Safaga!

Very early this morning about two-thirds of the ship's guests left for tours to Luxor and the Valley of the Kings.  Some are staying overnight in Luxor, while others are returning to the ship late this evening.  It's a three hour drive each way. Be prepared for walking over loose rocks and in and out of tombs with narrow steps. Wear your best walking shoes, a hat and carry water at all times. The sun is blazing hot.  It's well worth the experience, but since we've "been there, done that" we eschewed the caravan out to the Egyptian desert.

Our plans were to swim in the Red Sea this morning.  However, mother nature interfered.  As we sat having breakfast on Deck 11, a mighty wind blew the outside chairs across the veranda floor.  We felt the ship move. Both are rare occurrences while docked.  Then a code "Echo" was called at the pier.  We added "2+2" and figured out there was a problem.  Genius!

The wind was so fierce that as it pushed against the ship, a ballast on the pier gave way.  One of our lines pulled it right out of the concrete dock.  The gangway was lost as the ship moved away from the pier.  Thank goodness, no one was hurt, however it did create a lot of problems.  The remaining tours were put on hold while the ship was moved to a more secure area.  Lines were tied again and the gangway from Deck 4 was dropped instead of the one that had been at Deck 3.  This all took quite a bit of time. In the interest of being productive, we threw our dirty clothes into the washing machine.  Make a note here to always do laundry on days when most everyone is off the ship.  It's actually easy and there is never a wait for open machines.

Once the washing machine was humming, we were committed to hanging around.  There was another snafu, that delayed the other tours, but by then we had decided to pretend this magnificent ship was our (almost) private yacht. Nice dream!

The clothes are clean; we had a nice lunch in our (almost) private dining room and one of us is reading, while the other is drawing.  You guess who is doing what.

We'll try for the Red Sea tomorrow!

I'd like to take a moment to thank all of you who are following my blog.  It's very exciting to know that I have so many visitors from all over the world!  Thank you, dear readers, from the US, UK, AU, Russia, Spain, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Denmark, India, Israel, Turkey, Argentina, Egypt and Canada.  One of the greatest joys of travel is connecting with people around the world...I am happy to be able to do that in this blog.

Happy  guest!

Fishing in the Suez Canal

Suez Canal convoy behind our ship.  Oh my, look at all that sand!