It's been an eventful but ultimately good last few days, with moments of stress and excitement intertwining unexpectedly.

In the last week I managed to both lose my passport and chip my tooth, racking up unnecessary bills. The tooth I got fixed extremely quickly if rather expensively, and for an express fee I also managed to get my new passport the day I was leaving Vancouver. Of course, as fate has a twisted sense of humour, I immediately found my old passport upon getting home from getting the new one. I was less than enthusiastic.

My nine hour flight to London was quite enjoyable, and I spent it watching The King's Speech (great movie) and The Black Swan (good, but super creepy if you're in a daze, over the middle of the atlantic ocean, in the dead of night, and everyone around you is asleep...) as well as a few TV shows. My second flight, to Barcelona, was pleasantly short, and I had good conversation with the two people next to me. There was a spectacular view of the snow capped Pyrenees mountains,North of Barcelona. We arrived in Barcelona 7:30pm local time, or 10:30am Vancouver time, which I've decided not to contemplate, with the hope of tricking my body clock into overlooking the anomaly of dealing with effectively 24 straight hours of daylight.

Then my bass decided not show up at the airport - leading to a good hour and a half of waiting and filing the lost luggage report. This was somewhat disturbing as my bass literally is my livelihood on the ship, without which I would be expendable. I decided not to worry about it, and got the shuttle to my hotel, which was a Best Western. It was a nice hotel, and after showering, getting my free meal, and meeting some others who would be on the ship I was feeling pretty good about things again. My bass situation was effectively taken care of with the new knowledge (given to me by the guitarist who I'd just met) that the previous bass player was going to leave his bass on the ship while he was away, so I could use that while waiting for my own bass to turn up.

This morning was asuper early start, though technically by Vancouver time I got up at 8:30 at night, which I guess isn't that bad. We were on the ship before 8 in the morning o'clock local time, and I settled in really quickly, met lots of people, filled out the paperwork, and have now wandered into Barcelona, which is spectacular. 

I feel guilty in saying that of all of the amazing looking cafes on picturesque patios I am at a Macdonalds, ONLY because it was the one place I could tell without a doubt had free wifi. Lame, but practical.

That's all for now. This is just the beginning.