so I might try and keep it up a little more often. I am really enjoying having this outlet, and having people who actually seem interested on the other end of this is encouraging.