One Cruise Down...

Another busy few days onboard the Regent Seven Seas Voyager!  We have been in Stockholm for two days and are currently sailing to Copenhagen, Denmark, which will be the end of this first cruise.  I can’t believe this is only the first two weeks!  Since I last wrote we opened our last two large shows, “Ballroom Bravo” and “Jazz Legends.” 

“Ballroom” was fun because our new champion ballroom couple, Sasha and Elona from the Ukraine joined us finally!  We’ve been really excited to meet them and they had an excellent opening.  I have a feeling “Jazz Legends” will be one of my favorite shows to perform.  The music is excellent and it features each band member in a solo number.  The whole show is just really laid back and fun.  After a rough dress rehearsal and feeling a bit under-prepared (oops) we had a really successful night.  The audience enjoyed the show a lot and after the opening we decided to try and venture out into the city of Stockholm, Sweden for a couple hours.

We thought our Assistant Cruise Director, Chris, knew where he was going, but we ended up wandering around for about an hour and then finding that many of the places we wanted to go were only letting in people over 23 years old.  No good for us!  WE ended up heading back to the ship after being exhausted from our attempt to get out!  Ha ha!  Some things we learned about Sweden in our brief visit:

 

*Stereotypes are true: blondes rule over here.

*Swedish people are beautiful and skinny.  Really skinny.

*7/11 convenience stores are taking over Stockholm.  Terrifying.

*Stockholm is one of the cleanest AND most expensive cities in the world. 

 

Alright- I wish I could give a clearer picture also of what living on a ship is like.  There are great things like knowing that everything I need is within a 2-minute walking distance and that all my neighbors are really close.  There are horrible things about living on a ship also.  For instance: you never know when you may lose your balance.  You must know 3 ways to get anywhere just in case a water-tight door is closing.  (And potentially cutting off your appendages while closing.)  Pretty much everyday, though, I have some moment that takes my breath away.  I think I’ll start sharing those.  Today’s moment:

 

While eating a late lunch sailing around the coast of Sweden among tiny islands (no more than 10-20 acres large) I looked next to me.  I saw a man driving up in a boat to his home next to our large ship.  In his backyard was a rough outline for a tennis court he drew in the dirt and his bright yellow house looked happy sitting next to its bright red neighbor.  As I was watching this I realized that a flock of seagulls was flying right alongside the ship.  I was on the top deck and they were flying pretty darn high.  It was like we were racing each other.  There was one that literally looked over at me and was maybe 10 feet away, flying fast and high.  I couldn’t believe I had the privildge of sharing the skies for a second.

Love you all from the high seas!

Tripp  (with a little help from Lindsay Karchawer)