Day at sea
We both woke up this morning around 7:30. After taking a look at the schedule for the day, we showered and got ready for breakfast.
The ship has a breakfast buffet every morning in the Garden Cafe which is located on the pool deck. We both enjoyed our omelets at the made-to-order station that they had. After breakfast we go back to the room to get ready for the now infamous "naked photo" at 10:00. Getting ready for this is actually pretty easy--you just throw on your robe (with nothing on underneath) and proceed to the pre-determined spot, which was the pool deck. If you are reading this and you have never heard of the naked photo, this is something the band started on their first cruise. About 500 of us showed up the first year and we all dropped our robes for about 10 seconds for a "naked at sea" photo and have conituned doing it since. They had security standing guard only allowing those participating in the photo on deck. They had about 850 of us crazy "dippers" in the picture this year (slightly less than last year). And even some crazier ones actually jumped in the pool for the picture when the photographer called for some 'floaters" to fill in the pool area of the shot! (If your curious, the floaters convinced the band to jump in with them!) No, we didn't jump in the pool, but we did have a good spot this year and we will leave it at that.
Back at the room and clothed, we stopped by the Reverb room, Reverb is an environmental organization that BNL supports. They offer up suggestions for offsetting our carbon footprint on the environment, and give out cool samples. As with previous cruises, they were running a raffle for tickets to the BNL shows and we bought two chances for tonight's show. They told us the winners would be announced after 4:30 -- see you then! We then went to the David Bergman photo seminar slated for 11am. David is the photographer for the naked photo as well as BNL's tour photographer. He was offering a seminar where he was showing his work, BNL related and his other subjects, and fielded questions from the group. Most of the questions asked were about taking better concert photos. David offered up his suggestions and we blame him for the 1800+ pictures we took during our trip, mostly during the shows, trying to get that one great shot.
The seminar lasted about an hour, then it was over to the Garden Buffet for lunch. We don't remember what we had but we're sure it was decent. Next we went to the Stardust theater to line up for BNL's Snacktime show.
Snacktime is BNL's first children's album that was released last year. They were letting all the children in first with their parents (yes, a lot of people brought their kids on the cruise) and then they would let everyone else waiting fill in. We were happy to get into this as the line we were in stretched most of the ship and we weren't sure that there would be room. Even happier that we found seats in the third row, left side. The show started at 1:30 (1:45 actual time) and the band played all the songs from Snacktime as well as some other crowd favorites that were kid friendly like One Week and If I Had A $1,000,000. The band's energy was great for the kids and they put on a great set.
By 3:00, we had a few hours of downtime, one of the few times during the whole week that we were free, we decided to swing by The Sean Schau. This is comedian Sean Cullen's type of 'variety hour'. We only stayed about 15 min as we arrived in the middle of the show. If we caught it from the beginning we might have enjoyed it more but we just weren't feeling it. Throughout the rest of the cruise the show was replayed on the ship's TV and it was pretty funny. We took a walk out by the pool, Amy was wanting some outside sun time, and we thought maybe we'd take a little nap outside. Well, it was quite windy out and after about 20 minutes of the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds, we decided to take our nap to the cabin.
Before heading out for dinner, Amy wanted to stop by the Reverb room to see if the winners were announced for the concert tickets. We got there at 4:45 and didn't see any names posted. Stan figured they didn't do the drawing yet and was ready to leave, but Amy wanted to ask. She found out they held the drawing at 4:30 and you needed to be present to win. What? Nobody said that this morning, just to check back. She explained this to them and they said "yeah, I heard him say that to you. What was your name?". She gave them our name and found out that our names were actually drawn! We did win and we got the tickets!
This is great but now this messes up our night. We wake up, plan our day, and think we have it all worked out but our best laid plans are always at the mercy of the powers that be.
We decided to eat dinner at Azura, one of the ships main dining rooms. Stan had the lobster selection and Amy chose beef wellington--mmm good (well, sort of).
Our plan was to see Gaelic Storm play out on the pool deck at 8 but based on the game of hide and seek that the sun was playing with clouds earlier we knew the weather would not hold up. Sure enough we were right. While we were eating we thought we saw lighting. After we ate we headed out to the pool deck to see what was going on as Butterfly Boucher was scheduled to be playing there. Well it was pouring! No shows out on the pool deck tonight. Now the big question was where Gaelic Storm would be playing as we really want to see a full show by them. As we were standing by the doors to the pool deck watching the rain, right behind us comes Steve Twigger, singer/guitarist for Gaelic Storm. We figured if anybody would know where Gaelic Storm would be playing it would be him. He says they are playing in Bar City at 9:00. Well now we know where we are going.
On our way down to Bar City we stopped in the Atrium to see Mike Evin.
We never heard of him before and only caught a few songs but they were really good. When we got there Mike was playing piano and Andy Creeggan, an original member of BNL, was there playing percussion. The crowd really liked him and they did a awesome version of Billy Joel's Piano Man complete with the full audience singing along. CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO.
As it was getting closer to Gaelic Storm's start time we left the Atrium and headed over to Bar City. The new start time was 9:00 but they started a little late and we would have to leave before the show ended as the BNL show started at 10:00. Once again we would not get our chance to see a full Gaelic Storm show.
We made it over to the Stardust at 10:00 for BNL. We had pretty decent seats, toward the back on the left side. There were about 6 empty seats to the left of our row so Amy was happy to have lots of room to dance. They came on around 10:20 and as usual rocked a great show. Of note, was the crew made the band a "bucket of balls" in which they placed the names of all of the songs that the band had not yet played on any of their cruises, on ping pong balls. The guys in the band would pick out a ball and play the song that was on it. One of the balls that was pulled, Ed didn't even recognize as a BNL song!(and it was on their last album!) With a little coaxing from the other guys and the audience, he figured it out, played it and then resumed their regularly scheduled show.
After BNL, we stayed in the Stardust for a comedy show by Kevin McDonald from the Kids In the Hall. He was joined by Craig Northey from The Odds playing guitar as background music. We didn't stay long as it was getting late and the comedy was way out there. After heading up for our ritual late night snack, we go to bed with an extra hour of sleep coming to us. In the morning, we will be docked in Cozumel and also, a new time zone!
We both woke up this morning around 7:30. After taking a look at the schedule for the day, we showered and got ready for breakfast.
The ship has a breakfast buffet every morning in the Garden Cafe which is located on the pool deck. We both enjoyed our omelets at the made-to-order station that they had. After breakfast we go back to the room to get ready for the now infamous "naked photo" at 10:00. Getting ready for this is actually pretty easy--you just throw on your robe (with nothing on underneath) and proceed to the pre-determined spot, which was the pool deck. If you are reading this and you have never heard of the naked photo, this is something the band started on their first cruise. About 500 of us showed up the first year and we all dropped our robes for about 10 seconds for a "naked at sea" photo and have conituned doing it since. They had security standing guard only allowing those participating in the photo on deck. They had about 850 of us crazy "dippers" in the picture this year (slightly less than last year). And even some crazier ones actually jumped in the pool for the picture when the photographer called for some 'floaters" to fill in the pool area of the shot! (If your curious, the floaters convinced the band to jump in with them!) No, we didn't jump in the pool, but we did have a good spot this year and we will leave it at that.Back at the room and clothed, we stopped by the Reverb room, Reverb is an environmental organization that BNL supports. They offer up suggestions for offsetting our carbon footprint on the environment, and give out cool samples. As with previous cruises, they were running a raffle for tickets to the BNL shows and we bought two chances for tonight's show. They told us the winners would be announced after 4:30 -- see you then! We then went to the David Bergman photo seminar slated for 11am. David is the photographer for the naked photo as well as BNL's tour photographer. He was offering a seminar where he was showing his work, BNL related and his other subjects, and fielded questions from the group. Most of the questions asked were about taking better concert photos. David offered up his suggestions and we blame him for the 1800+ pictures we took during our trip, mostly during the shows, trying to get that one great shot.
The seminar lasted about an hour, then it was over to the Garden Buffet for lunch. We don't remember what we had but we're sure it was decent. Next we went to the Stardust theater to line up for BNL's Snacktime show.
Snacktime is BNL's first children's album that was released last year. They were letting all the children in first with their parents (yes, a lot of people brought their kids on the cruise) and then they would let everyone else waiting fill in. We were happy to get into this as the line we were in stretched most of the ship and we weren't sure that there would be room. Even happier that we found seats in the third row, left side. The show started at 1:30 (1:45 actual time) and the band played all the songs from Snacktime as well as some other crowd favorites that were kid friendly like One Week and If I Had A $1,000,000. The band's energy was great for the kids and they put on a great set.By 3:00, we had a few hours of downtime, one of the few times during the whole week that we were free, we decided to swing by The Sean Schau. This is comedian Sean Cullen's type of 'variety hour'. We only stayed about 15 min as we arrived in the middle of the show. If we caught it from the beginning we might have enjoyed it more but we just weren't feeling it. Throughout the rest of the cruise the show was replayed on the ship's TV and it was pretty funny. We took a walk out by the pool, Amy was wanting some outside sun time, and we thought maybe we'd take a little nap outside. Well, it was quite windy out and after about 20 minutes of the sun playing hide and seek with the clouds, we decided to take our nap to the cabin.
Before heading out for dinner, Amy wanted to stop by the Reverb room to see if the winners were announced for the concert tickets. We got there at 4:45 and didn't see any names posted. Stan figured they didn't do the drawing yet and was ready to leave, but Amy wanted to ask. She found out they held the drawing at 4:30 and you needed to be present to win. What? Nobody said that this morning, just to check back. She explained this to them and they said "yeah, I heard him say that to you. What was your name?". She gave them our name and found out that our names were actually drawn! We did win and we got the tickets!
This is great but now this messes up our night. We wake up, plan our day, and think we have it all worked out but our best laid plans are always at the mercy of the powers that be.
We decided to eat dinner at Azura, one of the ships main dining rooms. Stan had the lobster selection and Amy chose beef wellington--mmm good (well, sort of).
Our plan was to see Gaelic Storm play out on the pool deck at 8 but based on the game of hide and seek that the sun was playing with clouds earlier we knew the weather would not hold up. Sure enough we were right. While we were eating we thought we saw lighting. After we ate we headed out to the pool deck to see what was going on as Butterfly Boucher was scheduled to be playing there. Well it was pouring! No shows out on the pool deck tonight. Now the big question was where Gaelic Storm would be playing as we really want to see a full show by them. As we were standing by the doors to the pool deck watching the rain, right behind us comes Steve Twigger, singer/guitarist for Gaelic Storm. We figured if anybody would know where Gaelic Storm would be playing it would be him. He says they are playing in Bar City at 9:00. Well now we know where we are going.
On our way down to Bar City we stopped in the Atrium to see Mike Evin.
We never heard of him before and only caught a few songs but they were really good. When we got there Mike was playing piano and Andy Creeggan, an original member of BNL, was there playing percussion. The crowd really liked him and they did a awesome version of Billy Joel's Piano Man complete with the full audience singing along. CLICK HERE FOR VIDEO.As it was getting closer to Gaelic Storm's start time we left the Atrium and headed over to Bar City. The new start time was 9:00 but they started a little late and we would have to leave before the show ended as the BNL show started at 10:00. Once again we would not get our chance to see a full Gaelic Storm show.
We made it over to the Stardust at 10:00 for BNL. We had pretty decent seats, toward the back on the left side. There were about 6 empty seats to the left of our row so Amy was happy to have lots of room to dance. They came on around 10:20 and as usual rocked a great show. Of note, was the crew made the band a "bucket of balls" in which they placed the names of all of the songs that the band had not yet played on any of their cruises, on ping pong balls. The guys in the band would pick out a ball and play the song that was on it. One of the balls that was pulled, Ed didn't even recognize as a BNL song!(and it was on their last album!) With a little coaxing from the other guys and the audience, he figured it out, played it and then resumed their regularly scheduled show.
After BNL, we stayed in the Stardust for a comedy show by Kevin McDonald from the Kids In the Hall. He was joined by Craig Northey from The Odds playing guitar as background music. We didn't stay long as it was getting late and the comedy was way out there. After heading up for our ritual late night snack, we go to bed with an extra hour of sleep coming to us. In the morning, we will be docked in Cozumel and also, a new time zone!
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