Disembarkation Day

All good things do come to an end.  We had to be out of our cabin by 8:30 am and were scheduled to disembark around 9:45.  We followed our morning routine and had a little time after breakfast before heading to a public area to wait for our group to be called.  We ended up being called at 9:15 to pick up our luggage.  My plan was to walk about 1/2 mile to  Café Du Monde Riverwalk for Beignets before heading a short distance to pick up our rental car. Well, the rain that was supposed to stop by 9am now looked to be continuing until 11am so we took a taxi to the Avis desk in a Hilton hotel. I had reserved the car for noon and most car rental agencies let you pick up your car before your scheduled time, but not Avis!  So we cooled our heels for 1 1/2 hours as our day got off to a rocky start.

Once we got the car we drove through he French Quarter. Here are two pictures of the buildings.  Love the french architecture with the railings. But a festival was about to begin so we did not stick around, but headed to our next destination.

That being the state of Mississippi!  For good measure we had lunch in MS. Neither Mary nor I had been in that state before so now the states that we have not visited is down to 1 state for me and 2 for Mary, with Arkansas on both our lists. 

Our other destination was to drive across the Lake Pontchartrain Causeway.  So we circled back to the west and were amazed to find it was 24 miles long!  That lake is immense! 

So with those goals accomplished, we headed to our hotel for the night. 

On to the WWII museum tomorrow!

Music - Day 6

It's hard to find the adjectives to describe Jay White's Neil Diamond Tribute Show last night!  Fast-paced, continuous top hits like Love on the Rocks, Forever in Blue Jeans, Song Sung Blue and he closed with America and Sweet Caroline.  He shortened a few of them in order to fit 12 songs into a 1 hour concert, including some dialogue.    He had the audience standing, clapping and participating in the concert. Mary and I came back to the room on a major "high" from the experience. It was clearly the best concert so far.

Kathy Lill - we know you would have loved this show.  I hope you can see it if he comes to your area.  

This afternoon was a 2 1/2 hour concert with all the musicians.  Each performed some of their own songs, then a duet with the next artist.  Carole King and James Taylor, James and Jim Curry, Jim and Neil Diamond.  It wasn't the high power of last night's concert, but was very smooth, and enjoyable to hear the popular hits from each artist's portfolio. Chris Nole came on stage with Jim Curry and got to play a piano solo of "I'm Sorry".
The group gathered for a final song together and sang  "Barbara Ann" by the Beach Boys.  A great ending for a super show!

The week's activities closed with a Goodbye Again style event in the evening.  Jim Curry used this event to promote his next music cruise - Alaska in May 2027 - as well as to individually recognize all the performers and the support staff for this event.  Afterwards we talked to a few friends, took some pictures, then headed back to our cabin to finalize packing and put our suitcases out in the hallway for the ship to take on shore for us to pick up in the morning.

The ship is now heading up the Mississippi river to New Orleans so we can get off the ship tomorrow. We are staying an extra day in New Orleans to see some of the sights and visit the National WWII Museum on Monday morning before heading to the airport for the flight home.

 

Music - Day 5

Last night's Jim Curry show was excellent, as expected.  All John Denver music and all familiar songs.  Jim had his regular band there along with Chris Nole.  No technical issues and a very enjoyable concert.  

Not much else to add, but the room was packed (also as expected).

Today we are stopping at Costa Maya. It's our third time here, once in 2005 on our second cruise and again in 2015 on the first of two back-to-back cruises that earned us Elite status. Not much here, just a long, hot walk to a busy shopping area with semi-aggressive Mexican shop keepers.  Not much to see, but they did have a group of flamingos.  

We walked around for a while, then headed back to the ship to avoid the heat and humidity.

The James Taylor performer was interviewed today.  He did a good job of telling about his background and covering some lesser known James Taylor songs. He also performed a couple of his own that were in the James Taylor style.   He was joined on stage by Gordon Lustig who pays guitar for Jim Curry and others.  

While the show was interesting, the highlight was hearing Gordon play his  song "I am Not James Taylor".  That brought the house down.  

We had dinner at Cagney's, the ship's steak specialty restaurant, tonight.  It was delicious!  We both had filets and I had a grilled bacon appetizer which was amazingly good. 

I had apple pie for dessert while Mary had the delicious 7 layer chocolate cake pictured on the right.

Next up is the Neil Diamond tribute concert which I will cover tomorrow.

Music Day 4

Chris Nole had a great show last night.  He opened with several of his ragtime pieces, answered a few standards questions from Jim Curry, then played more songs.  His piano artistry was clearly on display.

Later in the show, when he was performing songs by groups he played with, he was joined by the Currys to play Elvira by the Oak Ridge Boys. He was surprised to be joined by the Neil Diamond tribute artist, Jay White, to sing the low "umpappa" lines. 

Since the Currys were on stage, next they sang "Down Home Time" which Chris wrote and is one of my favorite songs.  

He then wrapped up the session with some audience Q&A.  What a great night! 

Last night's Italian dinner was excellent.   Mary had salmon again while I had spaghetti carbonara. We could not believe the size of the tiramisu dessert so we just ordered one and shared it.

Today the ship stopped at Harvest Caye,  NCL's private island.  It was a long walk down the pier, but we can now add Belize to our list of countries visited.  The island had quite a few activities available. The picture on the right of the next paragraph lists most of them. What was interesting is you could not use your ship card to pay for anything - strictly cash or credit cards

My highlight this morning was doing a zip line excursion.  The map on the right (click to expand) shows the course. Looks for markers 17, 18, then 10.  The first 3 segments were pretty standard, but segment 10 was laying down and flying like superman over the water! 

What a thrill!   

This afternoon was the Carole King tribute singer interview. She covered quite a bit of information about her music background and how she came to be doing a Carole King tribute for 10 years.   She also played a number of songs and was very entertaining.

This evening we attended the Choir of Man show in the main theater.   All I can say is what an energy filled show!  We arrived early, which was a good thing, since 15 minutes before show time, the cast wandered out and asked "anyone want free beer?" Of course I answered the call along with many others and headed for the stage (see photo on left).  

During the show, which featured  energetic dancing and beautiful harmonious singing, the cast came into the audience and brought several guests on stage to participate in the show.  

In summary, the entire show (which takes place in a pub) is hard to explain and needs to be experienced. They start a US tour in December.  I highly recommend it!

Later tonight we have the Jim Curry John Denver tribute concert so more about that tomorrow.

Music - Day 3

Last night's concert was a Carole King tribute. She opened with some well known songs (It's Too Late and So Far Away), then diverged into a few lesser known songs, but wrapped up with a great medley of songs that Carole and her songwriter husband wrote for many famous bands in the mid 1960's.  

Overall a good show, but left Mary and I a bit disappointed at not hearing more songs from the famous Tapestry album.

We had a fairly quiet morning (omelets in the buffet for breakfast) before going ashore at Roatan for a while.   This is our first visit to Honduras and is the farthest point south on this cruise.  The shopping area at the end of the pier was very tourist oriented and was quite busy with our 4200 passengers and 6700 from the Allure of the Seas.   

I was able to get a nice picture of our ship while in the port. 

After lunch we went to the Sing Along which was nice, but rather sparsely attended due to being a popular port day. 

We are eating at the fancy Italian restaurant again tonight.  

Tonight at 10pm is a in depth Q&A with Chris Nole which should prove quite interesting.  He'll play a few of his songs and will join with Jim and Anne Curry for at least one John Denver song.  More on that tomorrow!

Muaic - Day 2

Last night's James Taylor tribute performance was excellent!  We had front row seats and he had the "look" as well as the mannerisms down pat.    He sang several of James' main hits, but the concert was over so quickly.  That is probably because these concerts are allocated 1 hour, and we're used to a full 2 1/2 hour concert.  Fortunately all future concerts start at 10:00pm, not 10:30, which was kinda late for us. 

We enjoyed breakfast with Chris Nole, who was John Denver's keyboard artist from 1994 until 1997 when John died.  Chris has become a good friend and we had a great conversation about his career and the possibility of any future concerts with him and Mack Bailey. 

After breakfast we got off the ship and walked around the Cozumel shopping area. When it started to get hot and muggy we headed back to the ship.

I thought I'd talk about the ship a bit today. Once nice thing about NCL is they have little fish in the carpet that they are always swimming toward the from the of ship.  That helps when finding your way around.

Speaking of getting around, by today we are pretty good at finding where we need to go.  If going for food, we turn right out of our cabin, if going to a show, turn left;  unless heading to a specialty restaurant, then we go left.  It's nice that nearly all our shows are in the same room on desk 6.   

The lower right picture is our cabin.  It's a bit smaller than we imagined but has a spacious bathroom and nice balcony.  A few things took some getting used to, like the closet very close to one side of the bed, but we have adapted. 

This afternoon we had a Name That Tune session.  15 short song segments were played and you needed to guess the song title and who sang it.  The first round was songs from the late 50's so we did not do too good, but in the second round, covering the early 60's, we came in second!  

After that was a sing-along session with mostly recognizable tunes, but a few new ones. 

The last event for the afternoon was where Jim and Ann Curry covered their history and how they got into singing John Denver music.   It was very insightful and we learned some interesting details of their background.  They played several John Denver songs along with one of their own compositions. 

We had a simple turkey dinner in the buffet tonight, so no food pictures today.

Tonight is a Carole King concert, but more about that tomorrow. 

Music - Day 1

Mary started out the day with this neat pre-sunrise picture.  We had a nice breakfast before we started out the day with the first of 5 scheduled activities on this first day of serious music events.

The first session was an overview of the events planned for this week.  After that came two early afternoon events about up-and-coming artists, and a first sing-along of the week.
Then came a session with the Neil Diamond artist.  He told about how he got started, and sang a few Neil Diamond songs that were about Neil's early career.  It was quite the engaging talk!

We enjoyed supper in the Italian specialty restaurant. We both had a spaghetti carbonara appetizer. For the main course Mary had salmon and I had lasagna followed by tiramisu for Mary and cannoli for me.

The last event of the day is a James Taylor concert  concert, but that doesn't start for another hour so I'll post about it tomorrow.