March 16th

Today we were in Valletta, Malta. Architecturally speaking, it is one of the most beautiful cities I have ever seen. The cityscape creates a powerful impression through the uniformity of the it's lightly coloured stones, as well as the design itself, which gives the entire city the look of a fortress.  This is largely because this city was created by the knights Hospitaller, or the Order of St. John of Jerusalem, in the wake of a large Ottoman Invasion on the island, and as such there are bastions, palaces, and curtains abounding. 

The city is nicknamed "Superbissima" which means "most proud/Illustrious" in honour of it's beauty and splendour, and was described by Benjamin Disraeli (British Primer Minister) as a city that "equals in its noble architecture, if it does not excel, any capital in Europe" and as "a city of palaces built by gentlemen for gentlemen." The city is also recognized as a world heritage site.

I spent four hours today just walking through the city, and the deeper you go the more it sucks you in. I'm very glad I will get another change to visit it, and hopefully get myself on one of the passenger excursions, which would provide a free ticket into many historic buildings. 

Traveling to all of these countries in the Mediterranean has inspired me to read up more on the history of these places - it was so much easier not to care when I hadn't seen them, but now that I have I am actually quite intrigued. We'll see if this inspiration actually amounts to anything.

Because one of the guest singers who we were to support had to leave due to illness, a variety show was put together last night, in which the Jade Orchestra was featured for the first five songs. We opened with Stevie Wonder's "Do I Do", arranged by our sax player, which was probably one of the coolest arrangements i've yet played on a cruise ship. The other four tunes were supporting singers from the production cast. 

Tonight we have a couple of big band sets in the Spinnaker Lounge and that's it. Tomorrow is a sea day, and then after that I'm back to Barcelona, the end of my first cruise on this ship. Hard to believe it's only been one cruise, because it's been such a long one. So far I have been to five new countries, and all going well (ie no riots) I will see three more new countries this week. 

march 20th

I am now on my second of four cruises, and about a third of the way through my contract. Music continues to be good here - we played a blues night Thursday night, the last night of last cruise, and it was basically the exact same set as I had played on my first blues night on the dawn, as it was hosted by Dave Webb, the lounge pianist who started it up on the Dawn as well. It was a fun night, and I got some scotch and green beer during and afterwards to probably mark St. Patty's day.

Today, Sunday, we were in Cassablanca, which was not certain to happen; apparently the last time around the ship did not come to either Cassablanca or Agadir, the two Moroccan ports, due presumably to recent protests of some kind. 

The first thing I noticed about Cassablanca was that it is smelly. It is definitely not a clean city by any means, and the streets are littered with garbage in varying degrees. Even the pavement in the port area had an unpleasant smell.

I was only out in Cassablanca for a couple of hours, walking around with the guitarist, Steve, and most of our time was spent trying to find a free wifi spot. The city itself was pretty unimpressive looking, the only notable thing on the skyline being a distant mosque which I didn't have time to get to to see. The city reminded me a bit of some of the ports I visited in the Caribbean, which is to say hot and tropical, but uninspiring from a cultural or architectural point of view.

This isn't to say that there was nothing good about it. The people were interesting to see, with an interesting mixture of traditional and modern clothing. French-speaking though Morocco is, most of the locals who I heard speaking french were virtually impossible to understand, and so I decided against practicing my french on anyone. 

The feeling I got from Cassablanca was that it was one step more middle-eastern feeling than Turkey, but probably one step less than Egypt - a point that Steve confirmed, who had been to Egypt before. It definitely did not have the same feeling of inclusiveness that I found in Istanbul, but it still felt like it had some potential as a tourist destination - unrealized potential, but potential. I think the way to really enjoy Morocco would be to go on a tour, which I didn't get organized to do in time.

On to the one noteworthy event that happened. A shuttle bus ferried us from the ship to the downtown area, and the first thing we did after getting off was to continue a little bit further in the direction that the bus had been taking us. Up ahead we saw a huge crowd of people, and heard lots of noise. As we got close we saw that it was a marching protest, with thousands of people, banners written in standard and (presumably) arabic writing, and people shouting and singing/chanting something. Tourists and locals alike were taking lots photos, and the protestors seemed pretty much like any would be in North America - a wide variety of people who were non-agressive but purposeful in their protesting. 

One man however got really upset at me while I was filming a bit of it, and proceeded to say a bunch of stuff that I could not understand. I decided it would still be prudent to not try my now terrible french, and just play the clueless North American. As he kept at it, a few others came, asking me what he'd said to me, to which I replied I had no idea. I got the impression that  the others were trying to calm him down by saying that plenty of other people were taking photos, and so not to get upset about it. At any rate, at that point I quietly went away, and decided to avoid the rest of the protest.

I did get some good photos of the protest, and I even filmed a little bit of them singing/chanting. It's pretty amazing to see. This all sounds extremely irresponsible on my part, but it really was not as bad as it probably sounds, and the protest was very peaceful and seemed pretty good-natured. Of course it's possible that I'll turn on the news tomorrow and see that it turned out to be a revolutionary event that turned violent and that that guy was the leader, and now carries a banner with my face on it with a slash through it, but I doubt it.

Tomorrow we are in Agadir, which I've heard good things about.