Cruising toward home

Thursday, November 6th, Nassau Bahamas

We are sitting on the deck at the stern of the Pearl... Relaxing and waiting for the music to start...

We have explored Nassau... There is a statue of a young Queen Victoria... The site of the Royal Victoria Hotel, now a celebrated parking lot.. Climbing Prospect Hill to the fort... Through Gregory  arch, past the pirate museum, gift shop and bar...  We found Da Balcony, a cafe and bar, and in the evening, a night club... Here we sat, had conch fritters and beers...  The fritters were so good we ordered a second plate... 

So now, back aboard the Pearl, we sit and read...  Or at least Miss T does... I go back ashore, back to Da Balcony, were for the price of a beer I sit and use their wifi and clear the spam out of my mailbox, and post a couple of blog entries and a few pictures... Back aboard, I find Tina on the fantail, sitting and reading...

Eventually the music calls...  Again... First Joan Osbourn, then dinner, the Indigo Girls from the front row, then rush upstairs for an "intimate" concert with Emmylou... By now Miss T is toast, but I continue, catching the end of Deering & Dunn and most of Sonia Leigh...  I need to see more of Deering & Done... I really like Sonia Leigh...


Now Friday, November 7th... At Sea,

I have been up for some time, sitting with coffee and working on the Colorado project... Tina slept in... now just after 10:00 (am... Even Tina the "human cat" can' sleep that late...)  today we are at sea, wasting time just off the Bahamas, making big lazy circles in concert with several other cruise ships,  in international waters, where shipboard gambling and tax free retail, the twin pillars of the cruise business model are legal... There is an ongoing pool party the Caribbean house band...

Today the music starts a bit after noon... It is a badly kept secret that Shawn Colvin will be performing with "friends"... We understand that one of the "friends" is Emmylou, but friends has been mentioned in the plural form, and the other or others is a mystery...  We get there a few minutes early, claiming seats in the front row off to the right...

Shawn's friends turn out to be Emmylou and Anne Wilson of Heart...   Anne Wilson turns out to be the surprise of the cruise... As Heart she still has the voice and presence for hard core rock (the "Dog Show"). Heart's second concert showed the bands softer side... Now with Shawn and Emmylou we saw more...

Joan Osborn's last show came next... Her surprise was Sonia Leigh, one of the showcase acts who joined her for a couple of songs...   Joan was the surprise walk on for both the Indigo Girls and Emmylou as the big shows came to an end...

Again, Tina went to bed while I checked out the showcase acts... This last evening I ended with Deering and Done  out of Skagway Alaska, via Memphis... She on rhythm guitar and vocals, he on electric blues guitar...   I enjoyed their act with a glass of bourbon... They have a Civil Wars style interplay...  His guitar has that bluesy old cigar feel... But I am not sure how they will evolve...

Saturday, November 8, Miami Florida

We are docked... People are starting to disembark...

I am sitting with cup of coffee on the fantail... There are  more seagulls than the 9th inning at AT&T... One just got lucky and scored a slice of bacon.  I am trying to check email, but the data connection via my phone is painfully slow... I can get a decent connection in the desert... But not in a major city...  I will give up soon...

They have cleared the ship for walk offs, those people who didn't bring more luggage than they can carry.... The rest of the passengers are at the mercy of the colored luggage tag...

We will walk off with our luggage... But not just yet... Our son is picking us up in the curiously colored jeep... It is bright green, a color I call "electric iguana green"...   At least it should be easy to spot in a sea of yellow taxis... We have talked and his is nearly an hour away...  Another sea gull just got lucky...

Now near 8:30... T and I have gathered our bags and decamped, dragging bags upstairs to the 12th floor for coffee, food and a place to sit with a view... A phone call says the son is on his way...   We head downstairs...

Actually leaving the ship proved problematical...   The gang way was near the bow (aka the pointy end) so we took the forward elevator down to the 4th floor... Only to be sent towards the stern... All the way to the stern... Then back the other side... Back towards the bow... Then they suspended disembarkation for a while... Trapping us with several hundred of our closest friends in a long hallway... Eventually they announce disembarkation was suspended...  Eventually we started moving again...  The gangway was particularly steep...  We are docked at a temporary facility in a tent without the airport style gangways... It wouldn't normally be a problem, but generally, you don't have luggage when using the ship's gangway...

Finally off we walk through customs and immigration, and outside where we find a bright green jeep parked among the buses...  We jam in luggage... I get the back seat... The lovely Tina gets the front seat...  We drive along the A1A through Miami Beach, to Ft Lauderdale for lunch at Johnny V's, then off to the airport...

It's now 6:15 pm... We are aboard Jet Blue flight 277, watching the flight attendant put on a life vest...  In a bit more than 6 hours we will be home...