callao is the biggest seaport near the major city of lima… it is our first overnight port, and though we don’t do any mainstage shows on overnight port nights, the piano bar, the jazz trio and the string quartet play even when in port… some guests venture out for dinner or do an overnight hotel stay, but many are still looking for something to do at night, so we are there for them… my schedule rocks because i have days free to enjoy the places we go! i had a really great day today and got off the ship shortly after we docked at … there was a shuttle that drove us to mira flores , a suburb of lima
the native peruvian people here are very striking, some with a beautiful reddish-brown skin tone and very distinctive features… some of the shopkeepers could speak a little english in the marketplace, and i understand about as much spanish, so we were fine… many of the houses have wrought iron gates in front of their entryways, and well-tended gardens… i couldn’t put a finger on what was odd throughout the drive from neighborhood to neighborhood, but i finally realized it was that the tops of so many buildings were partially missing, and i remembered the epic earthquake they just went through in 2010… clearly they are still fixing things and it must have done an incredible amount of damage… as i looked at the partial rooftops, everywhere was hanging people’s brightly hued clothing to dry on clotheslines, and the colors against the pale blue sky and the barren rooftops was really kind of pretty…
i won’t write a port song until tomorrow as i want to take another day in town and see some more stuff. since there was no show, i had a small but steady stream of people throughout the evening… one nice couple loaned me a flash drive they put a few songs on they had asked for that i didn’t know; my earnest list-maker was tired a little earlier than usual… i am getting to know my regulars pretty well, and i still am getting new people in, too – i am happy that my knowledgeable people are not lofty about it, they are actually helping me fill in the cracks of one of the smaller slices of my musical pie, which is broadway show tunes… many songs i know as jazz standards by cole porter or rodgers and hart, or gershwin, those all came from shows of yesteryear, and i do know a bunch; but there’s also a lot of other old-school shows that didn’t make the crossover into my jazz fake books… there’s one fellow in particular who knows pretty much every show and every song in them – his wife enjoys the casino while he comes into the piano bar, and he’s happy as long as she doesn’t show up for more money, he says! ha ha! he’s got a wealth of interesting anecdotes i will prob’ly be making notes of for future trivia games, etc. – one of my aussie fellows gave me a real nice compliment on my sondheim, and i had a hard time wrapping it up with a couple of my late night gals because we couldn’t stop chatting…
tonight’s theme was “latin and lovely,” which had everything from spanish songs to brazilian bossa nova … i threw in some american stuff, too, with a latin feel. looking forward to the next day of peru
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| cool cacti and nice landscaping everywhere |
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hall after hall of beautiful crafts
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