Cadiz, Spain

Stage Manager’s Log
M.S. Prinsendam
Sunday, June 4, 2006
Cadiz, Spain

So this morning I got up just in time to get a hot breakfast. Barely… I ate out on the aft terrace of the Lido where there was actually a view of the town. The city of Cadiz is right on the water so the port is basically right in town, as opposed to some of the other ports where you had to take a shuttle or taxi from the ship to the town center.

After breakfast I headed down to the TEAM room for today’s ISO 14001 Tier 3 training course. All department managers have to take this course. A lot of it is review from the other trainings we had, but they have to review it with department heads every few months I guess. This of course was my first time,

After the meeting was over, about 1200 ship’s time I got ready to get off the ship. We stayed on ship’s time today instead of making a two hour time change to local time since we would be changing again the next day. I guess they also didn’t want to do two hours in one night. It didn’t really matter, we were just two hours behind local time.

I got off the ship alone as most people I knew were getting off earlier. I thought that I was going to meet Buddy Mitchell, the pianist from the Crow’s Nest Lounge, but I didn’t run into him until I was going back to the ship. While I was walking through one of the big squares in front of a beautiful cathedral I did run into Stephen (from the cast), and Rich (from the front office). We had lunch together at a little café on the street and then walked around a bit. Cadiz is a beautiful town with lots of colors and narrow cobblestone streets. The thing that was a bummer was the fact that it was a Sunday, and in a Catholic country, not much is happening on Sunday. Most of the shops were closed, but it was still nice to walk around.

I was back on the ship at 1430 after an adventurous walk trying to make my way back to the cruise dock. I had a sound check with Peter in the Crow’s Nest where he was giving his debarkation talk for the people getting off tomorrow. As soon as that was done I had a sound check with tonight’s performer, Rustem Hayroudinoff, a pianist.

As we were leaving port I had a short phone call with Becca back at home. Unfortunately we were leaving port at the time and the reception was getting bad. hopefully we will have a better chance to talk in another port. Also during sailaway the wind was so strong that it blew one of the deck chairs off the deck. At that point they decided to cancel the band playing for sailaway. I would have liked to see the chair go flying.

Tonight we had early showtimes so that the guests who are getting off tomorrow in Lisbon have time to pack. So I had dinner at 1800 as usual, but the first show was at 1845 instead of the usual 2030. That is not such a bad thing, it means that I get done earlier. And Since I was done earlier I had time to go to the movie tonight, “Fun With Dick and Jane.” It wasn’t the best, but it wasn’t too bad.

After the movie it was off to bed, we have an hour forward tonight, and I want to have some energy to see Lisbon.