Life After Install

Venice!!

Hello friends and family!

Well, we've had almost 9 days of life after install. I know they didn't leave that long ago, but our install team consisting of Thomas, Gavin, and Erika, plus our lovely costume ladies is gone and it seems like ages since I've seen them already! It's crazy how skewed your perception of time can be when so much of your time with people is so condensed (living, working, eating, and playing with your co-workers all the time!) I think another reason that it seems like a while is because we have been filling the days as much as we can with happenings.

Since being on the ship, I have gone to the night club, had a pool party with passengers, traveled and seen just about every part of the ship that I'm allowed to go, had a massage at the spa (YES!), eaten at one of the specialty restaurants called the Tamarind - DELICIOUS Asian-fusion food that filled me and my comrades to near bursting - and a myriad of other day to day type things.

As I said in my last post, I'm doing some ports that I did during my last cruise and I can't tell you how thrilling it is to step off of my ship in cities that helped change my outlook on life and the world (and finally give me a feel of how Europe truly is for the first time) and have all of those memories come flooding back. In some places, I'm even remembering paths that I took and restaurants/cafes/shops that I visited. I think one of the ports that I'm the most excited about having come back to is Istanbul. That is such a cool city with such a vibrant way of life that is so different from ours back home.

So in brief, since I last wrote, we've been to Istanbul and overnighted. During that overnight, we went out to the hipper part of town at night and walked around and sang karaoke at a bar until about 1 am and made our way back to the ship by 2. We went to Mykonos and had fun at our production manager's hotel and the beach, put up our last show in Kusadasi, Turkey (where Ephesus is), took ATVs out and covered the whole northern half of the island of Santorini, went to a new port for me in Croatia (called Split) and did some complimentary internet over lunch, back to Venice and had a great day and night romping around, went to Dubrovnik and cliff dove for the afternoon and went to a water park in Kerkira, Corfu (a part of Greece). Some of these things are things that I waited to do until the end or didn't ever do on my last contract, so to get to do them now at the beginning leaves room for other things. That makes me REALLY excited for my time here in Europe!



                                       

Pic above: Thomas's hotel in Mykonos

We also met a few really cool people in Dubrovnik - both were from Australia. One was Ben (or Dan?…pretty sure it was Ben) who seemed to be about my age and one was Taso who seemed a little older. Ben/(Dan) couldn't stick around long because he had to meet a friend of his, but Taso stayed the whole time we were there. By the end of it all, we had all swapped life stories, jumped off cliffs together, taken pictures, and generally began to feel like he was part of our group. It was truly bittersweet a couple of hours later when we had to part ways and walk back to our ship. For whatever reason we all felt like we were abandoning one of our own. Needless to say, that was one of those cool meetings that it seems is fairly unique to world traveling when people are placed completely outside of their own social/cultural norms and have nothing but each other to gravitate towards to try and make sense of and share their current life experience.

Breakfast in Venice (same place I found with my friend MK 4 years ago!)

Tonight we perform our show, Garage Band. We finished the first show already and considering all of the technical things that weren't quite supposed to happen, I'd say we did a fine job of staying on our toes, listening to each other to figure out what to do, and improvising when the occasion arose. One more to go! I think that's all I have for now. Tomorrow we are in beautiful Santorini and I think I'm going to spend my day exploring the main town of Thira, perhaps buy a piece of art, and sit at a cafe on the cliffs and generally enjoy my time in the sunny Cyclades of Greece!

My friend, Joey, doing the splits in Split, Croatia!

Coming soon - More pictures of my travels and a blog on things that being a performer/gypsy/life-observer have taught me or made me realize!! Check back soon :) Thanks for reading guys and gals!