ms Zuiderdam in the Caribbean

We are currently on Holland America's ms Zuiderdam in the Caribbean. It is a beautiful ship with an amazing theater (see pictures). We had a great show with an amazing audience! You can't see it from the photo, but there is a lift on the front of the stage which we came up on at the beginning of the show. Very dramatic, very fun. The theater seats just under 1000 and we had two packed shows. The staff here is so accommodating and really made us feel at home. The orchestras on these ships continue to amaze us with their talent and abilities. The day of our show we get one rehearsal with the musicians. They basically have to sight read through our charts and make it sound like we've been playing together for years. And we manage to do all that in only one hour. Oh, and Jeff announced our recent engagement during our show. So now all the older ladies are coming up to me and asking to see my ring. Very sweet.

The other pictures are from a couple of our Caribbean ports. The first picture is of Road Town, Tortola. It's a very pretty port, but not a lot to do there. We enjoyed a tropical lunch by the pier...and all the chickens roaming the streets. The second picture is from one of our favorite ports, St. Thomas, US Virgin Islands. It's been 4 years since we've been here when we worked on Disney Cruise Line. Ironically, we are here with the Disney ship today. It's such a beautiful ship...though we don't exactly miss working there!

We did miss one of our ports, Grand Turk, due to the tropical storm Noel. The first two sea days were very rough. A lot of sick guests. The weather is now beautiful and very hot. Well, hot for us Seattlites! It's sunny, mid 80's out and very humid. Overall, we are having a ball here.