Funchal

Oct 29th
Funchal

Third visit to Funchal, this time without doing a tour. Before I get to the actual day description, today and tomorrow are practice code red health situation scenarios. This means, that everything is to be kept extremely clean so that no germs are spread (ships have lost weeks to such problems). So this means that the musicians and a good chunk of the entertainment division have to clean the theater…4 times today. So we go over all the arm rests and touch points in the theater with a rag and some kind of cleaning solution. We have enough people that it only takes about 10 minutes, but it’s still really dumb. So after doing that in the morning for the first time, I got off the ship with Peter, his GF Caro (the international ambassador on the ship – meaning she speaks 7 lanuages), and Steve from RCTV. Madeira, being known for it’s wine, has a bunch of wine tasting area’s around the city, so we hit a lot of those and sampled 3, 5, 10, 15, and even a 24 year old wine, all free. Madeira has 4 classifications of their wines, dry, medium dry, medium sweet, and sweet. The sweets are a little too strong for me and most people I know, so we all tried a varied collection of drys. And Caro, being able to speak Portuguese, made it so that we were treated better than the usual tourist. One of the stops we made, they served us cookies and this local dark cake thing, all for free. Following that and our wandering through the city, we made our way to the market, which was great. They sold unbelievable flowers there, native to the area I assume, but plants that I’ve never seen before and that were absolutely magnificent. Also, they had the local fruits there, which were out of this world. We were able to try passion fruits, and I don’t even know what, but every thing that entered my mouth was unbelievable, and a taste that I’d definitely never encountered before. The passion fruits were like some sort of jelly inside this ugly skin, but they served it to us with sugar and it was probably the best thing I’ve ever eaten that’s come off a plant. I ended up buying a Pineapple banana, or so we’ve been calling it. It’s the green banana shape, but it looks like it has armor on it. And then, when it opens up, you pick the fruit out from inside, and it tastes almost like pineapple. I’m taking pictures of it to post. But supposedly, it slowly peels itself, and as it loses more and more of it’s armor, you slowly eat the underlying fruit. Caro snuck it on to the ship in her bag, along with some other fruits she had bought. She purchased a mango, which unfortunately I missed out on tasting, but was told it was also great. My banana thingy should be half opened tomorrow, and then fully opened the next day, so I’ll eat it as it allows me to. The stupid thing cost over 5 euros though, so about $8, which is really pricey for a piece of fruit, but I figure after all the free wine and other samples, I can drop 5 Euro somewhere to do my small bit in supporting the economy. We eventually made our way back to the ship though, had a payday today, cleaned the theater again at 5, and got ready for Brenda Cochrine’s show, or I think that’s her last name. We played the first show, cleaned again between shows, and then played the second. I had a really nice alto feature in one of them where I get to blow blues licks under her singing. Well, those of you who have seen my bands at some time or another, you’ll know that’s something I do quite a bit of and maybe am somewhat decent at. Well, she loved it, and was really great to me after the show because she was so pleased with the band and my playing. It’s probably the most appreciative anyone’s been since I’ve been on the ship, at least as far as the guest artists go. So she bought everyone drinks after the show and talked to me forever, always returning back to how I played “my tits off” as she’d asked me to – she’s Scottish. Really nice lady though, and as we all (half the band, her, and a couple other random people) hung out in the Staff and officers bar (SOB), it was a really fun time talking with her and playing music from the computer in the room, where everyone has uploaded thousands of tunes onto. But it was a really fun day with a good show at night and a great hang afterwards. Not to mention, someone really enjoyed my playing and was nice enough make sure I knew and understood that, and coming from a guest artist who’s done her show a million times before with different sax players, maybe I should feel good about that. I’m just lucky it was a bluesy number that I could fake my way through well enough. But anyways, good day, tour tomorrow, and I’m going to bed right now at 4 AM (I really wanted to write stuff down while it’s still somewhat fresh). Thanks and have a great one!