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.