I'm writing this, my 1st official trip entry from under the sea just outside Santorini. No, don't worry, the ship hasn't sunk already, although I'm told we are near the spot where the recent cruise ship sinking did occur! Oh Joy!! The reason I'm underwater is because my cabin is down in the depths of the ship, which makes for a rather noisy night when the sea is rough as it was last night.
Yesterday was pretty eventful to say the least, that being said I actually spent the majority of it standing or sitting around without the faintest idea what was going on around me - a pretty scary thing to do considering I'm in a foreign country and there didn't seem to be many English speakers around to lend a hand. After the way all planning and organisation had gone so far I wasn't too surprised that I wasn't given the red carpet treatment when I stepped onto Greek soil, so after a comfortable enough flight watching Miss Potter I was delighted that my bags were the very first two on the conveyor belt and as soon as I got to the gate there was a rather dodgy looking Greek Taxi driver holding a sign, not for John-Marc or any other variation of my name but for Jon-Mark, things were looking pretty good!
I'm afraid it went down hill from there though! The taxi driver told me that someone else was due to be picked up so did we just had to wait for a bit for the flight to come in. No problem I thought until 10 minutes later he said we'd just leave and someone else would get the other guy. So half way into our 20 minute drive in a nice big Mercedes taxi the driver starts getting rather irate with the guy on the other end of the phone. When he finally hangs up he tells me we are now taking a detour to his house, where he'll finish the fare with his private car and another guy will take the taxi to go pick up the other guy from the airport. In hindsight I should have suggested we head back to the airport ourselves as I was later to discover that the 'other guy' was the only other person who has anything to do with Thomson or Peel (the two companies I work for) in sight. I finally get dropped off at the boat, which looked pretty impressive, no picture as yet though I'm afraid. To cut a rather long story short, after boarding at the crew entrance, for the next two hours I was passed from one person to the next, few of whom could string together a sentence (probably in their own language let alone English) until some nice lady introduced me to Adrian (up to now known as the 'the guy'), found us a passenger cabin each, before disappearing of into thin air once again.
Fortunately Adrian has worked with Peel as the light designer for the last few seasons, so when he knocked on my door an hour later some things started falling into place. I could detail all the ins and outs but I fear if your not already asleep it might send you needing a pillow. Most important thing being that before my head hit the pillow that night I had a decent meal inside me and had visited the bar.
So it's actually on Day Two that I'm writing at the moment and it seems it may actually be a while until I get internet access, so although I feel like I've quite a bit to say it will turn into a novel before the time when I'll get to post it on-line. The reason for the internet issue and most problems that I've been faced with so far is because the ship is currently being used by a different cruise company, 'Louis'. This ship was not supposed to be operational but the booking from ship that sank a few weeks ago have been transferred here, hence the general chaos and confusion. For that reason there actually isn't a huge amount of work that can be done at present as all the theatre and show spaces are being used for the current entertainment. That being said I've spent all afternoon clearing out the sound booth in 'The Regency Show Lounge', no mean feat I can tell you! It was full of junk, old equipment covered in dust just scattered everywhere, and with it being rather compact to put it nicely it has certainly benefited from the clear out.
I'll get more organised and post something more coherent next time I get a chance!!
