Monday 13/4/2015 Day 97 A day transiting the Suez Canal

Last night’s score was 4-2 to MUFC J. So we (Khachik I mean)  could get on with our Suez preparations without any sadness.....

Like a child the night before a special trip I was awake every couple of hours all through the night wondering if it was “first light” yet.  1 a.m. my wakefulness started, until finally at 6 a.m. Sam began her presentation through the ship cam channel on cabin tv. The ships engines were turned off at 3 and the anchor dropped.  But by 7 a.m. it became apparent that the southbound transit had been lucky and set off first and we would have to wait until around 11 a.m. to make our start in our convoy.  Not that it matters at all when you are on the sea.  It got more and more exciting as we realised that ahead of us in the queue were a US naval ship and a submarine.  Behind us were container ships and other cruise ships.  Like Panama it costs a ship a lot of money to cross – this time it was £400,000. We found out that 76 ships would be going through today, so not a bad income for a day.  It’s a good job too, because there’s no tourist industry left in Egypt. A few years ago everyone wanted to sail on the Nile, or visit Cairo.  Now tours are diverted away from Egypt.  Our 2 scheduled Egypt port stops were cancelled before embarkation for security reasons. 

All the way along the Egyptian coast on our port side there were armed soldiers keeping watch over the canal, all 120 miles of it from the Red Sea to the Med.  On land and sea was all the evidence of a successful oil producing country with moveable bridges, platforms and paraphernalia. 

Sam talked to us as we passed landmarks and went under the Suez Canal Bridge, giving us a lot of historical information and descriptions of the conflicts over Suez over the years.  Here's a pic of the souvenir from the Suez Transit.

The weather stayed fine and dry, hazy skies at first but then true blue, with very few clouds, cool early but warming up to about 20C throughout the morning. This meant we could be outside whenever we wanted without worrying about burning.

During the day a massive barbeque was set up outside today as most of the passengers were watching the transit from the decks.  Otherwise our day incorporated 60 focused minutes of cardio whilst looking out onto the sea at the front of the ship this morning, and a lovely art class this afternoon.  I had a bit of a cob on (only inside, no tantrums!) in art as it appears I am hopeless at drawing and painting flowers, and there has been no improvement in my flowers for the whole cruise.  Khachik’s flowers are always amazing, with soft petals and curves. Mine looked seriously flat and lifeless. Ah well, I will keep practising.

Dinner and an early night tonight.  Has to be when you’ve slept like a child on Christmas Eve the night before.  So I will say bye for now, until our sea day to Athens tomorrow. x

Friday 10/4/2015 Day 94 Sailing northwards between Egypt and Saudi Arabia on the Red Sea

Today is the fourth and last sea day to Jordan.  There’s a lot of excitement about the trips tomorrow.  The most popular one is Petra, the Lost City one of the wonders of the world I am learning, and a close second is Wadi Rum, history and a Bedouin experience.  We have had messages from the captain about the sudden drop in temperature to 12C (on the news that’s cooler than home at the moment) and we have been advised to take layers, water and a snack in case it warms up.

We are so lucky to have such a good life.  Day after day of new experiences and good fun.  Our day today has been another hot one, a little cooler than of late, with the elements playing around in a way we haven’t felt for a long, long time.  Force 7 winds, a rough sea and a moderate swell.  No land in sight either side of the Red Sea, but we are now in between Saudi and Egypt and making good, uneventful progress towards Jordan.

A crunchy, nutty and seedy breakfast, 30 minutes deck walking, 30 minutes in total bike, rowing and arm cycling and a beautiful yoga practice.  A very cleansed and healthy feeling is in the air today.  The walk through the mountains to Petra tomorrow might be 2-3 hours, so I reckon the deck walking and treadmilling will have helped us alot.

Art today was a sailing boat on the sea with reflection and background hills.  The “lesson” time wasn’t long enough really so I did a little bit more in the cabin.  It was quite an angular boat with a long straight line for mast and sails, and that was a first and a challenge, but it’s ok now.

After dinner this evening the ship’s movement was a bit more palpable and the outside decks were all closed. For this reason I have come inside and done another water colour portrait of Khachik.  I might share it the original pic and then the progress. Eyes are improving and also shading. Very grateful to Easa for showing me how to do this.

By the way, cabin doors are secured, lights are still off at night and curtains closed until we leave this area tomorrow.  The security measures (weapons, hailers and water hoses!!!) and personnel are still in place around the ship too.

Bye for today.  Reporting from Petra tomorrow, but might be late as it’s a 9-10 hour tour. xx

Thursday 9/4/2015 Day 93 On the Red Sea

Third sea day today on the way to Aqaba. It’s still hot, too hot for me to sit in for more than a few minutes, but lovely just the same.  Sea days make us really aware of any subtle changes in speed, sky, wind and sea state, and put us into a reflective mode.

Anyone remember Hugh Grant’s role in “Just a Boy” – the rich son who inherited the royalties of a Christmas song his father wrote?  Well I was thinking about his “units of time” (30 minutes=1 unit) and realising that’s what we do with our sea days.  Apart from the moments of reflection, which I would give one unit, we read our Horizon and ship’s newspaper (one unit) and plan our activities.  Since the sector started we spend 2 units each just selecting and enjoying breakfast and lunch, 3 dinner, 3 in the gym, 3-4 water colour painting, 1-2 doing crosswords, 1 writing the blog, then there’s unpredictable activities like chatting with fellow passengers (therefore falling outside of unitary measures), 2 in the Palladium, sometimes 2 in the dance classes, and sometimes 2 listening to port talks and of course, after dinner and the Palladium, watching television. We spend at least 10 units asleep, but I don’t think Hugh Grant referred to sleeping!

How far have we travelled so far? Today it is 31,500 nautical miles since Southampton.  We noticed the ship’s speed had picked up to 24 nautical miles per hour, which doesn’t sound very fast, but as our captain once told us the maximum speed we’d be doing was 21, we wondered if it was to make sure we got through the straights at the bottom of the Red Sea and cleared troubled Yemen’s coast as quickly as possible.   The sea around us is deserted by the way, not a sign of any activity to concern anyone.

Today was the day of the second world cruisers’ lunch or (should I say luncheon to give a feel?) We dressed up for this one. Drinks flowed freely, so there was lots of loose talk at the dinner table.  There was good news and bad news on our table.  Remember Victoria I mentioned yesterday?  Luckily for us she was hosting our table again and was like a breath of fresh air, young, vibrant, cheerful, full of interesting tales from the oceans and very open and honest when we asked questions.  She was happy to have her photo taken as one of our blog stars.

  The food was absolutely delicious: interestingly organised mozzarella starter, halibut in a lobster bisque sauce for main, a very extravagant desert with so many different flavours (citrus, caramel, butterscotch and choc) and a few artistic paintings in chocolate on the plate. Khachik enjoyed the red wine, passed on the champagne and I loved the iced orange juices. So far so good. The bad news? There were two other couples at the table and one of one couple seemed really attention seeking at any cost.  I’m ok with attention seeking, I’ve done enough of that myself!  It’s the “at any cost” I struggle with.  There was obnoxious, ignorant, rudeness to the waiters and our table host, loud complaining about the food, the wine, the ship, the service, the cruise etc etc.  Bearing in mind firstly that this lunch with drinks was invitation only and complimentary and secondly we had a beautiful person hosting our table who definitely didn’t deserve to have her lunch ruined. Now the worst news: he was publicly, blatantly, directly racist towards our waiters. Strange how we’d never seen him before on the ship,  if we had we would be giving him a very wide berth, and funny we should be brought together for such a special meal.  As we left the dining room I felt a sense of good riddance to that man. Resolved to make sure the waiters know that we do not feel like that, nor is our experience worthy of any complaint.

The rest of our day went well.  Art – we produced a watercolour copy of one of Easa’s oil paintings.  It was a King Charles spaniel. We both gave it our best shot and Khachik’s is lovely.   I am honestly very happy with the eyes on mine.  Afterwards we had coffee with Easa and he suggested I try to soften the hair a bit, so that’s what I did before dinner. J  Neither looks like Easa’s though.

After dinner we enjoyed a performance by a young opera singer, Victor, who enjoyed audience participation in all of his choruses, all of them Italian favourites.  Most we recognised, as he chose things like O Sole Mio, the theme from the Godfather.  He was very good, and the participation was actually great fun too!

Did I mention launderette rage?  There are three launderettes for all passengers.  Open 8 a.m. and close 10 p.m so it is an art form to avoid queues, or if you’re really unlucky a rager in the room.  We have been at the wrong end of a rager’s tongue for being in there just before 8 a.m. ;) Anyway, one way of avoiding laundry-conflict because nobody washes at night so you wash at dinner time and dry after the Palladium before 10p.m. and pick it up dry in the morning.   You might think launderette talk is not the stuff of a cruise blog, and you may well be right, but firstly it’s one unit of sea-day time ;)  Secondly launderette rage is what cruise legends are made of, and besides I would like a good excuse to repeat two bits of launderette gossip to give you a real feel for the more pressing issues around laundry….  We heard that early on in this cruise two passengers were expelled from the ship for fighting over a washing machine on behalf of their partners.  Later we heard that someone else had put a Mars bar inside one of the dryers after an argument over who was first in the queue.  No expulsion, but damages charged! There you have it, insight indeed into the issues facing some very troubled passengers on the Arcadia – I reckon yoga and meditation might be the answer ;)

I was just building up there  to say that last night we did our laundry one more time, without incident, and we calculate that this clever navigation around a potentially hazardous process need only be repeated twice more. Another stark reminder of the end of the cruise being almost here. 13 days in fact.

So I will say bye for now from inside of the Red Sea. Back tomorrow. xx