Another new cruise!!

June 8th-10th
Chicago to Southampton

And here we go again, another day, another contract, and another set of places I’ve yet to see. We’ll begin with me flying out of O’Hare on the 8th on Virgin Atlantic. The flight was decent, not the best, but luckily I didn’t run into any problems carrying 3 instruments and a backpack onto the plane with me. I sat next to a really nice woman from Finland who probably told me a good portion of her life story, of which a good portion was lost to my inability to get past the accent. Ok, it wasn’t that bad, but between the plane noise, her low speaking volume and prominent accent, there was plenty of smiling and nodding going on.
The plane landed the next morning in Heathrow, from which I had to find my way to the Holiday Inn where I was supposed to spend the night. After following the directions supplied by the ship, I made my way to the hotel via the “Hoppa Bus” and checked into my room. My original room was still dirty, and considering I got there so early I wasn’t surprised, but after an hour of waiting I was given an alternate room, which meant I likely escaped getting stuck with a roommate, so that worked out nicely. The remainder of the day consisted of alternating sleeping with eating as I tried to reset my internal clock, and this continued till I left early the next morning (I would have loved to go to London, but the hotel was in the middle of nowhere, so I opted for my series of naps). I did however make it to the gym that night, so at least I did something active on the 9th, Yay!
I left the next morning at 6:20 to get on the bus to the ship along with all the other sign-ons. The hotel was about 2 hours from Southampton, so I had some time to continue relaxing before I got on the ship. When we all arrived, the less than pleasant sign on process could begin, which lasted until just before noon, where I had a little time off until my first training session. After my second training thing ended around 3:00, I ran up to the spa to do some modeling! Yeah, that’s right, I’m a model now. A couple spa girls that I met at lunch said they needed models to demonstrate their procedures on while guest explored the spa area, so I was quick to volunteer for the free spa treatment. When I got up to the spa I found out I’d volunteered for micro current therapy, a treatment in which the spa girl rubs a metal electrode on your stomach (in my case) while you hold a different electrode, thus stimulating your cells with a “micro-current”. You can’t feel it, nor are you supposed to, and it supposedly gets your cells in balance to fight bloating, water retention, and all the other bad skin stuff people obsess about. So for an hour, that’s what I did while people walked by asking questions about the treatment and the good looking model getting a not-so-needed stomach reduction treatment. Whatever, it was fun and a good way to get on good terms with the spa girls.
I had a welcome aboard show that night, which was interesting. There are certainly some differences between this ship and the Royal ships I’ve been on, many of which I’ll try to cover in tomorrow’s post, but the show was fine. The band sounds good and the welcome aboard music is actually kind of difficult, a nice surprise. Then after the usual two shows, I was done for the day. Looks like I’ll be back to a somewhat normal musician schedule of working 3 hours a day (a rehearsal and 2 shows), so though I’ll miss my 4 hour a week job on the Rhapsody, I guess I still have no room to complain.
Anyways, that was about it for the night as I quickly found my bed after the shows…it was a long day. I’ll write more tomorrow describing the ship, but right now I have to go play my first show of the night. As always, thanks for reading!