Cruising the Suez Canal

Hello from the Suez Canal! Did you know the Suez Canal divides the continents of Africa and Asia?

As we are going southbound, Africa is on your right and Asia is on your left.

Ever see sunrise over the small strip of Egypt
on the continent of Asia? Now you have.

We were in a convoy of 22 ships using the older canal. Now they also have a newer canal so more ships can move through each day. We were number four, with three ships ahead of us...

and the remainder of the ships behind. There were three cruise ships transiting today.

Upon entering the Suez Canal we immediately noticed differences in the landscapes from one bank to the other. The landscape of Egypt on the African continent was green and developed while the Sinai Peninsula section of Egypt on the Asian continent side was brown and somewhat deserted looking. 

Some views of the Africa side:

Compare that to the Sinai Peninsula side:

While it looks as if the ship is docked along the sand,
it is actually transiting the western canal.

There is a bridge across the Suez Canal. The Mubarak Peace Bridge, also known as the Egyptian-Japanese Friendship Bridge or Al Salam Peace Bridge links the two continents. It is closed to traffic while convoys are making their way underneath.

It appeared the most popular way to get across the canal was by ferry. The ferries darted between the ships in the convoy. They also have floating pontoon bridges that swing out and across once the convoy passes. Because convoys disrupt traffic, they also have a tunnel under the Canal with plans to build more.

Today was a day of so very much to see. I went back and forth from port side to starboard side and found there was always something to take a picture of. While I could have taken hundreds of pictures I tried to limit them and have a just a few of them to show you.

Some sights from the Sinai Peninsula side:

Some from the African side:

 Fisherman were all throughout the waters. Some came quite close to the ship.

It felt like a day of discovery with so much to see, so many new learnings, and surprisingly a strong cell phone signal all day. (Thank goodness or you'd have no visuals of the day!) 

We did have two medical emergencies onboard today, with one passenger needing an emergency disembarkation. Our night time route is being altered a bit so he/she can be transferred to an onshore medical facility around 2:30 in the morning. Thoughts are with the passenger and family.

Tomorrow we have a sea day and I do believe I might just sleep in.

Heading to the Suez Canal

As I was researching the Suez Canal experience from a cruise passenger’s perspective I found all kinds of conflicting information.
*One said the ship is locked down and goes dark, with no one allowed outside or on the open decks during the day or night. This person said all curtains had to be closed and no lights allowed at night and passengers were pretty much confined to their cabins. For several days, actually.
*One said they were forced to endure pirate drills where they were all required to huddle in the hallways.
*Another said the Canal is one way so it took forever for the Canal to open in their direction. And they had to time it so the ship could leave in the cover of night to stealthily avoid the pirates.
*Yet another one said cruise ships have heavily armed guards onboard with water cannons set up on the open decks in case of attack.

In most of the cases I read about, the time in the Suez Canal sounded like a dire and pretty scary experience. I’ve traveled enough to know both cruise passengers and the news media exaggerate and dramatize certain things around cruising. I took what I read with a grain of salt so I was very much looking forward to the transit on this ship to see it first-hand for myself.

Side note: I do have two trusted sources I rely on when it comes to cruising. They aren’t just random people on the Internet and their information is highly accurate, engaging, and entertaining. Yellow Fish Cruises and Vickie and Bernie Travel blog live from their cruises. Each of them have a ton of cruising experience, and thus have a ton of information - with plenty of photos - on their blogs. And guess what? They are both right now on different ships in different parts of the world, blogging live as we speak. Be sure to check them out! Unfortunately neither has been through the Suez Canal so I had to look elsewhere for information this time around. (Thanks a lot ladies, leaving me alone to sort through the crappy information on the Internet. Just kidding. Sort of.)

After our first scheduled day of the Suez Canal transit I can report…
It was pretty much like a regular sea day. We had t-shirt sales and trivia and fruit and vegetable carving and Pub Lunch and music out at the pool and the don’t-hog-the-loungers notification and evening shows. E and I had our 6 AM breakfast (3 days in a row!) and while we missed the moment the sun rose over the horizon, we were walking the Promenade Deck in time to still get a nice view.

I spent time swimming and sunning, and we both spent time napping.

An adult beverage by the pool on a warm day as we head towards the Suez Canal?
Doesn’t get much better than this.

The only noticeable difference in the ship’s activities was by evening we had arrived in our staging area where we would wait for other ships to gather in preparation for our transit. We will be in the southbound convoy of ships beginning tomorrow at around 4 AM. With sunrise not long after 6, it doesn’t sound like cover of night to me.

We’re not the only one waiting for early morning.

Ever see a sunset over Africa? You have now.

Pirate drill with passengers huddled in hallways? Not yet, but I did hear there may be one after the Suez Canal as we will be entering some more potentially dangerous waters.
Relegated to our cabins? Not so far.
Lights off everywhere around the ship? Not yet.

Excited to see what tomorrow brings!

Rhodes, Greece

For the second day in a row, both E and I made it to breakfast before 6 AM. Yay, us! Also for the second day in a row, we took a little rest before I had to go out to my excursion. Since we had calm seas last night, he and I both were ready to explore Greece on our island tour. It wasn’t a great tour as it had extra shopping stops that weren’t in the description - they were ones the guide thought we should make. It extended our tour from a three and a half hour tour to a five hour tour. All because of extra shopping. Ugh. Plus she talked every single moment of the tour in her high-pitched voice. I so couldn’t wait for the tour to be over. But I did get some nice photos, both in the pouring rain (where we started the day) and in the sunshine (where we ended our day). 

When it was finally over I made a beeline for the quiet cabin to kick off my shoes and put on my slippers. While we stopped on the tour for a provided snack (a cookie), it was now over 9 hours since breakfast so I ordered room service (note to self: the cheese quesadilla on the kids menu on the Sapphire uses American cheese so don’t order it again) while I worked on the blog. 

Not much commentary tonight as my head is rattling from another day spent on a bumpy bus ride while having to listen to a screeching voice. So I’ll just leave you with the beautiful island of Rhodes, Greece.

Tour buses lined up on the dock and waiting for cruise ship passengers.

So rainy today.

The walled city.

The Sapphire Princess is out there somewhere.

The mountains of Turkey can be seen in the distance.

Even with the rain the ocean is gorgeous.

 

Finally, the sun!

Finally home.

We have some sea days coming up, thank goodness. The first two will be involving the Suez Canal. It’s a big reason we are on this trip so I’m interested to see what tomorrow holds.

Santorini, Greece

After a few more bumps in the night where we lost some items to the floor (TV controller, dang mini bottles from the mini bar that still hadn't been traded out), the waters calmed early in the morning. Whew.

The ship was a bit delayed arriving in Santorini, but by 10:30 the arrival announcement was made. Santorini is actually formed from a volcano. The ship stays out in the caldera and passengers are tendered back and forth to shore. Typically you would find a ship anchoring when offshore, but the water is so deep an anchor would be of no use so the ship drifts and uses the thrusters to somewhat stay put. (At least that's what our guide told us.)

If you were doing your own thing in Santorini, you went to a different dock than those on ship excursions. On-your-own people were dropped off at the bottom of the city of Fira. There are three ways to get out of the port area: walking, donkey, or cable car. Take a look at this switchback walkway - you have to make your way up all those stairs to make it from the sea to the city up above. Oh, my.

Can you imagine walking up (and then down) all that way?

For those on ship excursions, we wound up at another dock, the only one accessible by bus. Still, we found ourselves with a not-so-direct route out of the port.

Lots of switchbacks to get out of the port

My tour was an island drive. Boy, did we drive. Unfortunately, it was a soon-to-be stormy day with rain and thunder and lightning. We made several stops for photo opportunities, but some of those had such hard downpours it wasn't worth stepping outside. You'll find some of my photos are taken from inside a bus with raindrop-filled windows.

You can tell a storm is brewing.

Looks like snow, doesn't it? Nope, those are houses.

No pretty blue waters today

Windmills can be found around the island.

Someone is selling land, I think. I don't know as it's Greek to me!

It was a bit of a bust of a day. From what I hear, the colors are just spectacular on a sunny day. I'm glad I went, but not sure I'd do it again. With our bumpy last couple days on the ship, a bumpy tender ride over the island, a drive with a couple hours of switchbacks and curves, and another really bumpy tender ride back, my head is spinning. While I haven't been sick to my stomach so far this entire trip, my head is not happy right now. And although the ship is somewhat stationary at the moment, trying to concentrate on the words on the screen is a bit tough so I'll be cutting it short tonight. 

Tomorrow we have Rhodes, Greece. With a clearer head, I hope.

Sapphire Princess Surprise Sea Day

I was excited to see our new Patter for the day. We were supposed to be in Sicily, but we couldn’t dock because of weather. Presto-chango, sea day! We had two different destination presentations, one on Aqaba and one on the Suez Canal. There were other new things we haven’t seen before on a Princess ship, like a sign language class and a lip sync contest. That gave me four things to find my way to today. But with our morning starting at 3 AM, I got to absolutely none of them. It still wound up being a full day.

This morning E and I both decided we couldn’t take it anymore. The cabin has been so doggone noisy since day one. Not noisy as in passengers nearby or creaks and groans, but noisy as in airplane engine noisy. It didn’t matter if we were docked or at sea, day or night, there was this rumbling roar all throughout the cabin. A rumbling roar that had not once let up since we stepped aboard. Makes it almost impossible to sleep, hard to have a conversation, and required us to turn the TV volume way, way up to hear it over the noise. So at 3 AM we were sleep-deprived enough for E to head down to the Piazza for some quiet relief and me to head to the Passenger Services Desk.

Thankfully, the night manager was on duty and accompanied me back to the cabin. She could tell right away the noise was a problem and went off to find where it was coming from. I headed down to the Piazza with E in the meantime. She came down later to let us know she couldn’t find where the problem was, but had a temporary solution. While there wasn’t another cabin in our category to move us to, there was an obstructed oceanview she could temporarily move us to for the rest of the night. I was about to pass, but E was so ready for some sleep we took it. We were issued one blue cabin key to share. (It has been a while since we’ve had a blue cruise card in our hands.) Off we went back to our old room to pick up a few things we needed (pjs, medicine, bottles of water) and headed to our new cabin. Oh my, what a difference. By 4:15 AM we had tucked ourselves into the twin beds in the new cabin and thus began a peaceful sleep.

Until the phone rang in the morning, letting us know they were able to work some magic and if we wanted we could have the cabin for the rest of the voyage. Yes, please! We just needed to let them know when we were ready to move cabins and they’d send someone up. They also let us know we could keep sleeping, if we’d like. Yes, please!

Then we had the cabin steward coming in to service the cabin but was kind enough to let us sleep some more. Yay!

Then was the Captain’s noontime announcement (was it really noon already?) where he spent some time honoring Remembrance Day. The ship had a ceremony yesterday, but many passengers (us included) were off the ship. We’ve been on many ships during Remembrance Day before but this is the first time we’ve had the Captain acknowledge it in a lengthy presentation for all to hear. I’m guessing it has to do with the part of the world the ship is in right now.

The rest of the day involved:
*Learning how to walk on a ship while encountering 70 knot winds. Yep, the 50 knot winds we heard we might encounter actually turned into 70 knot winds. This ship is moving. Not only did I need to work on my balance, I had to help E work on his balance, and dodge all the other passengers trying to work on their balance. All the while trying to make my way to deck 5 to deck 8 to deck 10 and back to deck 8 to deck 6 and back to deck 5 to deck 14 and back to deck 8 back to deck 6 and back to deck 14 and back to deck 8. (I think that was my path for the day.) I don’t know how many steps I had, but it was a lot. For every step I should have taken I probably took an extra one or two is just trying to keep my balance. It took the entire day to:
*Pack up the old cabin and move to the new cabin and re-unpack everything.
*Go back to the Passenger Services desk to get new cabin cards. No sharing a blue temporary one anymore.
*Call room service for the umpteenth time to try and get the mini bar switched out. I don’t know what their delay is but we still haven’t gotten the new one. Thank goodness I had pre-ordered water or we’d really be in a world of hurt for in-cabin beverages. There also appears to be a glitch in the room service phone system. You are put on hold for one minute and when the 60 seconds is up, you are disconnected. So unless someone on their end picks up the phone within the minute you have to hang up and call again. And again. And again. And again.
*Read up on excursions for tomorrow. It was supposed to be a sea day, but since we missed today’s port we have a bonus port instead, Santorini. Woo hoo! It’s a tender port and with 25-30 knot winds expected might not be so fun getting to shore but I’m going forth anyway – on my own – for a little tour. The new excursions weren’t loaded into the system online so I had to make a trek down to the shore excursions desk to get my ticket.
*Go back to Passenger Services desk to turn in our passports. We knew they would need to go to the cabin steward this morning, but our new guy didn’t want them because we hadn’t officially changed cabins yet and our old cabin steward hadn’t even been told we were leaving his section.
*Make another trip down in International Café so E could get some soup in his system. There is where I tried to take a picture of the huge waves out the window but all we could see was sea spray hitting the windows hard. There were a couple times I did see waves towering over the windows, a sight I don’t believe I’ve ever seen before. That would have been an impressive picture.
*Trips to the buffet for green apples and bread for E and then a late lunch for me.
*Cancel our reservations for the specialty dining tonight. There is no way I can get E to get out of bed when the ship is rocking and rolling like it is.
*Sleep, sleep, sleep.

It has been a busy, bumpy, and sometimes relaxing day. We’ve got thunderstorms and lightning throughout the sky again tonight so still no bridge cam TV overnight. Another alarm day it’ll have to be.

Crossing my fingers for smoother sailing, calmer winds, and a great day in Santorini tomorrow.

Naples, Italy

Hello from Napoli!

I was hoping to be up early to get good pictures as we arrived in Napoli (Naples). We’re in an inside cabin this time around, so we turned the TV on to the webcam station last night so I could be awaken by daylight instead of an alarm. It worked great up until the time it didn't. We had thunderstorms throughout the night so the TV kept flashing white, making me think someone was turning on the light. Good thing hubby was snoring or I probably would have been blaming him for it. After a couple hours of being startled awake, the TV had to go off. Which should have meant I set an alarm. But I didn't so we slept. And slept. And slept.

We knew we didn't have to be anywhere until later in the day, anyway. With hubby’s stamina being the number one thing on my mind these days, I made sure today’s tour was an afternoon one so he had plenty of time for morning rest. We usually don’t take Princess tours but this cruise we are. 

Boy, we have a lot of sightseeing to do this month.

Being in a big group of cruise ship passengers in a confined space isn’t exactly our idea of fun. But Princess tour options typically pick up and drop off closer to the ship and keep pretty close to scheduled times, both things we need in order to keep him (hubby E) comfortable. I can’t wear the man out – there are still too many places around the world I want to see!

It wound up being a great tour. We saw a lot and I took a ton of pictures that I'll add later. Here's just a taste.

The ship docks in town. Next time we'll wander on our own instead.

Gelato for me and espresso for hubby. In Italy. Oh, yeah!

While we didn't get a chance to have pizza in Naples today, we still have a chance in Sicily tomorrow. will go to Alfredo's tonight instead. The Captain just announced tomorrow's port will be closed because of bad weather and we'll have a sea day instead. He tells us it'll be a bumpy one with the 50 knot winds. Hope it's not too bumpy by evening as it's formal night (just think about that champagne glass tower!) and we have dinner in the steakhouse tomorrow night  - in the back of the ship. It could get interesting.