The Philly Cheesesteak Challenge

Well, Philly was both mega fun and a disapointment.  Our schedule looked like we’d be able to have a full day off (Sunday) to enjoy all that one of my favorite cities of all time has to offer.  However, some last minute changes turned that into a travel day – meaning we had a few hours after we arrived at our hotel on Thursday to look around.  And thats about it…

Knowing that, we did a whirlwind tour of Centre City.  The National Constitution Center a $5 After 5 deal that we took advantage of.  If you’ve never been, its worth a look.  There are tons of exhibits dealing with our Bill of Rights and Supreme Court rulings – incredibly interesting.  They also present a 1-person theatrical performance which is incredibly moving.  As cheesy as it sounds, you really leave the theatre feeling ‘proud to be an American.’

Next, we stolled over to the site of Benjamin Franklin’s gravsite and also saw the outside of Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell.  Finally, a drive to test the ultimate Philly question..Geeno’s or Pat’s.  That’s right the Philly Cheesesteak Challenge – 2 delishous half sandwiches later and Pat was crowned king (though Geeno’s had better bread).  One of my favorite things to do in Philly…

Our shows went pretty well – I got to see an old friend, Sandy Marks, who I haven’t seen since HIGH SCHOOL.  Crazyness – she brought her 2 year old…but it was great to see her, and she seemed to really enjoy the show.

All in all, another great time in the city of Brotherly Love – though a little too short….

Because we spent so much time IN the hotel, I decided that the cast needed to have a Pizza and Porn night (something they started last season).  The ‘adult selections’ available at the hotel were absolutely hilarious – they actually offered Parody Porn – so true to form, I selected the one that sounded the most promising….Batman XXX:  A Porn Parody.  It was absolutely as disgusting as it was funny – and all I can really say is that I’ll never be able to see “The Joker” the same way again and that in an emergency porn situation, call Robin instead of Batman…..

Raleigh Ass Kicking Machine

We started by going into the downtown area, where we saw a sculpture of the world’s largest acron.  Being slightly unimpressed, we took ourselves over to the NC museum of art – with no cover charge.  They had  a great collection of modern and historic paintings, as well as a very large sculpture garden.  We skipped out on the scultpures (which included the world’s largest stack of newspapers…) because of the heat.  We tried to find a huge statue of Smokey the Bear, which is said to reside on the NC State Fairgrounds, but were litterally chased away by an angry mob of human flesh eating ducks.  Well, I may be exagerating a tad – but they were very upset to see us and did chase us back to our car.  Free Day ended with a trip to the Angus Barn restraunt, and their Ass Kicking Maching.  Seriously.  There is a wheel with 4 shoes attached to it and a crank that you can turn to…kick your ass….

Seeing as how our hotel in Raleigh was more like an apartment with a full kitchen – the cast and crew decided to throw a pot luck party, which was a great sucess.  Some of my other Raleigh adventures included a Sex In The City/Wine/Truth or Dare night (which turned into quite the headache the next day) and Drag Bingo at a gay club downtown.  All in all, Raleigh was a great time to spend our 2nd week -and a place I’d go back to someday just to visit again

We played the BankUnited Center – an arena that lives on the University of Miami campus over in Coral Gables.  The arena was actually very nice – and made for a great place to put in our 12 hour rehearsal days because of their ultra quality accoustics.  Hopefully in the cities to come, I will have more time for exploring the area – but hey – a picture is worth a thousand words anyway…

Jen in the Miami Sunset

Monday/Tuesday
I started out in Tampa and flew to New York/JFK to catch my flight overseas.  Since I had such a long time between flights, Tammy picked me up and we had a bite to eat and chatted for a while.  My international flight was set to leave out Monday night on Aer Lingus – landing in Dublin, Ireland on Tuesday morning.  The flight was great, roomy and seemed to fly by once we got started.  The plane we were to fly out on was late coming into NY, so we left a good hour and a half late.  Normally no big deal, but I had to catch a flight from Dublin to Amsterdam and now only had a grace period of about 30 minutes.  Needless to say, I hauled butt through Border Security and Airport Security.  Funny thing – in Ireland, they don’t care about checking your shoes or anything like that at the security checkpoint – but they realy want to inspect your umbrella… I ran through Dublin International and JUST made my connection to Amsterdam with minutes before they closed off the flight.  Again, the flight was nice – and short – about an hour and we were in Schipol Airport – the main airport in Holland, and right outside of Amsterdam.  After retrieving my luggage and breezing through customs, I decided to take an airport express train into Centraal Station and then catch a tram to the area my hotel was in.  Somehow I followed the Dutch signs and ended up where I was supposed to be – the Hotel Crystal, in the Liedesplein area of Amsterdam.  The hotel itself was very quaint – but still nice – family run.  Once I’d checked in, I took a tram back into the center of the city and found a restraunt serving Dutch cuisine and had a wonderfully made dinner.  I walked back to the hotel, just sort of taking in the city at night.  It is realy an amazing place – overrun with bicycles.  In fact, there is an entire bicycle sidewalk built into all the streets – which are not labled as such so watch out on your first visit… The most amazing part of the city is the overall feeling of security and respect – people leave their bikes or baby carriages out on the street, not chained up — and they are perfectly fine.  No one even THINKS about stealing them – in fact the entire time I was in this major city, I only heard poliece bells ONCE.  Being a NYer, that blew my mind all together – but I digress.  Having been a long 2 days of travel, I retired for the night.

Wednesday
When I booked my hotel and flight, I also booked a day long bus tour of the Amsterdam city proper as well as some of the surrounding Dutch cities.  After a quick breakfast at the hotel – basically meat and cheese selections with bread in case you wanted to make a sandwich (very European breakfast), I headed over to The Damrak area to catch my tour.  Being on the tour realy made me appreciate the educaiton systems over in Europe.  Everyone there speaks their home language, English as well as another language of their choice at the very minimun.  I felt rather stunted with my American version of English – but was very impressed as our tour guide basically gave her tour script first in English, then French and then in Spanish to make sure that everyone on board was being taken care of.  We drove around the major areas of the city, seeing the stunning Dutch buildings (which are so narrow because they are taxed on street frontage), churches, parks, and landmarks.  The highlight of this part of the tour was visiting the Gassan Diamond works – where they polish diamonds and use them in absolutely mouth watering jewelry.  The second part of our tour took us outside of Amsterdam and into Zans Schaans – a town that still maintains a ‘traditional’ Dutch way of life.  We visited a wooden shoe maker, who showed us how the shoes were crafted.  Then a cheese farm, where we saw how the cheese was made and were given the opportunity to taste a variety of local cheeses, including Ghouda.  Next we went to Volendam – a traditional Dutch fishing village, where we caught a finishing boat that took us across the water to the town of Marken, and back.  It was awesome to see things like the Dutch windmills and craftsmen and work.

Thursday
I had planned out where I wanted to go and what I wanted to see the rest of the days using a guide book I had bought many months ago when I decided to take the trip.  So the first stop today was the Van Gogh museum.  It was actually only a short walk to the museum from my hotel, and I beat the large lines that were forming by the time I was ready to leave.  The paintings in the museum were absolutely breathtaking – and to actually see the classic Van Gogh’s that I’d only seen in art books before was an immense opportunity.  Sunflowers, The Potatoe Eaters, and his many self portraits….seeing them in person, you know why he is considered one of the greats.  After my musings at the Van Gogh, I booked a cruise along the canals of the city.  There is no better way to see the ‘Venice of Holland’ then by boat.  There are three major canals that surround the original boundaries of the city: The Gentleman’s Canal, The Royal Canal and The Prince’s Canal.  The other canals were added as the city grew to keep the asthetic of the city’s layout.  There is so much history in Amsterdam that I didn’t realize – for example, we floated past the former warehouses of the East India Company, which was started and headquarted in Amsterdam.  After my canal cruise, I lunched at the Hardrock Cafe Amsterdam, which is attached to the Holland Casino.  When I was done I took a quick stroll down PC Hooftstraat – which is basically the 5th Ave of Amsterdam.  All the finest shops were there: Gucci, Armani, Mont Blanc, La Croix and dozens I’d never even heard of.  Too rich for my blood (especially in Euros) – so I opted for a stroll in Vondelpark.  This is their answer to Central Park in NYC – streams, grassy knolls, hundreds of shady trees, an open air theatre.  Very relaxing.  At the edge of the park lies the Filmmuseum – which is actually a film institute that restores old films and shows them to the public.  This month they were having a tribute to the untouchable Ingrid Bergman.  Since all the show times were later that evening, I moved on back to my hotel to have a rest and get ready to go out and see Boom Chicago in Liedesplein.  Boom Chicago is an improv company along the lines of Second City or UCB.  They were giving a performance of a show they called ‘Upgrade or Die’ that touched on all of the technologies that we depend on so much these days like: Twitter, Facebook, computers, cell phones.  Partly scripted and mostly improved, I thought they were hillarious – and strangely enough, all Americans – who spoke almost no Dutch…

Friday
Today was going to be my tour of ‘Alternative’ Amsterdam – however, I wanted to try and see the Anne Frank House (which I had planned to see the day before, but didn’t get around to).  So, I took a canal boat over to the area and found that the line to get in was at least 4 hours long.  After consulting my tour book, which suggested I return sometime after 4 to beat the lines, I decided to have brunch at a Pancake restruant.  The Dutch are known for a number of things: Cheese, Tulips, Chocolate, Paintings – and Pancakes.  The Dutch pancakes are very thin – almost crepe like – and can be either savory or sweet.  I choose a cheese and apple pancake – which was absolutely heaven.  I highly reccomend them if you are ever in the city.  Next I strolled over the The Ronkin area and visited The Amsterdam Dungeon.  This was one of the highlights of my visit.  It was part haunted house, part history lesson and part roller coaster.  Basically they took you room by room through Amsterdam’s dark history.  Superb actors in each room showed you what it was like to be questioned in the Inquisition, sold into slavery on the ships of the East India Company, sentanced by the courts for witchcraft and die gruesomely of the plauge.  The whole attraction was very well done – apparently there are sister Dungeon attractions all over Europe, each one focusing on the dark history of the city they are in.  After leaving the dungeon, I walked into the Red Light District to find the Erotic Museum.  Very interesting place – it featured erotic art, sculptures, cartoons, paintings, drawings, you name it.  Complete with a wall mural showing Snow White in a way you’ve never seen her before – in a room devoted to erotic cartoon films.  Not too far from the Erotic Museum, was the Sexmuseum.  The exhibits here were very similar actually, focusing on Sex throughout the ages.  Though here,  you will find motion activated animatronics featuring scenes that you ‘accidentially’ walk in on.  One showed a flasher, another was a Red Light District prostitue gone wrong, and yet another was a tiny window…if you looked it, a man inside pulled down his pants and peed all over the glass.  Very classy – but alot of fun.  It just illustrates the nonchallent attitude that they have about sex over there.  It was actually very eye opening - in many ways (lol).  As the day was coming to an end, I hopped back on my canal boat and rode over to the Rijks Museum to catch it just before it closed.  The Rijksmuseum is the national museum of Holland, featuring works of art done by many of the masters as well as furniture, models, sculptures, etc.  It is 2/3 of the way under renovation at the moment, but a number of the paintings were still viewable – including some of the brilliant works by Rembrandt.  Can I just say that you haven’t seen an amazing work of art until you stood in front of Rembrandts’ Nightwatch or Vermeer’s The Kitchen Maid.  The way that these painters captured beauty in such simple things just astounds me.  After a quick tour of the paintings – the crowds were much less here at the end of the day as well – I grabbed a quick bite to eat and headed back to the Red Light District.  I wanted to see what it was like at night – and it was a very surreal experience indeed.  There you are walking down these cobblestone and brick streets, next to buildings that are hundreds and hundreds of years old, at night, with the church bells of the Old Church ringing in the background, and all around is a red neon glow from the windows where the prostitutes are waiting, scantilly clad and tapping on the glass to get your attention.  Again, I was hit with such a bizarre mix of modern and olde world – it was like walking in a dream.

Saturday
This was my last day in Amsterdam, as I was starting my trip back home on Sunday morning.  I started the day, again, by visiting a different pancake restruant – and, again, I was not disappointed.  Next I went on a tour of the Royal Palace in Dam Square.  The palace was actually built to be the town hall back in the early 1800s – but was turned into a palace by Louis Bonapart (Napoleon’s brother), when the French occupied the area.  Later it became the palace of the House of Orange, who rule Amsterdam to this day – though in recent years, the living quarters of the Queen has moved to De Haag – though she still uses this palace to greet guests and hold important meetings or parties.  The inside of the building has been completely renovated to look as it originally would have during the time of the Bonaparts – the outside is still under renovations.  For the first time in history, they inside has been opened up to the public (when it is not being used for diplomatic purposes).  The building is nothing short of astounding – the details that went into every aspect of every sculpture and painting…  Just to stand in the main hall and feel the immensity of the room was a treat.  After that, I took a trip to both the New Church and the Olde Church and was again floored by the immesity and craftsmanship that went into these, still working, buildings.  Finally, it was time to do my shopping for gifts for people back home, so I took a quick jaunt into the local mall – which is housed in an old renovated building that could have been a castle from what it looks like on the outside.  That was followed with one last attempt at the Anne Frank House – but alas, my stomach started to cramp while I was in the (all be it, much shorter) line and I had to vacate.  Sadly, no Anne Frank for me this visit – but next time…

Sunday
I jumped in an airport shuttle and started my journey back to the states – with another layover in Dublin.  The trip was fairly uneventfull.  I made it through customs with all my gifts (even the cheese I had bought – which apparently was in dispute).

All in all – an amazing trip – I can’t say enough about it.

The last two weeks of tour were a blur mostly.  The first week (and Fourth of July) we spent in Fort Myers.  The big deal here was meeting our next cast members for season two.  They all flew in and we started rehearsals with them right away.  They seem like they are going to be a great group to work with and will fit into the synergy that the surviving cast already has going – which is a big relief.  Other then the rehearsals, there realy wasn’t much to do in Fort Myers.  A few of us took an evening trip over to Sanibel Island to see a summer stock musical review that was playing at the local resort theatre.  It was a good time – and made me happy to see actors working in Florida.  Having grown up here, I have an image of the whole state (save Orlando) being this vast wasteland for the performing arts – which just isn’t the case in reality.

Our other discovery in Fort Myers was a great, homey, little bar called Tubby’s.  We had a great time hanging out with the locals and came to Fourth of July Karaoke – after getting rained out of our cookout.  If I lived in the area, I definately would be a ‘regular’ there.

Our last week of tour finished up in Orlando.  We said goodbye to the cast of season two – who flew home for a three week hiatus – and finished up our time togeather.  The week was a whirlwind – the first half was tourist central.  Being in Orlando (one of my favorite places in Florida), I couldn’t pass up the theme parks.  First was Universal Studios Orlando, where we experienced the hyped up world of Harry Potter and the town of Hogsmead.  They really did an amazing job of re-creating the village and giving the feel of being in the world of the Harry Potter novels and movies.  The problem was the crowd – having just opened, it was still the ‘hot ticket’ in town.  If you didnt arrive in the park as it opened (we did) and run directly to the Harry Potter area, the wait to get into that section of the park grew to over 5 hours.  Add to that the blazing heat and cloying humidity – and it was the perfect Orlando Tourist Vacation Experience…

I also had a Disney date with my friend, Maria, who drove up from Tampa to meet me.  We went to Epcot Center for the day and tried to ‘drink around the world’.  Sadly the heat prevented us from doing the heavy drinking we’d planned – but we did get alot of people watching in.  I had the chance to ride SOARIN’ – which had opened since the last time I was in the park.  It was fantastic.  It actually recreates the feeling of flying over the different landscapes that cover the US between Florida and California.  They had also brought back the old 3D film of Captain EO and were playing it in the original theatre they built for it 20 years ago – when I originally saw it.

After all the sight seeing died down, we finished up our final shows and said goodbye to the cast members not returning to the show next season.  It was an incredibly sad event – I mean we’d spent the better portion of a year living, working and playing with some of them – and they will all be sorely missed as we move forward.

The best part about this part of the week was renting a car and staying at the house in Tampa.  I got to hang out with my parents and sister and Maria for a bit.  A little taste of my three week vacation…in two weeks.  The countdown officially begins: 10 shows left until this season’s tour ends!  It will be such a great and sad time, great because we’ll have the 3 weeks off and sad becuase we’ll be losing about half the cast.  It will be so weird to continue on with the show that we all created — without the original cast, but so it goes.

Had a great time here in Tampa Bay – went out to Ybor City on Saturday after the shows and had dinner at the Speghetti Warehouse (an attempt at ‘funny’ by my Dad).  Got to drive around the old haunts and see my neglected kitty daughter over at my friend Maria’s.  Plus had a huge turnout of people I know for the shows!  I am so glad that my voice returned and held out for these performances.  It was touch-and-go there for a while…

Well, next week is spent entirely in Fort Myers/Estero – and we get to meet the new cast.  They are all flying in for rehearsals, which will last all of next week and most of the following week in Orlando.  Should be fun…

Work-wise, I’m still fighting off whatever illness WPB threw my way.  In fact I had to go on complete vocal rest for the last 2 shows, so they played my sicktrack the entire show.  I HATE having to do that – and am absolutely on me knees praying that I will be able to perform in Clearwater at the end of the week.  I went to a Walk-In Clinic and the doctor told me that he wasn’t sure if my issues were allergy or viral, so he perscribed me a Z-Pack and told me to keep taking the Mucinex DM that I was already taking.  We’ll see I guess.

At The Lady And Sons

City Place in West Palm Beach

This week was spent entirely in West Palm Beach.  We had originally thought that this city would be the end of the tour, until this season was extend by 3 more weeks – So the anticipation for WPB was immense… 

Sadly, it hardly lived up to the hype.  We stayed at an (overpriced) hotel that was right near the venue, the Kravis Center, so the company did not provide us with cars.  Ordinarily that wouldn’t have been too bad, however, the temperature stayed steadily at 90 with about 150% humidity.  What does that mean? Well by the time I’d walked the 3 blocks to the Kravis Center, I was so drenched in sweat I had to change clothes.  Misery City.  Plus, the hotel we stayed at wasn’t realy near ANYTHING.  Ok , I take that back…we were right near a big shopping/entertainment area called City Place – about 5-6 blocks away.  But was I about to walk in this heat, knowing the result of a 3 block stroll??  Not likely – I ventured out once to the City Place, and temperature aside, it was nice: lots of shops and restruants, a movie theatre and even an Improv/Standup Comedy venue.  If I could have left the hotel, I might have had a nice time – but as it was…4 days straight inside my room followed by 8 shows at the Kravis…

Kravis Center

The Kravis Center itself is actually a really great venue – it’s HUGE!!!  We could have fit our entire show twice on their stage – which blows my mind because we were made to play arenas – not theatres.  Its also a beautfiul place (both in and out) – and the staff/locals that work there were fantastic – all in all a great working experience. 

The one other place I did get to go was the local Children’s Hospital.  I was able to accompany George and The Man in the Yellow Hat as they read to and met some of the patients.  They really seemed to appreciate us being there – and its always nice to see the children cheer up at the site of George.

Well, tomorrow we venture out of FL for about 3 days before coming back to finish up the season.  Savannah (and Paula Deen’s restraunt) is our destination tomorrow!

Hopefully what you will find here from now on is a look at all the cities that I visit, my experiences there and my overall impression of my time there. Since we travel to new cities once or twice a week, that’s how frequently I should be updating.

Feel free to comment along the way!

TTFN