The Best Laid Plans.....

This voyage is entitled "Holy Land Explorer", with the intended highlight being two days in Israel, for guests to tour Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Nazareth, and Galilee.  A few days before we were due to arrive, violence ignited between Israel and the Gaza strip.  Thousands of rockets began to be fired across the border.  Personally, we were planning to take the train to visit Tel Aviv. Then we saw on the news that a missile had landed right outside of town.  We decided we definitely wouldn't venture there after all, but would either stay in the port of Haifa or head north to Acre or thereabouts.  Then a few hours later, when we saw that Jerusalem had been targeted, we knew the ship definitely wouldn't be going to Israel at all, long before the official decision was announced to the guests.  Our overnight in Haifa was replaced with calls to Rhodes, Greece, and Antalya, Turkey.  Antalya was a completely new port for me, and I was astounded to discover that it holds the ranking of 3rd most visited city by international visitors in the world, after Paris and London, and before New York! Incredible.  It is Turkey's premier sea resort.  We got off the ship as soon as possible, and took the 20 minute shuttle bus ride into town.  We stayed in the Kaleici area - the old center surrounded by old city castle walls, with narrow cobbled streets of historical Ottoman-style houses.  We visited the Yivli Minare, a fluted minaret which has become the city's symbol, Hadrian's Gate, the old clocktower, and the Yat Limani, the harbour dating from Roman times.  What a nice unexpected treat to see an interesting new place.

Onward from Turkey, we continued our voyage and began heading toward the port of Alexandria, where we were meant to dock on the 24th of November.  As we sailed towards it, lo and behold, the news erupts about the President of Egypt causing mass demonstrations and riots in Alexandria and Cairo by declaring sweeping extra powers for himself.  (You can tell we have nothing much to do on board but watch the news) Oh no, here we go....we thought.  And we were right.....about 6pm we felt the ship slow down to a crawl, and slowly turn around.  An hour later the official announcement was made: we are not calling into Alexandria.  Now the guests are VERY upset.  Not only have they missed the Holy Land, but now the pyramids as well.  Hundreds of people speculated and grumbled among themselves about what decisions the captain ought to have made, many pressuring him to go back to see Israel again since the violence had calmed slightly.  I do understand their intense disappointment missing the very ports that made them choose this particular voyage, but at the same time it's hard to believe their willingness to risk their own safety and that of others and the ship in order to see what they had signed up for.  I feel sympathy for the poor people manning the front desk during this crisis of cruising.  They are getting pummeled.

Once Alexandria was cancelled, the company had to once again shift itinerary, and find the best possible alternative to placate our irate guests.  We all sat in the crew mess speculating what would be done, which port would be chosen.  I had my money on Messina, Sicily on our way up to Italy, but was wrong - they've managed to secure a berth on the lovely island of Malta. And what's more, we'll be staying overnight! We are in Santorini today, one day earlier than planned, to facilitate this, and will arrive in Malta tomorrow at 6pm.  Miraculously, I will have the night off.  The guest entertainer decided to do a show that uses only piano (he has one for the whole band, but wants to try out a new one that he hasn't had orchestrated yet....great!!).  The jazz set we will be doing instead only requires 2 horns, and I was on jazz the last time, so its the other two horn's turn.  Nick is also free because he is in the midst of a handover - training his replacement to take over.  At this point Rob is running everything and Nick is only backup, support and advice.  He has even handed over the cursed phone, which I swear rings every 15 minutes with someone needing the stage manager's help.  So Nick and I are very much looking forward to a whole evening in port and dinner ashore.  Once again, any change of plans usually tends to benefit the crew.  Most of us were planning to stay on board in Egypt anyway, and couldn't be more pleased with the change in itinerary.  I do feel bad for the guests, but it does usually work out that their loss is the crew's gain.  The captain made a very cheeky thank-you announcement to those logical and calm guests who had written him personally to commend him on making the decisions he did, to keep everyone on board safe, despite enormous pressure from hundreds of protesting guests.  We could all read between the lines there regarding those guests who had tantrums.

We are really on the countdown now, 4 days to go! We are both so ready to sign off and get this Christmas holiday started!

Ephesus and Knossos (ruins, ruins, and more ruins)

Last week when the ship docked in Izmir, Turkey, we took the opportunity to go and visit ancient Ephesus.  I have been there before a couple of times, years ago with guest tours, but Nick has never been, and we felt it was important to make the trip out there.  It was impossible to take public trans, as the train wouldn't get us back to the ship in time, so we had to take a taxi (its about an hour away).  We got a group together and split the fare, so we each paid 25 euros for the round trip, plus the entry fee to the site.  It was a perfect day, not crowded, not hot, but sunny.  It was stunning to see it in that weather, undistracted by the crippling heat that I remember.  We made a quick photo stop at what is left of the Temple of Artemis nearby, so we could cross another one of the 7 Wonders of the ancient world off the list.  On the way back our taxi driver, who was blasting Lady Gaga, took us the long way round back to the port, and we got to enjoy the beautiful coastline.

A few days ago, we visited Heraklion, Crete, for the first time.  We figured out how to take the public bus to the Minoan ruins of Knossos.  Famously the mythological home of King Minas and his Minotaur and labyrinth, it is a really neat site to visit - there is a lot there.  It is interesting because bits of it have been extrapolated and reconstructed (likely erroneously) by Arthur Evans, the British archaeologist who bought the site around 1900 and excavated the ruins.  That in itself is an interesting thing to see.  Later on in town we visited the Archaeological Museum and got to see many of the objects recovered from the site.  It was ideal to be able to see Minoan artifacts, and the place they came from, in the same day.  The museum and the site each helped us get a better context for the other.  

Bosphorus Cymbal Factory

This week I had the fantastic opportunity to accompany our two drummers on an Istanbul field trip in - to the amazing Bosphorus cymbal factory.  Gianni, our drummer, and Gethin (Queen's Room drummer, from Wales) let me tag along as they made the pilgrimage on board the public tramway system (for about an hour and a half) to the factory on the outskirts of Istanbul.  Both drummers had been there a few weeks ago for the first time, but were returning again, this time with slightly different purchases in mind, and more money saved up to buy these amazing cymbals.  Bosphorus is run by 3 Turkish men who started their official company about 30 years ago, but use age-old secret techniques they learned as apprentices from masters before them to create the most perfect, unique, and amazing cymbals.  Turkey has always been known for this tradition, and modern techniques are still based on ancient ones developed here and passed down.

When we arrived at the tram station, a driver from the factory came to pick us up and drove us to the hidden building quite off the beaten track. I was given a personal tour of the factory by one of the owners, who very patiently and passionately explained exactly how the process works.  ALL of their cymbals are made by hand, and they produce about 300 a week.  Once a week is casting day, where they superheat the metal (copper and tin) and then pour it into individual ingots which will throughout the course of the week be changed into aural gold.  They only have 10 separate pans, and so the process is repeated throughout the day and the workshop fills with smoke and steam.  In the next room on a following day, the process of flattening out the metal begins - they heat each piece of metal in a oak-burning oven individually, then pass them through a rolling press, reheating and repeating the process 7 or 8 times.  Finally, after excess is removed, the cymbals are hand hammered - I saw the room where about half a dozen men literally just sit and hammer all day.  There is also the lathing process - where the cymbal is spun at high speeds and grooves like a record player are added to the underside.  I got to see all of this going on - it truly felt like I had stepped back in time, and was witnessing an ancient secret art of the masters.

After my tour came a couple hours of sitting and observing as Gianni and Gethin tested countless cymbals, looking for just the perfect sound they wanted.  Big, small, hammered, smooth, splash, ride, antique, on and on it went.  I listened hard and learned from their comments about the different qualities drummers look for when choosing a cymbal.  There are nuances I never noticed before.  My ears were ringing a bit by the end, admittedly, but it was well worth the journey.  At the end of the afternoon they were nice enough to drive us all the way back to our ship to make sure we weren't late.  We got chatting with another drummer from a P.&O. ship that was also in that day.  It was really fun for me - I felt lucky to have a chance to go and experience the mastery of turkish cymbals firsthand.  Way better than any organized ship tour of Istanbul!!

The Wonders of Technology!

Hi everyone! I found a very cool website that you can use to track my ship! Its a marine database called Sea Scanner.  It shows our ship's position on a Google map, which you can manipulate and zoom in and out of to get the bigger picture or more zoomed in detail.  It also has a feed of our ship's live bridge webcam right there, looking over the bow, so you can literally see what we are seeing anytime!  It also gives current info on where we've come from, how long we have been in port and the time remaining in that port, where we are heading next, and the current weather!  What a neat discovery! So check out the link - I'll post it here but it will also be permanently on the left hand side of my blog page under "Where's Andrea TODAY?" Just For Your Information if you should choose to use it!!

http://www.seascanner.com/schiffsposition.php?schiff=Queen+Elizabeth

Opening "Palladium Nights!"

Last night we finally opened our brand new show - Palladium Nights.  The idea of the show is based of the weekly British television show - "Sunday Nights at the Palladium", where major artists would perform live.  The artists portrayed in our show are Mickey Vaughn, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, Englebert Humperdinck, Lulu, Sandie Shaw, and Shirley Bassie.  We have been rehearsing the show for a couple of months, it was a relief to finally open it! It has been a lot of work.  Imagine the poor tech guys who had to build the entire set for each rehearsal packed into any time the theatre was free and available, and then tearing it back down a couple hours later to set up for the normal shows going on in there.  The cast tended to start rehearsals around 10 during the port days and rehearse while everyone else was happily enjoying their port time, and then come back at midnight after the evening shows had finished to rehearse late into the night.

Once the costumes were all fitted and the cast were doing runs of the show in them, I came up to watch the show from the audience perspective.  This is something I will never be able to do again, as now that the band is "in" we will always be onstage whenever the show is being run.  So I took advantage of the chance to sit back and watch the show, as it is meant to look.  And it looks great!  I love the costumes.  There is a fun little section where the dancers are dressed and dance like marionettes to circus-like music, which is refreshingly different than anything I've seen before, and really fun to watch.  I was really impressed, and I know the overall impact jumps up once the band was onstage, adding live sound to the canned track music.  We really don't ever stop playing for the whole show.  It is exhausting....it took all Franck our trumpet player and I had to make it through a rehearsal and two shows.  Our drummer Gianni was nursing cramped legs and arms after the second show.  But was a show! The house was packed at both showtimes.  Before and after we were congratulated by Andrew Miller, the head of Entertainment for Carnival Corporation, who was on board for the premier.  It went so well, everyone is very proud to have been a part of it.  Now things will settle back down again as those midnight rehearsals cease and the show moves from the forefront of everyone's minds to take its place in the rotation of shows to be performed once a voyage.  It has been a really exciting ride! Well done, everyone!