Nearly finished!

Well what a whirlwind rehearsals have been!

We've just completed our third week of rehearsals. Having officially learned and run all three production shows, the directors gave us this entire weekend off for some well-deserved rest, homework-time, and some fun. Since I'm returning to the same ship that I did last year, the shows are all the same. I am doing some different parts than last time, so there was still plenty of new material to learn - along with changes to the shows along the way. So the past three weeks have been filled with an odd combination of forgetting some old, remembering some old, and learning some new. So my brain was a bit confused for a bit, but I think I've got a handle now on all the material.

Here's some shots of Scarborough - the town in North Yorkshire where we rehearse. Unfortunately, the weather has been the exact opposite from the beautiful spring we had last year. Like much of the US, we've had abnormally cold weather with lots of wind and snow.

 This building is The Spa. We rehearse in music and dance studios inside. The building is stunning.

Warm-up before rehearsal (The dancer girls bought matching pink onesies):

Aside from the work side of life - it's been so great returning here to Scarborough! The nearby Seamer Fisheries is still just amazing as I remember it from last year. I've had their Fish & Chips at least once a week.

The cottages they've built and furnished for us:

We celebrated Jacob's birthday our first weekend here. At the end of a crazy week of rehearsals, we definitely needed a chance to unwind with each other for a bit. A friend from the Infinity contract last year also came to visit from London. We had a big party to celebrate and explored cold-windy Scarborough the next day.

This week we have just three days of rehearsal. We'll run and clean the shows all week until our final run-throughs for company producers on Wednesday. Then a bunch of the cast is going home for a few days. Some of us will be staying here in Scarborough until we head to Manchester, UK on Saturday to fly out Sunday morning to head back to Florida to board the ship! So even though it's just three days of rehearsal this week, they'll be a full-on intense three days. Hope we make it through unscathed!

The men of the Infinity 2013 out in Scarborough this weekend:

Our director organized a discount sweatshirt order for us with Infinity 2013 printed on the sleeve/chest and nicknames on the back. A shot of our full company:

It's been an exhausting but exciting three weeks. Can't wait to spend the next 7 months with everyone. We're going to have a great contract exploring Northern Europe. Hopefully we'll get to explore a bit more before we fly to Florida on Sunday.

Rehearsal Travel

Well - We've made it. Barely.

After spending all week packing and cleaning our apartment to move out, we finally set off Saturday afternoon. We booked a Super Shuttle to transfer us from home to JFK airport. They again showed up early, so we rushed down the stairs with all our bags to keep them from waiting.  Yes - ALL our bags. Jacob and I each have 2 checked bags and a carry-on each. So our hands were FULL. Fortunately, our bags are relatively light this time. As this is our third cruise contract each, we finally have the swing of things when it comes to packing. We've left plenty of room in our bags for shopping and souvenirs - a huge problem here in European itineraries.

After a loooong ride on the Super Shuttle picking up about 5 additional passengers, we still arrived at JFK International Airport about two and a half hours before our flight at 7:20pm. Celebrity booked us both on an American Airlines flight direct from JFK to Manchester, UK. Now - typically I have not had the best experiences flying American. However - they really surprised me this trip. We had such an easy travel experience. We supplied a letter from Celebrity along with our Letters of Employment for the cruise ship in hopes of having our bag fees waived - and it worked!! Baggage fees are ridiculous these days, so that saved us over $60 each! Thank you, Celebrity and American! Our flight left on time, was smooth, and arrived on time. I tried to sleep the whole flight, but didn't have the best of luck with that - I never can sleep on a plane. 

Upon arriving in Manchester by 7:30am, we passed through Customs and then boarded a train from Manchester International Airport to Scarborough, UK. We did have to change trains in York (a tall order with all our luggage), but otherwise, the travel was smooth and carefree. We finally arrived at our housing in Scarborough by 1pm.

We're both excited to be returning to Scarborough, UK. It's such a different feeling from last time when everything was new. This time, we feel like Scarborough is already our home. We unpacked, went to the store, and met all our new cast mates last night. 

Everyone is very nice and super excited to get started with rehearsals. We all hung out last night, but then I had to pass out early. Having so little sleep the night before on the plane, my body had no idea what time it was. So I got a great night's sleep, woke up early this morning, and had time to write these blog posts.

Today's the first day of rehearsal. Nervous! But excited. So lucky and happy to be back here again.

Here we go!! Stay tuned.

- Cameron

Another European Cruise!

For those who aren't aware - I'm back on a European Ship Itinerary! And guess what - I get to share this one with Jacob!

I'm currently rehearsing with Qdos Entertainment to return to the Celebrity Infinity. We're rehearsing for 4 weeks in Scarborough, UK. We'll then join the ship in Ft. Lauderdale, FL. From there, I will repeat 2 Panama Canal cruises that I did last year. Then we head Trans-Atlantic!! Stops include England, Ireland, Scotland, Iceland, Norway, France, Spain, and Portugal.

I hope to update more like I did last time with such amazing ports. Stay tuned.

- Cameron

Nice & Florence

On the first day of our cruise, the Crew Welfare office organized a crew tour to Nice and Eze from Villefranche, and a big group from our cast decided to go. Overall, the tour was kind of a bust.. it was very rushed and uninformative.. But the places were beautiful! Nice was on the water, and then Eze up on the mountaintop.. they were both beautiful! Here's a photo of the French Riviera from the drive up to Eze.

Yesterday, however, I finally got to go into Florence for the first time!! It was BEAUTIFUL!! The highlight of the day was definitely just walking around.. It's such an awesome city. My favorite itinerary item, though, was the statue of David by Michelangelo. I can honestly say I was really shocked by how amazing it was! I'd always seen pictures of it and heard it was so amazing, but I didn't really get what the fascination was.. But in person, it really is awe-inspiring. First of all, it's huge!! I thought it was going to be life-size, but it's like 30 feet tall.. ha! I was so oblivious.. Overall, florence was beautiful! I did some really great wine tastings, saw the final resting tombs of Michelangelo, Galileo, and Machiavelli, and was dumbfounded by the Duomo.. It's just crazy to think that that's really where the whole Renaissance movement happened! They lived it there. It was so awesome to experience it.. I can't wait to go back and just get lost wandering the streets again.. Here's a few shots of my day. The first is an aerial shot from a lookout piazza over florence.. The second is in front of the Ponte Vecchio!

Today, we're in Civitavecchia outside Rome.. I've had enough of Rome for the time being, so I'm sitting in an internet cafe.. Tomorrow's a sea day and our Touch of Broadway show.. Then: Dubrovnik, Croatia and and overnight in Venice!

Hope everyone back home is doing well!

Miss you.

Saying Goodbyes

The back half of my cruise was more or less uninteresting.. After leaving Mykonos, I went on another tour from Kusadasi, Turkey. Because I had a very detailed tour of the Ephesus Archaeological Site when my parents were here, I opted to do a tour that didn't include the landmark. Instead, we visited two small country villages, did some wine tasting, and saw some local craft markets.. The tour was fine.. A good chance to relax mostly. there were only about 20 of us on the tour. Here's one of the farmers from the second village Kirazli:

Mostly, though, I've had some people that I know leave this cruise.. For one, the end of a contract, the other quit.. but it's weird. Not to quote anyone specific, but "People do come and go so quickly around here..." It's crazy! We're all on this ship for different lengths of time.. all the contracts are done on a rolling basis.. people come and go. So that kind of stunk for this cruise.. you just get used to a routine, familiar faces, etc. And then that gets taken away from you.. It's hard to make yourself a home when the surroundings are constantly changing.

Otherwise, we've officially hit the halfway mark!! I'm home in 3 months and 1 week. I'm having an amazing time exploring these amazing places, but I'm definitely ready to get back to the City and my friends..

Sorry for the lame update! who knows what will happen this next cruise..

Hope everyone is staying cool in the heatwave of the East coast these days! Missing you all..

Escorting Tours!

So this cruise, three different cast members have family cruising.. So, since all my friends are busy, I decided to sign up to escort a bunch of the passenger tours for free.. See what happens!! (When we "escort" we simply go along the tour.. it's the ship's way of providing staff with the opportunity to accompany these tours when there's an empty seat on the bus! ha. In return, we just fill out a short survey evaluating the tour so they can improve them for future guests).

I've been incredibly lucky and had a great time! Here's what I've done so far:

In Livorno, Italy I escorted a tour to the beautiful region of Cinque Terre. So we boarded the bus and drove for about an hour and a half to the small coastal town of Manarola. From there, we walked along La Via dell'Amore (a cliffside path along the Italian Riviera) to the next town Riomaggiore. After a few minutes to walk around, we boarded a small boat ferry to head to the next town.. Now.. these towns are literally cut off from the rest of the world.. the train system that goes there is only about 20 years old.. before that it was only the ferries.. but the cliffs are so steep, there aren't even docks!! the boat just pulls up against a rock and you hop on and off. HA! So we hop on the ferry and travel to Vernazza. Here we had about a half hour to wander around before boarding the ferry again and traveling to the last (and largest) of the 5 villages: Monterosso al Mare. Here we had two hours of free time where I found an amazing family-owned restaurant for lunch. An extremely generous couple on the tour even paid for my lunch! It was such a cool day. Now, there was really nothing to "do" in any of these towns, per se.. but the scenery was beautiful. I'd love the opportunity to go back and stay there for a few days and really see all the towns. it was beautiful. here's a few pictures:

The next day I went along for a tour into Rome. Now, by this time I have seen PLENTY of Rome.. ha! This tour, however, went inside the Colosseum - something I hadn't done yet - and spent more time in St. Peter's Basilica - where I really wanted to spend more time.. It's just so beautiful! So that was a fun day. It also included a delicious lunch!!

Yesterday, I was able to take a really cool tour to Mount Etna in Sicily - one of Europe's largest active volcanos! It was my first volcano - it was so weird. ha! They pretty much just took us to the volcano and gave us free time to wander around the craters. It was so cool! Overall, a nice day that would've been hard to get to without being on a tour.

Today I'm in Mykonos, Greece. A group of us got off this morning and rented some ATV's (4-wheelers) to get to the other side of the island for Paradise Beach! It was BEAUTIFUL!!! Such a great day.. I just sat in a lounge chair.. had some good Greek beer and Gyros.. also - Megan (in my cast).. her dad brought some goggles so I was able to do my first semi-snorkeling! I say semi because we didn't have a breathing thing.. so i just had to dive up and down all the time.. There was a huge rock under the water that had tons of plant life on it and, therefore, tons of fish! It was so beautiful!! The rock dove down about 15 feet on the far side of it, so you could see right down to the bottom of the water there too. It was beautiful!! I had such a great time chasing the fish under water.. And - to be honest - they did some chasing of me too. ha! it was really fun..

Now i'm in an internet cafe with some good fast internet that I'm using to call family and upload some pictures.. Not to mention to update all of you!!

Hope things are good back in the States!! I can't wait to come home in just over 3 months. Woo-hoo!!

The cruise after the family

WELL! As amazing as it was to have my family on board, it was definitely exhausting!! Getting up early everyday and running around these amazing cities.. then having to come back and do shows and stuff at night.. I had a blast and wouldn't change a second of it! But, after they left, I was ready to sleep in and take it easy for a few days!! So I did that (mostly) for this past cruise. Here are some highlights though from the past 12 days:

Our overnight in Venice.. First off, it was INCREDIBLY hot and humid.. I felt like I was back in Georgia or New York all over again.. the first day, though, I actually went to the top of the famous bell tower in St. Mark's Square!! The view was beautiful from up there.. The only reason we did it then was because there was no line.. It was so cool though. That night, they threw a Wine & Cheese Night party for the crew out on our crew pool deck.. I had a really nice night that night, overall. It was really great.

My other highlight was our last port day.. The Crew Welfare office often organizes "Crew Tours" at discounted rates for us to have something to do at the ports.. For Salerno, this cruise, they offered a trip by boat to a private beach.. They provided sandwiches, fruit, sodas, and beer for all of us.. Our entire cast (almost) ended up going.. So did a lot of the officers - including the Captain of the ship!!! We had a BLAST at the beach!! We all had our own beach chair.. The water was beautiful.. we rented a paddle boat for just 1 euro each and went around the rocks to an even more private beach that you can only get to by boat.. It was such an amazing relaxing and beautiful day!! I loved it.

Now, another cruise starts today.. with 1800 new passengers. It's crazy to think I have just under 4 months left of this contract.. and yet, our cruises are so long, that I only have 9 cruises left! It seems way shorter to think about it that way..

I miss everyone back home SOOO much. I can't wait to see you all again..

Thanks for all your love and support to those who read!! I miss you..