Lisbon/Sea Day

Nov 8th and 9th
Lisbon/Sea day

The 8th was my final visit to Lisbon, and unfortunately didn’t work out exactly as planned. First of all, I’d signed up for a walking tour through the city, which I was excited for, but I didn’t get the phone message the previous day I was looking for. Pieter let me know mid day that he was meeting up with a local friend who was taking him out for a tour of the area by car and invited me to come, so I quickly got my things together to meet Pieter outside. Well, somehow we managed to never find each other outside the terminal, and after 20 minutes of looking, we both gave up. However, that meant he left for a cool tour while I walked back onto the ship. We can’t figure out exactly what happened, and I know he waited because I have a phone call on my machine from him, just somehow we managed to screw up this simple task. So I went back to the ship and didn’t get off till later in the day, when I went for a walk with Brandon (new tenor player). We just walked into the city, eventually stopped at some place to get a sandwich, and headed back to the ship. I wanted to stop for food and found this local hole in the wall place that seemed to be where a lot of locals hung out, most around my age. So I went to the counter to order a sandwich, to which the Portuguese kind of looked at me in the confusion that comes from speaking a different language. He did figure out what it was that I wanted and made a gesture towards this block of meat he had on display under the counter. After seeing his double thumbs up stamp of approval on the mystery meat, Brandon and I both got the sandwich and something to drink. So we go back to eat it, this thickly sliced piece of something or other served on a roll of some sort, without a condiment to be seen. Oddly enough, the sandwich has absolutely no taste. I don’t have a clue what that meat was that we were eating, but it somehow had absolutely no flavor. And I mean none, nothing good or bad about it, it’s quite miraculous really that such a meat exists and is sold to people, but we were both completely boggled by this thing we were eating. I think we decided it must be someone’s dog, obviously a joke, but there were no visual clues either to aid the meat identity mystery. And even more odd is the fact that the jolly guy behind the counter thought it was great. I was glad to have experienced it, I guess, but I’m now sure that my palate is slightly above the tasteless drywall sandwich I had that day.
That evening we were supposed to play Pete Mathew’s show for the last time, but due to an emergency at home, Pete was unable to make it in. Considering Pete is the one entertainer that the entire band enjoys and likes to hang with, everyone was quite disappointed. But instead, we got the night off while the comedian got moved up to fill the space. And I guess that’s about it for my farewell to Lisbon.
Oh…..I did go up to the top deck to see the ship sail under the bridge that leaves the city, I forget the name of it, but it’s a beautiful structure. And watching the ship just barely squeeze under it was an amazing feat in itself.
The next day I figured out that the voicemail indicator light on my room phone doesn’t flash, meaning that when I checked the phone for messages, I found 7 unheard messages left over the past few days. One of which could have gotten me on a tour in Lisbon, which I now feel bad about flat out missing. So I put a call into the service department to get it fixed, but I’m sure it’s going to end up taking longer than expected.
Nothing real important happened on the sea day, at least not that I remember. We had a new entertainer to play for, Jon Courtney, who played piano, sang, and made some jokes. He did a good job and the show was nice enough to play, I never mind getting new music to read.
We did have a Crown and Anchor event to play though, something that doesn’t usually happen. C&A is for return guests, and this cruise just so happens to have 1700 returning passengers, about 10 times more people than usual. Because of this large number, a couple events were planned in the theater where the band had to play an hour-long big band set. The set that day didn’t go so well for a number of reasons, most of which I’ll blame on the brass section. But it was a busy day between a rehearsal for a new show, the two shows that night, and an extra big band set in a format know one was used to. But it’s a sea day, can’t hurt to be busy, sort of.