at Sea
December 13, 2022
The great thing about traveling west are the time changes. 4 time changes across the Atlantic. That means four 25 hour days. Those are easy to handle.
The Captain had a question and answer session today on the world stage. Surprisingly he was asked some very good questions. One was the fee for getting through the Suez Canal. $400,000. Is cash used to pay for any of the port fees. Not usually he said but Africa was very different. Everyone was asking for money or “gifts”. One even asked for “American Cigarettes”. Did he get them? No. Everything about Africa was very different according to the Captain. A passenger asked why we had to miss a port because of the tide as tide tables are published years in advance. He acknowledged that and said because of the pandemic, ship schedules were cancelled and added back at different times and the tides did not match. The Captain said he knew that he could not get into that port before we even left Ft. Lauderdale.
Team trivia was a bit different today. Erica had asked for questions from all players. 2 maximum per room. She put them in a box and pulled them at random. They were harder than hers. My wasn’t pulled. Which musical instrument consistently reads the also clef. I doubt that there were any violists in the room but one can never tell. We did very poorly but so did everyone else. Some teams had two member questions pulled. We had none.
The evening entertainment. The BB King All Stars. They just came aboard back in Cape Verde. Wow. Fantastic. Male and Female lead singers, tpt and tenor sax, rhythm and bass guitar pianist and drummer. The drummer was exceptional.The female lead did covers of Midnight Train to Georgia, I Will Survive and Proud Mary. The male lead looked like a young Sammy Davis Jr and covered September, Soul Man, and some Stevie Wonder. Best band we have heard on the trip. 10
After the show, we sat and listened to the ocean bar band. Pianist/vocalist can sing but needs some major mic intervention. The bassist/vocalist is very good. The rhythm guitarist only knows one kind of style in solos Every solo is a rock solo with bent notes.He plays in the “how many notes can I play in a 32 bar solo” style. Its kind of a turn off when you are dancing to Spanish Eyes and he breaks into a note bender solo.
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