Coming up soon -- Passage to India

It's been nearly a year since we last met - and what a year! After a different but nice Christmas we were ready to face 2014. Christmas was different because only Katie was able to come since Stan got a new job in Boston just before the holiday.  She came and left by Amtrak which sounded like an interesting trip. We had a nice time but wished we'd all been together.

2014 started with literally a bang. On the last Saturday night in January, Al slipped and fell in our bedroom  going to the bathroom in the middle of the night. His right humerus was shattered like a piece of glass . After 6.5 hours of surgery he's back together with a long plate and twenty- five screws keeping everything in order. Security checks should be lots of fun now, and lifting a bag into the overhead is a thing of the past. Nonetheless it could have been worse and we're still here.

This summer saw the wedding in Annapolis of our nephew and his bride.  Annapolis is a neat place and we enjoyed our time there. A week later Katie and I met in London and sailed in the Med for 17 days. It was a great voyage and you can read about it at our blog  -
Ann & Katie's voyages
Anyway we are now less than 6 weeks away from our next voyage - a Passage to India.  We'll begin in Athens for a couple of nights before boarding the Odyssey. We're scheduled to spend a couple of days in Israel before transiting the Suez Canal.  I' m not sure that will happen, but we shall see.

There do seem to be some lovely people on the roll call. We have a trivia team ready to go.  What more can one ask for!

Our voyage will take us from Athens to Crete to Haifa and Ashdod Israel.  Next we'll transit the Suez and spend a day first in Aqaba, Jordan.  While there we'll visit Petra of Indiana Jones fame.  I don't expect we'll see any leftover crusaders! Then we have a few days in Egypt with the most memorable thing being an overnight trip to Luxor to visit the Valley of the Kings.

After sailing the length of the Red Sea past parts of Sudan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen and Djibouti, we'll enter the Arabian Sea and visit  Oman.  I' m not sure what' s there but I guess we'll find out.  Finally we'll arrive in Mumbai, India, where we'll be whisked away on our magic carpet (more like 737) to Delhi and Agra. From these two places we'll have a chance to visit the Taj Mahal, one of the 7 wonders of the world.  While we're at it we'll stay in one of India's best hotels and eat at a restaurant purported to be one of their best. I've not tasted authentic Indian cuisine so I'm looking forward to trying something good.

Finally we'll stop in Dubai for two nights on our way home.  I have heard that the superlatives one hears on TV can't adequately describe this Emirates state perched between the sand dunes and the sea. We shall see.  So six weeks from now we'll be on board the Seabourn Odyssey on our Passage to India.