November 29 and 30 - The Gulf of Aden

Sea day number 4.  We’re motoring along doing 16.1 knots on our way to Salalah, Oman.  We haven’t seen any pirates or rockets or much of anything except a few freighters.  Our excitement this morning  was a small plane that flew over us at a pretty low altitude and all of us on deck had to have a look. Since it wasn’t a helicopter we weren’t concerned.  (I’m guessing you heard about the ship last week that was taken over by people coming down from a chopper.)

I'm just going to add some random photos so you don't have to only read my blathering about nothing.

Some of us girls at dinner in the TK Grill a couple of nights ago

I asked this bartender what his name was because he wasn't wearing a name tag. He said his name wouldn't fit because it's "Super-duper Amazing Brian."  He makes the best cocktails.

Last night we had a girls’ night dinner in the restaurant.  My two new friends and I dined with the Guest Services Manager who is a delightful lady from Berlin, Germany.  I met her on my cruise to Antarctica and just coincidentally she’ll be on my next one too.  Anyway, I don’t think the four of us had laughed so much in a long, long time. Afterwards we went to the show which was a production with the Seabourn singers and dancers and it was enjoyable.  As usual we went down to the club afterwards but the music ended early for some unbeknownst reason.  We were not happy campers because we were ready to burn off at least a few calories.  Today we did let the cruise director know of our displeasure and we’ll see if that did any good tonight.

You know, this really is a small world.  My next-door neighbors here on the ship sailed with Al and me years ago when we did a similar cruise and they came to a party we had in our cabin on that voyage.  One of the ladies I’ve met lived in Kingsmill and then Williamsburg Landing for 20 some years until her husband passed away and then she went back to England.  It turns out that lady, Joyce, knows Cathy, one of my friends and neighbors in Holly Hills.  Last night when Joyce and I were having a drink before dinner we realized that we both follow Cathy’s volunteer dog-walking blog and Cathy has been reading my blog.  What are the odds that that would happen on a cruise in the middle east?

We’re still plugging away at trivia at noon.  We haven’t won, but there’s hope that our cumulative score will put us in the running.  Today a question was how many points does a knight get in chess.  I think everyone in the room  was flummoxed because we didn’t think there are points in chess.  We all guessed and we happened to guess correctly the number three. I’ve got to run now because my friends are in the jewelry fashion show and I have to cheer them on.

Some of my trivia team before a game. Notice they aren't studying.😁 

It’s tomorrow now.  The fashion show was nice.  One of my friends, Jude, wore a ruby and diamond  necklace that sells for over a quarter of million dollars.  I don’t think they actually sold anything. I had dinner with my friends and a man who is traveling solo since his wife died.  There is something about being on a cruise.  It hits you that the people on the ship can be anything they want to be; in other words there can be a lot of embellishment and puffery going on. He may be a wonderful guy but for whatever reason I take everything he says with a whole saltshaker of salt. It's just a feeling I have.

Some of my friends who modeled beautiful jewelry

After dinner we went to a magic show (bad – should have missed it) and then to the club.  The band did a better job; at least they played, but I was feeling a little off so I left around midnight.  I must have needed sleep because I turned off the light and woke up at almost 10 AM. I missed breakfast (no great loss) and now am writing a little before it’s time for trivia again.   I'd better post this.  Sorry if it's not exciting but sea days are just like that.

November 28 - Bab-el-Mandeb

It’s Tuesday, our 3rd sea day since leaving Safaga and we’re still in the Red Sea.  This evening around 7 PM our time (we’re 8 hrs. ahead of EST) we’ll make our transit through the strait of Bab-el-Mandeb which lies between Yemen on the Arabian peninsula and Djibouti and Eritrea on the African continent on what’s known as the Horn of Africa.  Apparently the name in Arabic means the gate of grief and lately that’s been a pretty apt name.  It’s from that place in Yemen that the Houthis have been launching their attacks on a couple of freighters and even one of our navy ships patrolling in this part of the world.  The first time we went through there years ago we could see people with guns walking on the beach in Yemen.  That’s how close we were.

Last night I had dinner at the Captain’s table; in fact I sat next to him.  He told us that the bridge is in constant communication with the naval forces in the area and we’ve been given the green light to make our transit into the Gulf of Aden.  I’m not worried but I think a few of my fellow passengers are.  I just know that the ship wouldn’t go there if there was a problem.

Anyway, it was an interesting evening at dinner.  The captain is from the Netherlands and when he was 18 he wanted to be an airline pilot for KLM.  He was accepted to that airline’s aviation academy but it turned out they had accepted too many people so they had a lottery and his number wasn’t drawn. Instead he enrolled in the Dutch maritime academy.  Some years later he still wanted to fly so he took a break from the sea and went to a flight school in Chesapeake, VA.  Because of his time there he was very familiar with my area and we could talk about some common things.

Ed and Cyndi, he came to Seabourn from Holland America and knew Captain Albert from your world cruise quite well.  Instead of a myth today I’ll tell you a real-life story he told us at dinner.  When he was a 3rd officer on a freighter,  they were carrying a load of beef from Argentina to Aqaba, Jordan in refrigerated holds.  The ship made it across the Atlantic, through the Mediterranean and the Suez Canal without problems  and then the ship had to navigate through the Strait of Tiran to get from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aqaba.  Our captain, who was a junior officer at the time, was asleep when he was jolted awake by the ship making a tremendous noise.  He said he ran up to the bridge and found that the ship had run aground on a reef (not on his watch).  This happened back in the late 1980’s and there weren’t as sophisticated navigational systems as now, but the master of the freighter was in a hurry to get the refrigerated meat to its destination and he was going at full speed, something our captain  said you should never do in narrow straits, at night and especially in unfamiliar waters.  The upshot was that the ship had to be pulled off the reef by a tug and towed sailing backwards to Suez, the port at the Red Sea end of the canal.  The Egyptians were rightfully angry because it was in their waters and there was a fuel spill.  The whole crew, including the captain were arrested and he spent one month in an Egyptian jail until things could be sorted out.  The captain of the freighter wasn’t so lucky and spent a much longer time in jail.  I don’t know, but I doubt that in an Egyptian jail they worry much about prisoners’ rights.  The captain said it was not an experience he would wish on anyone. 

We stayed at the table so long that I missed the show.  My friends told me it was no loss when we met in the Club later.  We had some new additions to our dance party.  A couple of junior officers (women) joined us as well as a German couple who were feeling no pain.  The German man was the only male on the dance floor with all us ladies. What is it with men and dancing? Once again we closed the place down.

Since I don’t have any exciting pictures of land to post I thought I’d post a few of my cabin so you can see my home away from home and a couple of random ones from around the ship. So here goes…

My bedroom and sitting area with the veranda beyond

The bathroom with 2 sinks, a tub, and a shower you can't see in the lower left

My walk-in closet and the elephant I'm sharing my room with

The moon over the Red Sea

November 27 - A Painted Ship on a Painted Ocean

It’s  Monday here on the good ship Seabourn Encore and we’re on our second of five sea days.  We’re heading south through the Red Sea and at the moment we’re roughly west of Jeddah, Saudi Arabia and east of Port Sudan, Sudan.  Those are two places I have no interest in visiting.  It’s quite calm and warm and muggy outside.

Sea days fall into a routine quickly.  I get up generally around 9AM, get dressed and go to the Colonnade for breakfast.  Most days I have fruit and a roll or pastry, but occasionally I splurge and order something special like these eggs royale (eggs benedict with smoked salmon instead of Canadian bacon).  These came with a dollop of caviar on top.  Then it’s time to check e-mails, find my friends and see what we have planned for the day and talk.

Eggs Royale with caviar

At noon it’s time for Trivia.  Yesterday we came within 10 points of being the winners.  We’re doing cumulative scores so on the last day the scores will be added up and overall champions will be announced. We’re definitely in the running.  After trivia it’s time for lunch.  Yesterday we ate in Sushi, the Japanese venue, and had a very nice and light lunch.  A Brazilian lady traveling alone joined us.  Today they’re having the Galley Market Lunch which is great fun.  Stations are set up in the main galley and we go through there to make our selections for lunch.  It gives us an opportunity to thank all the people who work so hard behind the scene. The presentation of the food is always pretty spectacular.  After most of the diners have gone through the galley the food and beverage team come and parade out giving us an opportunity to thank them for all their hard work.

Omar from Peru who serves us bloody marys when we play trivia

Do you make your watermelons look this beautiful?

The cheese and bread station in the galley

The dessert station after it had been nearly wiped out by us

These three men were so tickled that someone was taking their photo. Their smiles are contagious.

Our Executive Chef leading the parade

During both the morning and afternoon there are lectures about a variety of subjects.  There’s a naturalist who has given some talks about birds in the area.  We have a couple of historians and a modern political person who talks about current events.  I have gone to a few of the lectures, but I must confess that occasionally they have voices that sort of lull me to sleep.  I try to sit in the back so it won’t be too obvious if that happens.  

Every afternoon they have a formal tea in one of the lounges and it is always very nice.  I haven’t been at all on this cruise because I would just be eating continuously if I did.  Before I know it it’s time to get cleaned up for cocktails and dinner.  There is a lovely bar up high where they have a duo playing nice music, and, surprise, surprise, they have hors d’oeuvres in case we are feeling weak from hunger.  There’s also a very nice piano bar outside of the alternative restaurant.  Tonight my friends and I are going to a cocktail party for long-time Seabourn cruisers in another venue called the Retreat.  Then it’s dinnertime.  Every night I have an invitation to a table hosted by a member of the staff.  Some nights I go; on other nights I meet with friends.  Tonight I’ve been invited to dine with the captain.  He’s the same captain I sailed with to Antarctica earlier this year.

Dinner is usually over by around 9 or 9:30 in time to go to the show.  Some nights it’s a guest performer and some nights it’s the ship’s entertainment cast.  After the show is when the dancing starts.  My friends and I go down to the club where there is live music and we have a good time dancing. There’s usually just a small group of us down there so we aren’t shy about asking for music we want to hear.  Our philosophy is that the band has to play for the audience not for themselves.  By midnight the live music ends and sometimes we leave; other nights we stay for a while and finish our drinks and have interesting conversations.

Here's the bar in the club where we have our after show parties

Then it’s time to go back to the cabin and rest up for the next sea day.  It doesn’t sound like it should be tiring, but somehow I find I fall asleep almost the moment I turn the light off. I also manage to get in 2.5 to 3 miles a day just walking here, there and everywhere on the ship. I don’t sit in the sun while many people, especially the Brits do.  I do sit on my veranda sometimes and just watch the sea go by.  We’re usually too far off land to see anything. In summary, it’s a very relaxing way to pass the days. 

November 25 - Safaga, Egypt

I’m moving a little slowly today; we were up dancing until very late.  We’re docked in Safaga, Egypt, the Red Sea port which is the jumping off place for a visit to Luxor.  The last time I came here, the ship stayed overnight and we took a tour which allowed us to stay in a hotel along the Nile in Luxor.  This time we’re only here for the day so the tour to Luxor involved leaving at 6:30 AM, 8 hours in a bus and only a few hours in Luxor.  I originally booked it, but after getting on the ship I canceled because it really didn’t seem worth it.  The ride from Safaga goes through the Red Sea mountain range which is nothing but rocks and sand with only an occasional scrubby bush.  If you can picture the Israelites wandering through the wilderness after escaping Egypt, you’ve got a pretty good idea of the terrain.  Also, and rather importantly, there are no bathroom stops until you arrive in Luxor.

You can see what I mean about being desolate

So today I’m going to cheat and I’m going to write about Luxor and post some  photos from my last visit here so you can get an idea what it’s like. Luxor was the ancient city of Thebes and the capital of Upper Egypt.  The Egyptian god Amun was the patron of Thebes and after a rebellion in the 16th century BC, Amun became fused with Ra, the Sun god.  Amun-Ra became essentially the king of Gods in the Egyptian pantheon.  The city lies on the Nile River about 130 miles downriver from the Aswan Dam. It was an important city as far back as 2100 BC. Luxor is the site of the Temple of Karnak, which is the largest one in Egypt. It covers an area of 250 acres and incorporates hundreds of columns, statues and, at one time, over 100 obelisks.  Now there are only a few left and the most impressive is the one dedicated to Queen Hatshepsut.  It’s 100 feet tall and weighs 350 tons.  I always marvel at how these ancient people were able to build such massive, beautiful buildings.

These are in the Temple of Karnak

The Temple of Karnak is connected to the Temple of Luxor by an avenue called the avenue of rams because of the statues along the way, each with the body of a lion and the head of a ram.  They look like small sphinxes, except the Sphinx has the head of a human.  The entrance to  the Temple of Luxor is flanked by two massive statues of Ramesses II and an obelisk.  There were originally two of the latter but one was taken by the French and now stands in the Place de la Concorde in Paris. (Everyone always thinks of the British as having taken lots of ancient artifacts like the Elgin Marbles from Greece, but they weren’t the only ones.)  The Temple of Luxor over the ages had a Roman temple within it, followed by a church and finally a mosque which still lies within the temple boundary.

The Avenue of the Rams

The entrance to the Temple of Luxor with RanessesII on either side of the gate

That's the miinaret of in the mosque in the Temple of Luxor

It’s worth telling a little about the Nile which has always played a big part in Egypt’s history.  The Nile actually begins as the Blue Nile, whose source is in Ethiopia, and the White Nile, whose source has long been disputed but it’s either in Rwanda or Burundi. The two Niles join together around Khartoum, the capital of Sudan.  As I wrote earlier the countryside you ride through on the way to Luxor is truly desolate until you approach the Nile and then you come to lush fields with the main crop being sugarcane.  Along the way there were lots of houses built of mud bricks with roofs of thatched sugarcane.  Riding through places like this makes you realize how fortunate we are to have the conveniences we have, and it hits home how many people there are who live in a manner in which our forebears did.

A couple of scenes from the Nile

Well, that’s a little about Luxor as I remember it from nearly ten years ago.  I’m sorry I don’t have new things to tell about it.  I think the temples are still as they were then so the pictures should give you some idea of the place.  The one different thing I can see from the ship is the city of Safaga.  Last time we were here the streets were packed with people waiting to get on ships in the port to take them across the Red Sea  to Jeddah in Saudi Arabia.  There were literally thousands camping out on the streets and we figured it must have been the time for the Hajj that many Muslims make to Mecca.  They aren’t in evidence today.

November 24 - Red Sea

It’s time to play catch up now. After leaving Rhodes on Tuesday evening we had a full day sailing south to the Mediterranean entrance of the Suez Canal.  It was a sunny day with calm seas. Now that the port intensive part of the cruise is over, we have many more activities going on during the day. There are two art instructors, a bridge instructor and several lecturers talking about everything from birds and other wildlife in this part of the world to all things historical, from Egyptian to modern day politics and events in the middle east. There are enough things going on that the days seem to zip by and I can feel exhausted in good kind of way.

Just a few of the ships waiting to transit the canal with us

By late afternoon Wednesday we had arrived at the anchorage for the canal.  I should tell a little about the Suez Canal.  Over the millennia small canals were dug by civilizations occupying this area including Egyptians and Persians. None of those connected the Med to the Red Sea which is what the modern Suez Canal does.  The prime mover behind getting this one built was a Frenchman named Ferdinand de Lesseps in the mid-19th century. Prior to its construction trade between India, the Spice islands and other parts of Asia had to either go overland or go around Africa, De Lesseps envisioned a sea level canal with no locks which reduced the transit between the Mediterranean and the Indian Ocean by approximately 5500 miles.  He had a cousin who was well-connected, Eugenie, the wife of Napoleon III and she helped him to persuade some of the authorities to give permission for the project and to get investors to help fund it.  Interestingly, the British government was fundamentally against building a canal.  In part it was due to traditional rivalries between France and England and in part because the British with their large colonial empire in  south Asia  (India, e.g.) had a monopoly on trade even if it took longer. Egypt at the time was part of the Ottoman Empire with a local sultan acting as a representative for the overall ruler in Istanbul. De Lesseps befriended the local sultan Sa’id and got his approval.  Only around the time that construction was beginning was the man in Istanbul told about it.

Construction was begun in 1859 and carried on until 1869. The canal was officially opened in November 1869.  As I mentioned earlier the Suez Canal is a sea level passageway with no locks. Consequently, it didn’t present the challenges that building a canal across Panama did years later.  It was initially a one-lane passageway with a place for  south and north bound ships to pass in the Great Bitter Lake, which is sort of at the mid-point. The canal was owned by the Egyptian government but the operation was owned by a concessionary company owned by mainly French and British shareholders. The Suez Canal is about 120 miles long and divided Africa from Asia, specifically the Sinai Peninsula.  In 2014 the Egyptian government under el-Sisi began construction of a 22-mile bypass section in the northern part of the canal so that two-way traffic can occur and the capacity of the canal has been increased to nearly 100 ships per day.

In 1888 a treaty called the Convention of Constantinople was signed which essentially granted all countries the right of passage through the Canal in times of peace and war. Without going into a whole lot more history of events in this part of the world, Britain maintained a military presence here from about 1882 to 1956.  As a result during WWI and WWII it denied access to its opponents in those wars. (So much for treaties.)  In 1956 Gamal Abdel Nasser, the president of Egypt, nationalized the Suez Canal, causing what the world knew as the Suez Canal Crisis. For a period of nearly  a year the canal was closed and you can imagine what a monkey wrench that threw into world trade.

In the subsequent years conflicts between Israel and the Arab countries have caused some problems but for the most part the canal has remained open.  A couple of years ago a container ship called the Ever Given ran aground and blocked traffic in both directions for six days.  Can you imagine the back up that created?  Lawsuits are still flying because of that.

So what do you see as you sail through the canal?  The first time I came through nearly 10 years ago we saw sand, sand, and more sand.  The last time I went through on Al’s and my last cruise there was a lot of construction going on on the Sinai side which is the one we faced.  A large city was being built.  This time I’m on the Sinai side again and the city looks well-populated.  Apparently the other side is also grown up and ferries run back and forth. About midway along the northern half of the canal is a big bridge officially known as the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge. We passed under it as we made our transit and I couldn’t see many cars on it but it was impressive.

A little compound along the canal

This city was under construction last time I came this way

Looks pretty lived in now. See the laundry hanging. I wonder what happens ina sand storm.

The man in the archway was watching us intently and making a shrill whistle which at first I though was some kind of eagle calling

One of the many ferries taking people, cars and trucks across

A statue commemorating something along the shoreline

More bridge pictures than you ever wanted to see

And another one

And then there was sand, but no Lawrence and no camels

About our transit.  We were supposed to begin at 4 AM on Thursday, the 23rd.  We finally got underway around 11:30 AM on that day.  The official story is that the northbound convoy (ships go through in convoys) was delayed.  I’m going to be a little of a conspiracy theorist here and say that I think maybe we were delayed because the friendly Houthis down in Yemen fired 8 attack drones at ships in the Red Sea and one of our US Navy ships took the drones out.  That sounds far more exciting than that someone feel asleep at the switch on a freighter heading north.  Whatever, we did as a result do most of our transit in daylight.  

I’ve always loved the movie Lawrence of Arabia and I can remember how disappointed I was the first time we sailed through here because I fully expected that on the Sinai side I would see white-robed men riding along on camels with their rolling walk.  No Lawrence, no white floaty robed men at all and not a single camel was in sight. So much for girlish dreams.

I guess I’ve bored you enough.  I’ve been to a couple of lectures and I’ve played trivia.  I’ve danced in the evening and those have been my accomplishments for the last few days.  We’re in the Red Sea now heading to Safaga, Egypt.   That’s all for now.

November 23  -  Suez Canal, Egypt

Happy Thanksgiving!

Lots of things going on here today so I'll write more tomorrow.  I just wanted to wish everyone a wonderful Thanksgiving. 

November 21 - Rhodes, Greece

I was here last year in the spring and I wrote a lot of the history of the island which I am going to include again so that maybe I’ll remember it.  If you read it before skip over it.

Rhodes is the largest of the Dodecanese Islands and has been inhabited since the Neolithic period but there are only a few remnants of that time. In the 16th century BC the Minoans came from Crete which lies to the south. A century later the Mycenaean Greeks arrived.  Homer mentions that Rhodes participated in the Trojan war. It wasn’t until the 8th century BC under Dorian Greeks that some substantial settlements arose. The legend was that the island was created by the union of Helios, the sun god, and the nymph Rhodos so the three major towns were named for their three sons.  

The island was conquered in subsequent centuries by the Persians, Athenians and Alexander the Great.  Following Alexander’s death in 323 BC his empire was divided among his three principal generals. Rhodes formed a strong trading alliance with the Ptolemies in Egypt (Ptolemy I was one of Alexander’s generals and the last member of his dynasty was someone everyone has heard of – Cleopatra.)  Another of the generals, Antigonus sent his son to lay siege to Rhodes to break the alliance. The son brought catapults, battering rams and a huge siege tower, but after a year he signed a peace agreement and left, leaving behind all his war materials.  The enterprising Rhodians took all the armaments and melted down the metals, sold the rest, and used the proceeds to build the Colossus of Rhodes to celebrate the peace.

The Colossus was one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.  It was constructed around 280 BC of bronze over an iron frame and was around 108 feet tall. It represented the sun god Helios.  The exact location on the island is unknown because the Colossus was destroyed in an earthquake in 226 BC.  Everything we know about it is from fragments of writings by ancient authors.

I know I'm writing a lot of history but perhaps this way I'll remember it (and who knows it may help in trivia one day 😃).  Over the ensuing centuries Greeks came and went as then did Romans, both western and eastern (Byzantine).  Then we come to the age of the Crusades.  The Knights Hospitaller (AKA the Knights of St. John) who built the castle in Bodrum, also had a stronghold in Rhodes, the walled old city. They left Rhodes after Suleiman the Magnificent overran them in Bodrum and moved their headquarters to Malta.

Since I’d taken a tour of the island last time, I decided today to visit the old town of Rhodes.  We were docked right next to it; in fact from my veranda, I looked right out at the city walls.  I’ll digress for just a moment to say that as I was having breakfast a huge NCL ship came into the dock next to ours.  It was like watching an apartment building slide by.

These were views from my veranda and the dock

Just a slight difference in size

It wasn’t a long walk to get to the first of the old gates to the city. I had heard how lovely the old town is and it didn’t disappoint.  The streets are very narrow and many are paved with cobblestones.  I’m not sure what the rules are but apparently a few people can have cars inside the walls and motorbikes are definitely okay.  There were lots of stores selling those floaty, gauzy Greek dresses like something you’d see in Mamma Mia, and much as I’d like to have one, I just don’t think they would look quite the same on me as on Meryl Streep.  I went in to one of those shops and a Greek lady who was no Twiggy herself told me the dresses look “beautiful on everyone.”  I noticed she wasn’t wearing one so I just smiled on went on my way. 

These are some street scenes from inside the walls

I went in a tiny jewelry shop that had things which looked Greek and handmade and found out it’s owned by a family.  The Papa is a jeweler and goldsmith; the Mama reminded me a lot of the mother in “My Big Fat Greek Wedding.”  The son is the moneyman and the daughter Theodora is a jewelry designer and goldsmith who also does design work for museums in Rhodes and in Athens.  They invited me to sit down and Mama insisted I have some coffee and cookies. You can guess the rest; I did buy something. When I’d finished the friend who also works in the shop pulled her car around and Theodora hopped in the back seat, I was in the front and they drove me around the narrow streets so I could see the Knights’ Castle,  the beautiful trees and flowers around it; we drove through the covered gateway where the portcullis must have been across what used to be the moat.  There was a lot of Greek floating around by my two escorts which I think was “turn here, no there.”  We did a lot of horn-beeping to get tour groups out of our way on what I really thought  were pedestrian only streets. But then what do I know.  Anyway, eventually we went outside the walls and back to the dock.  A big conversation ensued with the guards there because cars weren’t supposed to enter, but they let us pass.  We pulled up to a customs office and Theodora raced in to get some form stamped so I could get the EU VAT tax refunded.  We drove back inside the walls to the shop, where Mama fixed me another cup of coffee and gave me a cookie (I must look poorly fed) and they proceeded to give me back the tax money. We zipped back in the car and they drove me back to the guarded dock and took me nearly to the gangway. Even if I didn’t like what I bought, the experience was worth it just to watch this Greek family in action. 

Me and my new Greek friends

The Knights' Castle

The old town looked quite magical as it got dark

It was mid-afternoon by this time so I stayed on board. We played trivia (didn’t win) and then it was time for oysters, caviar and champagne by the pool.  It was chilly and windy and I didn’t stay long at all because I was shivering.

Before dinner I met my two new dancing friends for a drink and then we went off to our respective hosted tables.  There was a show with a British Motown group who were so-so, and then of course we went down to dance until the music stopped.  I had to work off the extra cookies I had along the way.  And that was my day.  I know I’ve gone on too long, but it was a really fun day and I hope I’ve conveyed that.  The next several days we’ll be at sea as we make our way to the Suez Canal and then into the Red Sea.  I need some days to rest. 

I don't know why they loaded down here; they were supposed to be by the other street scenes. The last is to show they're getting ready for Christmas.