CRUISE MAP


View Cruise Destinations in a larger map

Sunday 31 October 2010

It's been a while!

Hi everyone.

Sorry it’s taken me so long to get this blog going. I’m now into the fourth week of my six month cruise and am having a great time onboard Holland America Line’s msRyndam.

So far I’ve visited countries such as the Bahamas, Jamaica, Cayman Islands, Mexico, Belize and Honduras. I’ll be covering each of these destinations in future blogs, complete with photos. In the meantime, here’s a picture I took at Grand Turk, during the first week of our cruise.

Grand Turk

Working on the ship is pretty fun. I’m the band leader of a trio, called the ‘Neptunes’ (the same trio appears on all Holland America Line – HAL – ships). My other band mates are a drummer called Marino from Italy and a bass player called Thomas from Texas. We play from 6.30pm to 11.30pm every night (yes, EVERY night) in the Ocean Bar, an open-plan area on the eighth deck of the ship complete with dance floor.

Our mandate is to play ‘dance music’ so we do a lot of ballroom / strict tempo pieces. HAL provide music books for us to play from (about 400 tunes spread over four volumes) which are pretty comprehensive. We’ve also brought our own Real Books which we dip into when nobody's looking!

In the coming weeks, as well as covering destinations, I’ll also show you around the ship, including some video of the Neptunes performing and a look at my cabin! I’ll hopefully be updating this blog more frequently now so be sure to check back soon.

Thanks for reading!

Peter

Friday 1 October 2010

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to my new blog which will be all about my cruise to the Caribbean!

I'm playing piano in a trio called the 'Neptunes' on the ms Ryndam, a Holland America Line ship (more details here)

During my cruise I'll be visiting Tampa, Florida, US; Key West, Florida, US; Belize City, Belize; Mahogany Bay, Honduras; Costa Maya, Mexico; Ocho Rios, Jamaica; Georgetown, Cayman Islands and Cozumel, Mexico.

I'll be taking two cameras with me: my Nikon D40 and my newly acquired Panasonic Lumix TZ10 as well as my laptop! Whilst internet might be patchy at times (and guaranteed to be very slow onboard) I'll hopefully find an internet cafe where I will be able to upload pictures and videos to here.

Don't expect grand essays on my trip (unless I suddenly feel inspired) but hopefully you'll enjoy following my adventures through the photos and videos I post here.

I fly out to Tampa on 9th October 2010 and return to the UK on 10th April 2011.

Enjoy the blog!

Peter
blog