2 week cruise continued!

Day 9

Woke up bright and early to explore Quebec City. Quebec city is quite a strange place. The place where we dock is the pretty looking Quebec city. The tourist town where all the buildings are nice and the streets are very european thanks to the french influence. But as soon as I walked out of the compound, it just turned into an ordinary city with traffic and ordinary streets. I guess I'll stick to the touristy part of town in the future. 

Speaking of french influence, everything is in freaking french. Every single written thing is in french. Even the tourist information booth is in french. It's actually kind of annoying. 

While walking on the street today I got greeted to the sound of 'hey it's the famous drummer'. Yes I am gathering quite the following on this particular cruise. The old people love me. 

Day 10

Sea day again. Got to play some jazz tonight. So far in this cruise it's just been show after show in the theatre and it was a big release to play some jazz tonight. Not that playing shows is bad, in fact it's nice because it's mostly easy stuff, but playing jazz is my thing. It's my breath of fresh air. And coupled with the fact that I've not been getting practice time this week because of all the tech work late nights, it was especially good to play jazz tonight. 

Day 11

Had a ridiculous 8am rehearsal today for the new production show. 8AM! I've never played drums that early before.  Heck I've barely woken up at 8am before. It's been years since I've needed to do anything that early. And man did I feel it today. I could barely focus during rehearsal and I was reading the show for the first time. Ugh, hope we never have to do such an early rehearsal ever again.

Arrived in Charlottetown, in Prince Edward Island Canada. Got off the ship to explore but there wasn't much to do. It's not a particularly exciting port. It was actually rather boring. It's small, but not the quaint niceness of Portland. It's dull. There's nothing to do or see. 

Another singer show tonight. Back in the theater we go.

Day 12

Another early day. Sort of. Not as early as yesterday but still early. Rehearsing the new show again. At least now I know what's going on and I can focus properly. 

We docked in Sydney Nova Scotia today. And it was just as boring as Charlottetown. Man, the second half of this cruise has really been a let down. It started off really cool with cool places to be and go and it just ended up in these small boring places. I guess old people enjoy sitting in the small parks with not much action going on. But for me, I was bored. There's not any exceptional scenery to see, nor was there any special things to do. You can tell that a place is dull when you read the map and under the 'attractions' section all you see are churches. Not old majestic big crazy buildings with incredible unnecessary ornamental decorations churches, but just churches in general. Attractions, yeah right. 

There was supposed to be a ventriloquist tonight. We were supposed to have the night off. But his jamaican dummy did not make it on the ship and so we had to pull together a backup show with the singer from yesterday. It's funny hearing her rant about how unprofessional it was that she had to do a last minute show. Well if there's anything I've learned from ship life is that stuff never goes according to plan all the time.

Day 13

Last production show of the cruise. We're actually behind the curtain for the majority of the show. But even so, they made us wear costumes. We have ridiculously ugly shirts with colourful fish on them - it's an underwater themed show you see - and equally horrendous and ridiculous straw hats. Thankfully for me I'm a drummer and I bop around alot when I"m playing so that hat is not staying on. They tried to fix a strap on it but it wouldn't hold. Bad for them and their whole costume fixing, good for me and my pride. No straw hat for me.

The other bad thing about having to play to the show behind the curtain is that I can't see the show. It actually looks pretty interesting from all the costumes and sets but we see none of it. And I'm actually half blocked by one of the backdrops so half of the theater can't even see me and I can't see half the stage. 

Day 14

Final day of the cruise. 2 week routines feel extremely long on this boat. It felt like forever since I was last back in Bayonne. 

Thoughts from the week(s)? 

I think my roomie has questionable hygiene habits. I make sure to take my showers everyday and use some deodorant. Not sure he does either of that. And I make sure to change my shirts and have em cleaned often. Not sure he does that too. He does physically stink up the room every now and then. Wonder if buying an air freshener and putting it in the room might be a hint.