Day 5 - Thursday Feb 5

Thursday - Day 5

Today is supposed to be our day of relaxing in the sun at the beach on Norwegian’s private island of Great Stirrup Cay.

Well, it was not to be and yesterday we were told that due to the poor surf conditions at Great Stirrup Cay we would not be able to tender at the island. Instead we are going to Key West, FL. As this was very unexpected, obviously, we had done no research on Key West so we were not going to do too much as this is a long day for us. 2 words can describe our time in Key West - VERY COLD!!

Since it was kinda cold, surprisingly, this made Stan crabby and we didn’t spend too much time there. We did walk around downtown for a little bit, had a really good piece of Key Lime pie and coffee, got some souvenirs and then ate lunch at a great little place called Roof Top Café.
Well that was our stop in Key West. We're sure it is a great little place but Stan just was in no mood for the cold weather. Oh well, guess it happens to all of us at some point or another.

Anyway, we got back on the boat around 2 and time to starting thinking about how to make the most of our final night on the ship. With it being pretty cold and the schedule calling for a show out on the pool deck to start in the evening followed by a couple of indoor main theatre shows and ending with a late night outdoor jam we have plenty to think about regarding our clothing situation. At 4:30 we dressed in long pants and long sleeves and headed up to the pool deck for the sail away show by Gaelic Storm (our 3rd time seeing them this cruise). As we got there about an hour and half before show time we started chatting with another guy there who grabbed a couple of chairs and put them right up front of the stage. We followed suit and no sooner than us the rest of the people hanging out on the deck grabbed a few chairs or just stood in their spot for the show. Luckily for us we ended up right in the first row just left of center. AWESOME!! This makes baring the cold that much easier. The band came out and played fantastic even with it being so cold and Patrick seeming to be under the weather as he was “broken” the night before from a late night partying.
The show ended with Patrick leading a Conga line from the stage up to the 2nd level of the pool deck, around the upper level and down the other side stairs, directly to the pool where - yep you guessed it - Patrick jumped in followed by a few crazy souls. What a crazy, great ending to a trifecta of GS shows.
Thanks to BNL and Sixthman for exposing us to another great band that we have fallen in love with.

With the first outdoor show of the night over and a couple of indoor shows next we headed to our cabin to remove some of our layers and have our heavy clothing ready for after the BNL show. First we went to dinner and checked out the merch store (again!). Amy wanted to see what our charges to the room were and even though we have assigned seats for the show Stan was getting anxious about getting to the Sarah McLaughlin show as he was really looking forward to this since she was announced on the cruise. So Stan went to the theater and Amy went to the reception desk and she met him in the theater. She made it by the 8:30 start time and as usual, with just about everything on board, the show was late and Amy didn’t miss a thing. On my way to the theater, before the show started, Stan noticed a sign that made him both excited and bummed at the same time. The late night shows on the pool deck have been moved indoors to Bar City. So Yeah! We won’t freeze tonight but at the same time the new venue is quite small and the late night jam finale is a big event. All of our heavy clothing planning was for naught. Sarah’s set started at about 8:40 and it was amazing! Obviously she sang and played guitar on some songs and piano on the others. She was backed by Tyler and Jim from BNL and Melissa McClelland and Luke Doucet. Sarah also asked Butterfly Boucher to sing on 2 songs. Did we say it was fantastic??!?!
With Sarah’s show over and at least 45 minutes before BNL, we headed up to our cabin to get rid of our heavy clothing since we will not be going outdoors anymore tonite. We made it back in plenty of time for BNL and they started their set about 10:15 and of course it was great. At the time we did not realize that this would be the last time that we would be seeing Steven Page playing in the Barenaked Ladies.

The show ended and we headed over to Bar City for The Odds then Acid Wish’s All-Star Jam. As expected the place was packed. We managed to squeeze our way to the left of the stage probably about 8-10 rows back in the standing room only floor. As the night went on and the hour getting later more people started to leave and we kept moving up as expected. By the time the show ended we were in about row 1½. At around 3:40AM during a raucous version of the Proclaimers “I Will Walk 500 miles”, the power went out. Ed made a sign saying they “blew a circuit and they were working on fixing it“, however we have a feeling that Norwegian were not working real hard to get it fixed. The remaining performers would have none of the silence and urged the crowd to continue the “na na na na na, na na na” part of the song. After about 10 minutes of this you could tell we were just about done for the night. Then all of a sudden someone started to sing the ending to “Hey Jude”.
Still with no power, the guys on stage leading the sing along about 100 more times, they finally ended the last refrain of “Hey Jude” making a perfect end to the cruise…well that is until the audience decided they were gonna be the ones to say when the jam/cruise was over. A few audience members started singing Hey Jude again then the voices carried from audience member to audience member like a wild fire before every member of the audience was singing. By now the guys on stage just stood there in amazement as we continued. The guys on stage then took our lead and started again playing whatever percussion instrument they could find. Then after what seemed like another 100 times of Hey Jude it was over. 4:10AM and we were done. WOW! We stuck around for a few minutes seeing all the guys say goodbye to each other and then we made our way up to the garden café once more for a late night, now early morning snack. This time it only consisted of a few glasses of water and ice tea and some cookies we had in our room. We went to bed a 4:30 to get some sleep and get up around 8 to pack and grab breakfast before disembarkation.

What a long a wonderful day!