The END - April 29th



Sorrento

We are at our final port of call before reaching Monte Carlo, Sorrento.  This email is to say THE END to our blog, and hopefully "HELLO" soon to you all.  It has been a wonderful trip, enhanced by the "drop in" visits of Kelly, Larry, Amy, Ron, William, Andrea, Hilary and Ricardo.
I am only sorry that Diana, Dan, Robby, Kirstan, Lorna and Brian could not make it. 
Now we return home to see our beautiful, new grandaughter and attend Luis's law school graduation and Danny's wedding, and in September, await the arrival of our second great-grandchild. 
We are thinking seriously about goling to India next Christmas to see Kady, Ford and Wells, so perhaps there will be a new blog.
Love and kisses to all,
ME

Alexandria, Egypt - April 26th

We docked yesterday in Alexandria and Hilary and Ricardo went on the long bus ride to Cairo and to the Pyramids. Once again, the tourist count was waaaay down and they said the only buses in the usual parking area there were the ones from Silver Seas.  Carl and I went on the ship shuttle bus into town in Alexandria and then walked to the new Library of Alexandria.  It is a rather modern looking building (Norwegian team won the competition for the design) with touches of local flavor such as what appear to be hieroglyphics but are just meaningless symbols.  Once inside, after paying a very modest ticket fee, we were entitled to take a guided tour. These tours run every 45 minutes and they ask your nationality so they know what language in which to schedule the tour. 

We were with one other couple from the ship and we had an excellent guide who spoke perfect English and was knowledgeable and interesting. 

As we entered the area overlooking the main reading room we were almost stunned at the WOW! Factor.  I don’t think the pictures I took did it justice.  The building is on 9 levels (slanted) and has many exhibition halls, a planetarium, and lecture facilities.  It also has a printing press which can print, collate and bind a book in minutes.  There are art works and memorabilia of earlier printing systems and a vast level of computer interaction for anyone in the world, and connecting with the library is free.

The traffic in Alexandria is just about the worst we have seen and life as a pedestrian is beyond hazardous.  This was the first port where our shuttle bus could not run on a schedule because even allowing extra time for the trip, it was always behind. One of the reasons for the horrible traffic may well be that cars double park any and everywhere, goods for sale are laid out well into the street and people weave in and out of the traffic because this is the only way they can cross or move up the block. 

Last night we had our Arabian dress up dinner.  Picture of Carl will be attached, I hope.  Lately the ship’s internet has not wanted to send any of my pictures.  I am going to try today to send the second set of Safaga photos as well as those from Petra.  (Ed Note: Added to Petra posting.)

 And so, we are down to our final two sea days, then one day in Sorrento and c’est fini.  I will try and write one more time after our farewell dinner.  Thanks to all who have had the patience and kindness to follow our travels.  We will bore you even more with verbal tales when next we meet.

Love and kisses,

ME

Crossing the Suez Canal - April 25th

Photos sent by Hilary via IPad

A convoy of 28 boats, we are first!!!!

Hilary


Breakfast in the Suez Canal... and my
handsome partner for breakfast.

Ricardo

Mom and Dad with convoy behind them

Petra, Jordan - April 23rd

Yesterday we took the long drive (two hours this time, and no Carl) to Petra from the port of Aqaba in Jordan.  At one point, on a clear day, you can see four countries.  Yesterday we mostly saw Israel on the other bank of the Red Sea.

There is an ancient Petra and a new Petra and our destination was the former.  It is a former city from at least two thousand years ago and the route to the principal surviving building, The Treasury, was long and winding and full of gorgeous sites of the cavern around us.  Frankly, the photos do not do it justice. 

The rock faces, with all the changing colors, looked sometimes like striated wood.  I do have a photo or two of the Temple but I enjoyed the scenery almost more than the history. 

The trek is all downhill until, of course, you have to come back and it is a pretty tiring trip back up.  All told it is about three miles long. Hilary and Ricardo were very sweet and stuck to me to make sure I didn’t trip or expire.  There were carriages or horses available to rent, but the ride on those looked rather risky in itself. There will be a photo of one of them, but no one we know was in that particular carriage. The poor horses have to pull a cart with three people (some of generous size) over many areas of the stones from the original time. 

Ed Note: Apologies - could not rotate.  Will keep trying.

It was hard for me to walk on them because they are so uneven. Fortunately, they are only in a few of the areas of the trail. I considered it a badge of honor to have made it all the way down and back.  By the time we reached the hotel for lunch, my face must have been as red as the proverbial beet.  I was offered a fan which I used vociferously (or can you only say that about some other type of activity?) and gratefully.  A couple of Diet Pepsi drinks, a lovely lunch and then a nap on the way back and all was well.

Our guide on this trip was himself born a Bedouin.  Of course, he is still a Bedouin but he has left the life style.  He returns to the camp two months a year to help his family with the chores of the tribe but his mother considers him “lost”.  He was able to tell us a great deal about their life and about the newer customs as well.  Jordan now sends mobile classrooms into the desert to teach the children.  The teachers are paid almost four times the normal salary to compensate for time spent where there is no electricity or any of the other accoutrements of modern living.  Then when they leave, usually the parents of each student give them a sizeable cash gift (instead of goats or camels because they know they cannot be kept in the city) and so there is almost a lottery for teachers who WANT to teach the Bedouin children, at least for a while. Our guide felt that the entire Bedouin society will  die out now because of the exposure the children are now receiving through these teachers and lessons to the modern world.  “How’re you going to keep ‘em down on the farm after they’ve seen Paris?”

I never realized that deserts could have big rock mountains as well as stretches of sand.  My geography preparation was poor.
Today, Carl and Hilary have gone snorkeling.  Ricardo and I are enjoying doing nothing. Tomorrow we are transiting the Suez Canal.  Pirate time seems to be over.

Love and kisses to all,

ME

HILARY AND RICARDO, MY BIRTHDAY AND LUXOR!!!

The big events of April 21^st are hereby included:

Hilary and Ricardo were awaiting our arrival as the ship docked in SAFAGA, which is about three and a half hours away from Luxor.  We left immediately on the bus trip (Carl with a pillow, some Xanax and the back seat of the bus to himself) and made the long trek to see our first sight, the Temple of Luxor. 

It was, as advertised, quite compelling, enormous and VERY old.  I am going to include photos of it,

some of the row of sphinx statues which used to stretch three kilometers to the funeral palace of Ramses III,








some views of the Temple of Karnak (I could not help but think of Johnny Carson every time I heard the name)

and one of Hilary, Ricardo and Carl at that second site. 

There is also one of the view from our hotel, overlooking the Nile.  It was  Hilton Resort, just redone totally and it was BEAUTIFUL.  I think one of the charms was the lack of other guests.  It was as though we (the group from the ship) had the place to ourselves.  Food was great, service impeccable and the pool area (infinity pools for both bathing and as decorative touches) inviting.  If I didn’t have to travel so far to get there, I would go again.

At lunch, after the AM of travel and touring the first temple, I was surprised with a birthday chorus and small (delicious) cake and singing in Arabic and English.  Fellow tourists grouped around as I blew out my candle. There was also a lovely decoration and birthday wishes awaiting me in our room.  I told all the other guests that I was inviting them all to a dinner cruise on the Nile.  Of course, that was part of the tour anyway, so I felt OK in promising it.  The food on the cruise was not so hot and the Egyptian wine was pretty poor! But the evening was most enjoyable and a very comfortable temperature.  There was even comic relief at the end as they had a real problem getting the boat to line up with the small docking area at the hotel.  First they overshot the area, then they only had one guy trying to pull the boat backwards, and in the end, we all left on a gangplank thankful we had not seriously imbibed. I have one photo of the last minutes of the tug of war between the ship and our lone (finally aided by a second person)  dock hand. (Ed Note: Couldn't find that photo).  By the way, we now all know what the men wear under their long robes.  It appears to have been white boxers!  And so to bed.

The next morning we went to the Valley of the Kings after a ferry ride across the Nile.  It was  hot, but not too crowded and the two tombs we entered (Hilary and Ricardo went on to see the Tomb of King Tutenkhamen  (spelling?) but Carl and I walked back to the bus.  The still visible colors inside the tombs are quite extraordinary.  We had a guide with a doctorate in Egyptology who had a tendency to try and explain each and every cartouche and decoration.  The guides were not allowed to lecture inside so she tried to explain to us how to look for each and every symbol and understand what each meant.  I was just happy to see the pretty colors!

There was a visit then to the Temple of Karnak and some shorter stops at other sites which are already blending into one OLD place.  After a lovely lunch at the hotel, we boarded the bus back to the ship.  Mercifully, the guide did not repeat her three hour lecture of the first bus trip, but she was not exactly silent.  Guides seem to have the habit of repeating themselves in case we didn’t get something the first three times. The countryside area through which we passed was filled with donkeys, wheat fields and black robed women.  Our guide announced that she was not going to talk about politics but by the end of the trip we knew she did not support the revolution, she thought it was totally brought about by the middle class of the cities, she thought the poorer people of the country were very happy with their old ways (including female circumcision) and that it was a good thing for the government to control much of the economy. We heard about the disappearance of any police force during the height of the crisis and how glad she was to see them back again.  We learned that there are severe gasoline shortages and saw lines (very long) of cars and tractors which she said sometimes involved parking overnight. Many were pushing their vehicles as the line moved forward slowly.

The canals which irrigated the fields were quite dirty and the small “homes” lining them were more than modest and all had sugar cane or reeds drying on the rooftops.   In the early part of the drive, the guide spoke about the Bedouin tribes but we did not really see any.  Yesterday, in Jordan, on the way to Petra we did see the tents and herds of goats and camels.  More on that in my Petra post.

Love and kisses,

ME

Muscat, Oman - April 15th

PIRATES AND SMUGGLERS!!! They have been at the top of the conversational menu for the last couple of days.  We have had an additional briefing by the captain who explained that we will be entering an area  where we are constantly monitored by various patrols and sail in a “guided transit” system of several ships at a time but not a convoy.   So, here we are on the first of our five sea days before reaching Safaga, Egypt, approaching the area of greatest concern regarding pirates. Precautions include: the pool deck is shut down after dark and many interior lights which shine out are dimmed.  All curtained areas have the drapes drawn and even in our cabins we are asked to keep them closed and not turn on our outside veranda light.  No one really seems to be too worried as the pirates are mostly after  commercial vessels and would probably not be interested in a ship with over 600 people to hold hostage, half if whom, as spoiled passengers, would be demanding champagne, canapés and regular dinner service. Also, our vessel is probably too tall for the smaller ships, sent out by the mother ship, to board with their short ladders.  Additionally, the captain says we can probably outrun them.  So, I feel very  protected.

Now, the smugglers are another topic of conversation.  As we were anchored in the Omani port of Khasab,  just before Muscat, I kept seeing all these smaller speed boats passing into shore in groups of two or three, with only two darkly clad men in each.  I assumed this was some kind of security.  Hah!  The captain told me, as we dined with a small group of other World Cruise guests, that they were smugglers from Iran.  They come over with GOATS (why I do not know) and take back the cigarettes and other things which they cannot get in Iran.  We were anchored just past the Strait of Hormuz and this is the shortest distance between Iran and Oman.  So there I was merrily waving to them and happy when several waved back not realizing what I was seeing.  Wasn’t that friendly for smugglers?

Muscat was a place which was decidedly different from our earlier stops in UAE.  Here, tradition and modernity blended well and it was charmingly NOT high rise or filled with gee gaws.  The old town, the official capital, has only about 600 residents, making it the smallest capital in the world in terms of population. 

I am including a picture if one of the forts at the entrance to the harbor,

a couple of a local family

(you can see a bit how the mother and father are dressed) 

photos of what is a large statue of a replica of an incense burner (incense is one of their biggest products),

a photo of the Sultan’s palace entrance,

and one looking down on the old town. (Ed Note:  Not sure I got these placed correctly - please advise!)  We went to the Souk but bought only “genuine fake copy Gucci” dark glasses for Carl.  There were beautiful materials and shawls etc., but I think I have enough souvenirs already.  I did look for a gold bangle for my collection but they would not bargain at all, which was surprising.  So, I got firm and said no thanks.

Our dinner in the officers’ mess was most enjoyable.  The captain hosts about six couples with a meal which is much more elaborate than the officers themselves get, but which is in their own dining room. I did not take my camera, but if Norman, the hotel director, forwards me any of the photos he took, I’ll include one eventually.
We had an Irish flute player entertaining us last night and tonight there is a classical pianist.  It’s hard to stay up until 10:00 PM for these concerts, so we don’t always do so, but I’ll try again tonight.

There will not be much to report in the next few days, unless I get some forwarded pictures to pass along.  Also, the internet connection has been worse than usual, so I think I will send my next report from Egypt

Much love and kisses to all.

ME

Dubai - April 12th

We are in Dubai for a second day, after a stop in Fujairah.  Both of these are in the United Arab Emirates.  I have finally learned how to spell Emirates.  Fujairah was a waste of time and Dubai is a bit of a disappointment.  Now, to be honest, we have not gone into any of the famous buildings which are said to be luxurious (if gaudy) beyond description.  But, the city itself is full of tall buildings, homes behind elaborate gates, look alike apartment buildings and town houses and a great deal of dust and sand.  The most interesting thing which happened to us yesterday was getting caught, just as we were returning to the ship from our helicopter ride, in a sand storm.  The wind came up very suddenly and combined with the stinging sand, I needed help getting back on the ship!

Our helicopter ride made it back just in time, with no hint at what was about to occur.  The group from the ship scheduled for an hour after us had their flight cancelled.  But, they have the fun now of being picked up from near the ship.  It is almost an hour drive to the helipad (located near the Dubai Atlantis Hotel, which is a replica if the one in the Bahamas).  I didn’t go for the look of it in either place.  During the drive we got to see a great deal of the city and so cancelled our bus tour for today.  I was tempted to go out on the ship shuttle to the Dubai Mall which is supposed to be extremely upscale.  I have resisted the temptation.

The pictures are mostly from the helicopter ride…Carl,

views of what is called THE PALM, (a palm shaped development),

the famous hotel built like a ship,

a poor shot of the tallest building in the world (I consider they cheated because it is mostly skinny)

and a picture of a number of houses each with their own swimming pool near a golf course.  I wonder if that is where they play the Dubai Open!

I am beginning to get excited about Hilary and Ricardo’s arrival.  We will be at sea (after two more stops) for five days and then they will join us. 

Love and kisses,

ME