Two Fabulous Days...

Two great experiences in two wonderful days. The first was the performance of our live Broadway show a few days ago. It's the only truly live show I've ever performed on a cruise ship and I get great pleasure out of performing it each time. The other day was no exception. The show has an amazing energy for all of us involved. It's quite a pain to rehearse with organizing stage time, band time, and sound time, but it's all worth it in the end. It's just us up there singing, harmonizing, and not moving much in the way of crazy choreography. I have two wonderful features including a Billy Joel song that has a Manhattan Transfer style background vocal with it.http://www.badongo.com/file/2695756 I also get a fabulous comedic song from Kander and Ebb that I have so much fun with on stage. It's a great feeling at the end of the day when the show is over of a job well done. Especially since we have to be such musicians and actors on stage being in tune with each other as singers and with the band.

Yesterday we ported in Cochin, India. It was my first visit to India ever. As we pulled in we were greeted with decorated elephants. On the dockside as well were flocks of Ambassador cabs. These cabs are old 1940s cars all in white that take me back to the days of the Indiana Jones flicks. We got off the ship in the morning and took one of these cabs to a resort about 40 minutes away. It was the La Meridien resort. All the way there I kept thinking of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom with the character Shortround driving the car through India. It was a funny thought. We got there and the resort wasn't anything special, but we told people we'd meet them there so we sat down for the buffet lunch available. It was amazing. There was a mixture of flavors, but most of it was Indian. I had a delicious tomato and cilantro (coriander) soup as well as some other local dishes. We wrapped up our time there and took another Ambassador cab to the recommended hotel of Taj Malabar. Here we lounged around the infinity pool and basked in the sun. It was about 90 degrees and humid. The water was perfect and the atmosphere was to die for. I felt like I was really on vacation. After a day of dipping into the pool and spending time in the sun, I fell asleep on one of the cots with the warm breeze blowing off the Arabian Sea. I still can't believe I'm in this part of the world. That night we took part in the barbeque diner offered by the hotel. A little overpriced, but well worth it. You couldn't possibly leave that dinner starving there was so much food. For appetizers they just kept bringing over new grilled delights that sparked my palette in new ways. I hardly had room for the buffet portion after all the grilled bits came by. It included beer with the meal. Now I'm not the beer drinker, but it went well with the meal and I had to partake since it was St. Patrick's Day AND it was included. I left that meal completely overstuffed and satiated. We spent that evening of sailing away on the top deck of the ship watching Cochin leave us. We didn't go into the markets or the city, but I feel I will get my full experience of that side of India when we are in Bombay in a few days. Someone needs to pinch me, because I can't believe what all I'm seeing in these past few years.