from burka's to bootyshorts

April 16^th and 17^th

Cartagena, Spain

Sorry about the delay ya’ll, the end of this world cruise has been intense. With rehearsals for our Broadway show and learning backup vocals to sing with Wayne Newton and going off at port, these days have been packed! So, Cartagena day was just splendid.  Jess, Eli, Nate and I wandered around in the morning and took tons of pictures before stopping at a coffee shop to get a cappuccino. Everyone began to order there coffees and I immediately said “wait, I want to put my Spanish that I have been learning to use. Hold up!”…..”tres cappuccinos por favor”. Haha not that difficult. However, it was good to know a little Spanish before going because surprisingly not a ton of people spoke English.

The architecture here was old, but with modern improvements. The buildings were gorgeous and the city was soooo clean! It was amazing! With Palm Sunday coming up, there were beautiful floral structures outside of churches. Also, there was a ton of graffiti that was so artistic I felt like I should have paid someone to look at these intricate designs. We then continued to walk up to the castle on top of the hill and kept on hearing really loud bird noises. Turns out, there was a park located there that had wild peacocks everywhere. It was incredible. They were so majestic. One of the peacocks literally put on a show for us….opened his feathers and paraded in a circle. I thought for sure this was a robot peacock cause this was too good to be true. Haha. We also ran into a band member from the Niew Amsterdam, which was docked with us…and had drinks with him. We could have all explored the newest ship in the fleet, but I was far more interested in exploring Spain yah? The end of the day consisted of me burning a hole in my bank account. Sooo much money spent! Ahhhh oh well, people warned me about this first contract world cruise syndrome….guess I couldn’t help it haha.

Cadiz- (Seville)

In the morning of Cadiz (pronounced cadithhh, which sounds like you have a speech impediment…ha) I got up really early despite the fact that we had a late rehearsal the night before. I got up, went to breakfast and was planning on going to Seville for the day with anyone who wanted to go with me. I was really unsure about going though. I was tired, and I didn’t want to get lost, or not make it back in time for rehearsal. Whenever you plan to go far away from port, you take the risk of not making the right train or bus and getting stuck having to fly back to the next port. It can be stressful. However, one of my friends from the casino, Marina and the artistic manager Kat and her friend Tiffany, all decided to take a day trip to Seville, even if it would only be for a few hours. It was Palm Sunday, so there were religious ceremonies happening everywhere, so our time got cut due to traffic and streets blocked off. But let me tell you, it was so worth going to see this place. It was full of flowers and old Spanish architecture and the fashion was just incredible. Even thought it was a religious holiday, the miniskirts and booty shorts were out! Quite a change from the religious clothing restrictions in the Middle East haha. It was a fashion show everywhere. 

The huge parade was probably the most interesting thing of the day. There were men and women in what looked like white long KKK outfits marching through the street. It was almost offensive. In our culture it means something totally different. But it was supposed to be beautiful to them. I felt uncomfortable, but tried to remember that the outfits stemmed from something good originally and then it turned corrupt. It was overwhelming to see that.  

Other than the parade, the whole town was just phenomenal. We didn’t have enough time to even have tapas, in order to make it back on the bus, so we just stopped and had wine and watched the parade. It was so nice to be with 3 random girls who just loved life. I love hanging out with different people all the time. The only bad thing about the day is that I lost my bus ticket back, and I was close to missing the 5:00 bus. Ahhh that made me nervous, but Marina reminded me my health is more important than a few extra Euros spent on another bus ticket. So true!