January 26, 2008.
Day 1: Saturday
After months of anticipation, Mary (travel buddy extraordinaire) and I fly to Miami in preparation for boarding the Carnival Victory for Ships & Dip III. This music festival on a boat is chartered by a company called Sixthman who does music-themed cruises. It's actually the second S&D -- they skipped number 2 because BNL declared that sequels are just filled with heartache and disappoint, i.e. they suck.
Background: After last summer's East Coast adventure, totally selected by me so I could see multiple concerts by Great Big Sea, Mary mentioned that she'd be interested in going on a cruise. When GBS announced that they had joined the lineup for Ships & Dip, I said, "I found us a cruise..."
The headliner/host band is Barenaked Ladies, plus Guster, Gaelic Storm, Carbon Leaf, and several others that I hadn't heard of (some were side bands by guys in BNL). For me, they're all bonuses to see when GBS isn't playing.
Since the semester began mid-January and the cruise was the end of January, it took a little finagling arrange the time off, but it all worked out.
We arrived in Miami on Saturday evening, in time for the pre-cruise mingler at the hotel, but we actually started meeting fellow "dippers" in the airport thanks to the S&D luggage tags that had been supplied in our survival kits. We were entertained to meet Bonnie and Jean -- a groupie and her enabler friend along for the cruise. Hmm...this does sound familiar, doesn't it? (Not surprising, Mary and Jean did end up chatting fairly often while us nuts were staking out good seats for the concerts. Or pausing to chat with band members.)
For future reference, the members of Great Big Sea are Alan, Sean, Bob, Murray, and Kris.
The members of Barenaked Ladies are Steve, Ed, Tyler, Jim, Kevin.
Side note: Miami airport is not recommended unless you're into eXtreme travel. Disorganized to say the least.
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