Hello everyone.
For the past 5 days we have been at sea – now I say sea, but really I mean seas. We have sailed out of Mumbai into The Arabian Sea (have left the Indian Ocean earlier), then we went into the Gulf of Aden. Having passed Aden we then swung a right into The Red Sea, where we sailed for a couple of days and then into Sharm el Sheikh. The weather for these five days has been perfect, glorious in fact, (what we expected for the whole cruise, but regrettably did not get). However, it has now been too hot for sunbathing for longer than an hour. There is plenty of entertainment around the ship during the day, I still go to the Arts and Crafts Class in the morning, while Geoffrey is going to the Gym for his exercise.
18th March - Sharm el Sheikh
This is situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Desert. The brochure says that the prime reason for the ship’s call there is to visit the Monastery of St. Catherine . We, however, decided not to do this as it was a three hour drive to the Monastery and a three hour drive back. It made it a very long day. Instead we decided to go to the Golden Sands of the Na’ama Bay and relax for the day. Na’ama Bay is becoming a leading tourist resort and is often referred as “the capital of the Egyptian Riviera”. We enjoyed the day relaxing and using the facilities of a deluxe hotel beach resort (Nicola please note it was the Marriott – could be a good use for your points). The trip included the return transportation, admission and use of the swimming pool and private beach. During our time here we had a one hour trip in a glass bottomed boat, which had to be accessed along a narrow 20 metre long floating walkway, needless to say Doreen did not enjoy this experience (see photo). The boat took us over the coral reef and we admired the amazing underwater world beneath us. We saw unique and wonderful corals of all shapes and sizes as well as a multitude of rainbow coloured schools of fish, which presented a panorama of unsurpassed beauty. Many of the people on this trip said that this reef was better than The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We cannot confirm this as we were unable to see The Great Barrier Reef this year because of the weather.
The rest of the day was spent laying under a sun umbrella on the beach, RELAXING.
Tomorrow the ship transcends the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal.
19th March – SUEZ CANAL and CAIRO
Geoffrey and Doreen parted company for this day with Doreen staying with the ship and travelling through the canal and Geoffrey getting up at 3.00am to join the 20 hour expedition by coach to the Pyramids, Sphinx, and a visit to necropolis of Sakkara.
The Suez Canal is 89 nautical miles in length, at its narrowest point 300 metres wide. It runs from The Red Sea into the Small or Little Bitter Lake, then into the Great Bitter Lakes, where it is possible for ships to pass each other, on to Port Said. There is a relatively new bridge construction across the Suez Canal, called the Suez Canal Bridge (or the Mubarak Peace Bridge or the Japanese Peace Bridge. The bridge is 3.9k long and was funded by the Egyptians (60%) and Japanese (40%). It took us all day to travel the length of the Suez Canal, at sometimes quite boring, but at other times very interesting, this was because of the varied landscape – the desert on one side but a quite cultivated town on the other.
The trip to the Pyramids started with breakfast at 3.00am after which we boarded the ship’s tenders for the 3 mile trip to the quayside. Here we were met by armed soldiers and police, who escorted us to our eleven coaches for an exciting, if not, hair raising 2.1/2 hour drive to Cairo with the convoy weaving in and out of the rush hour traffic at high speed, whilst police were stopping all other traffic along the way. We felt like Royalty. On arriving in the centre of Cairo we had a second breakfast in a five star hotel, overlooking the Pyramids.
After breakfast we drove a mile into the desert to the Pyramids and Sphinx and provided you could ignore the thousands of other people and the persistent street traders the experience fully lived up to Geoffrey’s expectations and he spent an extremely pleasant hour and a half wandering around taking in the atmosphere of the Pyramids and the vast desert beyond. Too soon we had to rejoin the coach to drive the 40 kilometres south of Cairo to view the stepped Pyramid of Sakkara, which pre-dates the Pyramids in Cairo, by some 200 years. Although interesting they did not have the grandeur of the 148 metre high Pyramids in Cairo. We visited various tombs and artefacts in the area before returning to our hotel in Cairo for a well earned luncheon.
After lunch we visited the mandatory shopping area for some retail therapy for the ladies on board, this did however involve a visit to the Papyrus Institute, where we were introduced to the process of paper making from reeds and art discovered by the Ancient Egyptians. We then rejoined our armed escort for an even more exciting journey back to Port Said and our ship.
For the past 5 days we have been at sea – now I say sea, but really I mean seas. We have sailed out of Mumbai into The Arabian Sea (have left the Indian Ocean earlier), then we went into the Gulf of Aden. Having passed Aden we then swung a right into The Red Sea, where we sailed for a couple of days and then into Sharm el Sheikh. The weather for these five days has been perfect, glorious in fact, (what we expected for the whole cruise, but regrettably did not get). However, it has now been too hot for sunbathing for longer than an hour. There is plenty of entertainment around the ship during the day, I still go to the Arts and Crafts Class in the morning, while Geoffrey is going to the Gym for his exercise.
18th March - Sharm el Sheikh
This is situated on the southern tip of the Sinai Desert. The brochure says that the prime reason for the ship’s call there is to visit the Monastery of St. Catherine . We, however, decided not to do this as it was a three hour drive to the Monastery and a three hour drive back. It made it a very long day. Instead we decided to go to the Golden Sands of the Na’ama Bay and relax for the day. Na’ama Bay is becoming a leading tourist resort and is often referred as “the capital of the Egyptian Riviera”. We enjoyed the day relaxing and using the facilities of a deluxe hotel beach resort (Nicola please note it was the Marriott – could be a good use for your points). The trip included the return transportation, admission and use of the swimming pool and private beach. During our time here we had a one hour trip in a glass bottomed boat, which had to be accessed along a narrow 20 metre long floating walkway, needless to say Doreen did not enjoy this experience (see photo). The boat took us over the coral reef and we admired the amazing underwater world beneath us. We saw unique and wonderful corals of all shapes and sizes as well as a multitude of rainbow coloured schools of fish, which presented a panorama of unsurpassed beauty. Many of the people on this trip said that this reef was better than The Great Barrier Reef in Australia. We cannot confirm this as we were unable to see The Great Barrier Reef this year because of the weather.
The rest of the day was spent laying under a sun umbrella on the beach, RELAXING.
Tomorrow the ship transcends the Gulf of Suez and the Suez Canal.
19th March – SUEZ CANAL and CAIRO
Geoffrey and Doreen parted company for this day with Doreen staying with the ship and travelling through the canal and Geoffrey getting up at 3.00am to join the 20 hour expedition by coach to the Pyramids, Sphinx, and a visit to necropolis of Sakkara.
The Suez Canal is 89 nautical miles in length, at its narrowest point 300 metres wide. It runs from The Red Sea into the Small or Little Bitter Lake, then into the Great Bitter Lakes, where it is possible for ships to pass each other, on to Port Said. There is a relatively new bridge construction across the Suez Canal, called the Suez Canal Bridge (or the Mubarak Peace Bridge or the Japanese Peace Bridge. The bridge is 3.9k long and was funded by the Egyptians (60%) and Japanese (40%). It took us all day to travel the length of the Suez Canal, at sometimes quite boring, but at other times very interesting, this was because of the varied landscape – the desert on one side but a quite cultivated town on the other.
The trip to the Pyramids started with breakfast at 3.00am after which we boarded the ship’s tenders for the 3 mile trip to the quayside. Here we were met by armed soldiers and police, who escorted us to our eleven coaches for an exciting, if not, hair raising 2.1/2 hour drive to Cairo with the convoy weaving in and out of the rush hour traffic at high speed, whilst police were stopping all other traffic along the way. We felt like Royalty. On arriving in the centre of Cairo we had a second breakfast in a five star hotel, overlooking the Pyramids.
After breakfast we drove a mile into the desert to the Pyramids and Sphinx and provided you could ignore the thousands of other people and the persistent street traders the experience fully lived up to Geoffrey’s expectations and he spent an extremely pleasant hour and a half wandering around taking in the atmosphere of the Pyramids and the vast desert beyond. Too soon we had to rejoin the coach to drive the 40 kilometres south of Cairo to view the stepped Pyramid of Sakkara, which pre-dates the Pyramids in Cairo, by some 200 years. Although interesting they did not have the grandeur of the 148 metre high Pyramids in Cairo. We visited various tombs and artefacts in the area before returning to our hotel in Cairo for a well earned luncheon.
After lunch we visited the mandatory shopping area for some retail therapy for the ladies on board, this did however involve a visit to the Papyrus Institute, where we were introduced to the process of paper making from reeds and art discovered by the Ancient Egyptians. We then rejoined our armed escort for an even more exciting journey back to Port Said and our ship.
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