Ivaylo’s Tidbits – Paid Vacation In Monte Carlo
September 27, 2007
Paid vacation in Monte Carlo.
By Ivaylo – bassist from Montreal, Canada. www.ivaylo.ca
Hey y’all!
This is a sweet bit about my first ever contract as a cruise ship show band bassist.
Summer of 2005, and I was playing bass in the all purpose 4 piece band of the Seabourn Legend. She’s a small ship with only 208 passenger capacity. We played everything from written out Broadway-style shows, to jazz sets, to rock n’ roll. We sailed the Western Mediterranean, the French, Italian and Spanish coast, and anchored at Capri, Corsica, Menorca, Palma de Mallorca and Malta. The scenery was fairy tale like.
So get this: half way through my contract we get chartered by the company Phillip Morris to stay docked in Monte Carlo for a week, and serve as their hotel during the Grand Prix. They didn’t want us to play.
So, we got a paid week off! We had crew bikes on board, so I went biking many times to Nice, Villefranche, some medieval villages up in the mountains, and I even took a long bike ride to Italy. We all had a great time.
The only down side of hanging out in Monte Carlo during the Grand Prix was the deafening roar of the F1′s. But again, that’s just me, some people get an adrenaline rush from just hearing that!
Cheers, mates!
Ivaylo
