Capri Round 2

We went back to Capri and rented speedboats to take around the island. It was by far, the most fun I’ve had out here. We started out bright and early, trying to get off the ship at 8am, but our plans were foiled by ship security and we couldn’t get off until about 8:30, making us miss the ferry we wanted to take. We finally got to Capri and stopped for supplies: booze, food, and more booze.  We cruised around the island and stopped at some really amazing places. The first was a place where some people jumped off a cliff. The water was a bit too choppy and the cliff a little too high, but I jumped in the water to cool down. After that, we headed for calmer water and dropped anchor in a gorgeous cove where we had lunch, cracked open some drinks, and played in the water for a while.

(Yes, I'm wearing bottoms haha)

We continued exploring the waters around the island and we swam through the green grotto and the boats met us on the other side.  The water was so incredibly clear and blue, I’m not sure why it’s the green grotto, but I guess there’s a blue one somewhere too, but you have to pay to go in or something.  The adventure continued and we drove through the iconic rock formation of Capri.

Sorrento wasn’t far away, so we decided to take a trip over. I decided to try standing up in the front of the boat while holding the rope that was attached up there. It was so much fun, but then I realized that Stefan was a bit of a rough driver (I have the bruises to prove it) so I sat down and enjoyed the rest of the ride. We dropped anchor again and hung out there for a while before heading back to drop some people off who wanted to head back to the ship early. Greg was a bit hesitant to leave me and Uli in control of a boat since we were a bit…well, tanked. Deena, one of the Legends dancers, had a friend visiting and he was sober and in our boat, so we were fine. I convinced Uli to let me drive the boat—which wasn’t very hard since he wanted to make another drink anyway.

We drove back around the island and climbed up into one of the caves, which was also really neat! 

 We headed back and Rich tried his luck at standing in the front of the boat like I did earlier. He did a good job considering I was driving with my hat flopping in my face and Uli handing me a bottle of Stoli with a splash of Coke in it lol. We made it back in safely and caught our ferry back to Napoli. I took and awesome nap when we got back. There was a band gig in crew bar that night with the Blue Man band and some other guests. At one point Uli was singing and asked who was sober. I was the only one to raise my hand and we both had to laugh—at least I’m not the only one who believes in only getting drunk once a day!

Capri

Last Tuesday we took a ferry from Napoli to the gorgeous island of Capri. It was absolutely beautiful, but so hot! (And expensive) It's a major tourist spot, so it was crowded, but it was a lot of fun. We went up to on of the towns in a taxi with a driver who was working on his stand-up comedy. There were a lot of us and the group in the tack behind us could hear how loud we were laughing. The water there was the warmest sea water I've ever been in. I never wanted to get out! You could see right to the bottom and there were hardly any nasty fishy things to swim with (I don't do marine life.)

A giant tile map of Capri. I was standing on a terrance one story above this when I took this photo.

The natural pure white sunlight of the island makes the colors of the flowers seem even more saturated. (We were lost when I took this one. Adrian sent us down the wrong street to get back down to the port we needed to be at. And it was all downhill, so climbing back to the top in the ridiculous heat was not fun.)

A view from the top of the island

Another view from the saw spot.

And one more.

I guess this is one of the mot recognizable things on Capri. I just thought it was neat, so I took a picture of it. 

We're planning to go back to Capri one more time so we can rent speedboats for the day and just cruise around the island and drink and swim. Some other people from our department did that while we were there, but the rest of us wanted to see the island first. 

Liz's EPIC birthday

So this wasn't an excursion, but it certainly was an adventure. Liz, one of the lounge techs, had a birthday last week so we decided to do a ship crawl and hit almost all the bars on the ship and end in crew bar. It was a night of shenanigans that she doesn't remember. Everyone kept buying her drinks and shots everywhere, so that one drink in every bar turned into about 4 drinks in every bar. I looked around all day for something good to get her in Napoli, but didn't find anything. So I found a whole bunch of random crap to give her--including a rubber chicken.

The birthday girl. One of my random gifts was an "Emergency Mustache Kit" 

 Ashley (backstage tech) & Mike (Production Stage Manager for Blue Man & Legends)

I asked James (Blue Man sound tech) to take a picture of me and Uli and I got about 15 pictures like this of him and Al (Blue Man)

This was the picture we were trying for, and I found after about 20 shots of Al, James, the floor, my shoulder... everything but me & Uli (Blue Man captain)

All of these were in crew bar because we couldn't get too crazy in passenger areas and if we did, we shouldn't document it so we won't get in trouble. But this is basically what every night is like on the ship. We drink, we get silly, and we try not to get caught by security. We can't be out in passenger areas past 2am and we can never have a BAC over .08. It's really lame, but I've already seen people get kicked off because they were wandering the i-95 wasted at 6am. But anyway, it was a fun night and the following one Liz and I ended up at a cabin party with a couple of the Cirque performers and I didn't get to bed until 10am. It was rough, but watching the sun come up as we pulled into port was pretty awesome. 

Pompeii

Diane and I went to Pompeii a couple weeks ago, it was disgustingly hot out, but we had a good time. The city was much bigger than I expected, but we saw most of it (I think.) Except the frozen people, we couldn't find those. I was ok not seeing dead bodies preserved in the rock that killed them and wiped out the city. Diane was disappointed though.

From the top of the amphitheater, looking out over part of the city. This is the tiniest little portion, that whole place was massive.

 Amphitheater. The acoustics in that place are amazing! If you stand in the center of the stage and clap it's amazing how well you can hear it. They really knew how to build a theatre. Although, if we went back to that I know quite a few audio techs that would be out of a job, so I guess we'll keep the modern designs.

They even had a second stage right next to the big theatre! We didn't really go into this one, but I'm sure the acoustics are just a good.  

 Not sure what this was, but it was pretty :-) 

 We took a guess that this was their arena type venue for gladiator type events. They didn't have any signage, so we just made stories up about a lot of stuff. 

This was one of my favorites. It's amazing that this wall mural is still in such good condition after thousands of years and a volcano erupting all over the city. This was in a huge house which had paintings all over the walls. The colors were great, reds and yellows everywhere and this was tucked away at the back of the courtyard. 

This was the view as we left the ruins.

There were lots of pedestals and broken columns and such, so naturally Diane and I decided to be ridiculous statues on top of them. She posted more on Facebook, but this was the only one on my phone. I've got another where I'm falling over, it's pretty hilarious but I'm not posting it.

The Beach in Cannes

We had a very chill day on Friday in Cannes, France. We had a big group from our department just hanging out at the beach all day. We had a giant bottle of vodka, some juices, bread, olives, cheese, and sausage. It was fantastic, and I didn't get too burnt!

That's the Epic way out there. Cannes is a tender port, so the ship sits at anchor and we tender over to land in the life boats.

 My house.

The next day (yesterday) in Marseilles the traffic was awful so they stopped letting crew off the ship because the passengers were cued up waiting for busses and they get priority. Diane and I decided to explore the ship more and went to the arcade. I won the claw machine the first two times I tried it. Then we got pedicures at the spa. Not a total waste of a day.

Trevi Fountain & Spanish Steps

Another Roman adventure! Diane and I went out to find the Trevi Fountain and Spanish Steps on Wednesday. We got a little lost and detoured to lots of shops (we both have a bit of a shopping problem) but we eventually found both. At the steps we met a very nice old Italian man who recommended a great little restaurant around the corner and we chatted for a bit.

 Trevi Fountain. Yes, we tossed in our coins :-)

It was beautiful, but crowded so we didn't stay long.

Diane, my adventure partner. She's one of the Blue Man Group techs.

Nutella Gelato with fresh whipped cream. Heaven. (Yes we had this before lunch)

The Spanish Steps. Again, super crowded, but this is where we met our Italian friend.

Lunch was delicious. Lasagna Bolognese. Om nom :-)

The Vatican

The only major tourist excursion I've gone on so far was a trip to the Vatican in Rome. It was Al's birthday (one of the Blue Men,) and he wanted to go. My favorite part was that I was told around midnight that this trip was happening the next day and to meet up at 8:45. Anyway, the pope give his weekly address on Wednesdays, which happens to be the day that we port in Civitavecchia and Rome is a 45 minute train ride away. Since this was my first time off the ship, I let everyone else take the lead. One of our wardrobe girls, Katie, goes into Rome all the time and has been on the ship the longest of those of us that went. Elaine, one of the Legends dancers knew how to do everything too. Al, Diane (Blue Man props girl,) Greg (Blue Man music director & zither player,) and I pretty much let them take the lead in getting us on the right train, which we managed.

 Benny is up there under that tent. We were pretty far back because we got there after he had begun and didn't really go to see/hear him speak. We just wanted to go to the museum.

 Nameless mummy. It's ridiculous how perfectly the body is preserved though. 

There were lots of lion statues in the animal statue room, but this was was the coolest.  We named him Aslan.

Even the ceilings were something to look at! It was complete sensory overload, I had no idea where I should look or what I should take pictures of.

Tour groups were awful! The leaders would stop the whole group right in the middle of the corridors and block traffic. We managed to get around most of them though. This entire hallway was just one massive collection of art on the ceiling, it was difficult to walk and look at them and not bump into or step on anyone.

Since the Sistine Chapel is a sacred place, pictures are not allowed, knees and shoulders have to be covered, and you're supposed to be silent. It was crazy being in there, I never thought I'd get the chance, but my second week on the ship I ended up at one of the places I've always wanted to see. It wasn't anything like I expected, the colors were much more vibrant that I thought they'd be. It was really a great experience simply for the art and history there since I have no religious ties to it. Anyway, this spiral staircase was how you left the museum, it was just a cool shot that I liked.

Some castle, not sure what it's significance or story is, but hey it's a castle a few blocks from the Vatican! Al said he thinks they hid a pope there once. That's all I've got. 

We had lunch in a little cafe, it was pretty good nothing extraordinary to report about that. So yeah, that was my trip to the Vatican :-)

The Basics

I'm about 2 and a half weeks into my 6 month contract on the norwegian Epic, cruising around the Mediterranean for the summer. I guess we should do this right and start with the basics. Our cruise itinerary is:
Sunday: Barcelona, Spain
Monday: At Sea
Tuesday: Napoli (Naples,) Italy
Wednesday: Civitavecchia, Italy (Rome is a train ride away from this port)
Thursday: Livorno, Italy
Friday: Cannes, France
Saturday: Marseille, France

My job. My job title is "stage manager" but I also assist the Production Manager with some stuff. Basically I serve as a back up for the department. I'm learning to call all of the shows onboard, which are Legends In Concert (we have Rod Stewart, Madonna, and Elvis) and Blue Man Group on the main stage which is the Epic Theatre. In the Spiegel Tent we have Cirque Dreams & Dinner (which is not a CdS show, just a similar style of circus.) I've been calling Legends since the first week I got here and shadowing a lot on the other two. Cirque is difficult only because almost all the cues are safeties that can't go until the performers are safely set in certain places, so it's really just getting to know the show better. I could probably call that one at this point, I just haven't. Blue Man is very specific and mostly set to counts, so that one is the most difficult, but I'm comfortable with most of the sections. I also oversee the Nickelodeon events, mostly just spot checking them to make sure they are starting their events on time and that they have everything they need. There's also a Motown Cabaret in one of the dining rooms with the ensemble from Legends when they don't have shows in the Epic-so 3 times a week. I just have to get them there and take a few notes for that one though, the show runs itself and the techs know what they're doing--mostly. I don't really work all that much, I have all day to go play in port and then I come in around 5 or so to check e-mails and do a few paperwork type things, and work until about 11:30 or 12:30 depending on which show is happening. For the shows that the Production Stage Managers call, I just watch the shows or wander around the ship checking in with the other guest entertainers in the lounges and stuff like that. It's a pretty cushy job, and I have a "yellow card" which allows me to be in any passenger area and I'm allowed to take my name tag off when I'm outside of crew areas.

There's a lot of drinking onboard, mostly because there's nothing else to do. We usually end up in one of the lounges for a while and then head down to crew bar. On Wednesdays we have movie nights in the Epic theatre on the big projection screen. I've been reading a lot in my downtime too. I don't spend much time in my cabin, which I usually refer to as my shoebox. It's small, but it's a petty officer cabin, so it's not as small as a crew cabin and I have my own bathroom.

I think that covers the basics. I'll try to be good about updating this every few days or so. Eventually I'll put some pictures up too, but right now I'm using ship internet which is slow and expensive, so I'm calling it a post. I also need breakfast--I'm starving!

-Nikki