Week 5 So Far

Well it’s been quite an eventful week 5 so far! Today was an unbelievably warm day in Ketchikan – as in 85 degrees, I-got-a-tan warm. Locals said it never gets this warm! It was warmer here today than it was back home in Boston…weird?

This evening, a priest who is vacationing on board organized and officiated a Catholic mass in the “Cinema” on board. It was the Feast of the Assumption of the Holy Mary and it was a lovely service. It was so nice of the Father to donate his vacation time on this holy Sunday. I forgot how much I missed that weekly tradition – it’s been 4 weeks!

I’ve met a lot of great passengers this week – a woman from Thailand who is vacationing with her elderly father is my new best friend. I also met a couple from Jamaica Plains who had just eaten at Finz in Salem before they left for the cruise! They were very impressed. Overall, everyone is in excellent spirits because the weather has been SO kind to us. It really does make such a difference in the passengers’ vacation and the morale of the crew.

We had a chance to see some meteor showers on Friday night – the stargazing is just amazing up on the top decks late at night. Mostly what we saw were bats flying in the sky – but they looked pretty cool under the light of the stars. There is so much scenery and activity out here that I would never get to experience otherwise. I now understand why Alaska is such a hot destination for people all over the world.

This week we got a new dancer. She has performer on Celebrity ships before, but she was sent out for the last 5 weeks of this contract because one of the other dancers really hurt her back and was sent home about 4 weeks ago. It’s been surprising to me how little consideration there is for illness onboard. If one of the dancers is sick, the dance captain has to re-choreograph the entire dance. Amy arrived on board on Friday and was in the show Saturday night. The guitarist on board has been under the weather, and it’s hard to account for these kinds of things happening. My wrists have been giving me a lot of trouble, but there’s no one else to do my job so we all persevere. There’s so much behind-the-scenes work that goes on to make sure everything runs smoothly when we run into unexpected problems; there is no barring accidents.

Another thing I was not aware of is tipping. There are no tip jars out on our ship at all – I believe it’s a fleet-wide policy (which is not the case on all cruise lines). I was playing a solo set in our Café and an enthusiastic audience member asked me if she could tip me. I didn’t know what to say, so I politely declined (now I’m having visions of hundred dollar bills….). When I checked with my boss later, he said technically the answer is no. But as long as you don’t say ‘yes’…

Always an adventure on the Celebrity Infinity!