Sunday - April 24, 2005
Home Again, 115 Days Later
Just before dawn on Friday, April 22, we sailed
up the Hudson River, under the Verizano Bridge, and past the Statue of Liberty
to arrive in New York, right back where we had started from on January 3. If you
have been following this blog, you will know that this World voyage has been an
extraordinary adventure and one that we are sad to see end. How are we going to
deal with re-entry and reality after being away for 3 months and 3 weeks? A
fellow I met on the ship who has done five world cruises told me that there are
four things he hates about returning home: having to make his own bed, having to
get his own breakfast, not having a chocolate on his pillow each night, and
having to put his own napkin in his lap!
Posted at 11:51 PM Read More Feedback
Monday - April 18, 2005
England: Southampton
This was definitely a day of emotional conflict
for us. After two days of packing and some pretty rough seas crossing the
dreaded Bay of Biscay, we arrived in Southampton, the last port of call on our
QE2 World Cruise. It was a bittersweet time because although we would be
transferring to the "biggest, tallest, widest, grandest ship in the world", the
Queen Mary 2, for our transatlantic crossing to New York and home, I really
hated to say goodbye to the QE2 and all her wonderful staff. Stateroom 2057 had
been home for us for the last three and a half months and we were really going
to miss it. The good news was that the friends we had made on the voyage would
be with us on the QM2 and were feeling the same sense of separation.
Posted at 01:12 PM Read More Feedback
Sunday - April 17, 2005
Spain: Malaga
Seeing as we have a timeshare condo we can use
that is just an hour's drive away from Malaga, we felt like we were coming home
in a way. We have visited all the places that the shore excursions were slated
to go (Granada, Ronda, Mijas, Marbella and Puerto Banus) and didn't feel the
need to pay for a guided tour, so we decided that we would just hire a taxi and
poke around on our own for the day. It made for another lazy day where we didn't
do a great deal of anything, which was just fine with us.
Posted at 06:06 AM Read More Feedback
Tuesday - April 12, 2005
Spain: Barcelona
Barcelona is a fantastic city and I'm so glad we
had two days here to get to know the place. Other than a two-hour, whirwind bus
tour of the city a few years ago, neither of us had ever spent time in Barcelona
and didn't really appreciate what we had been missing. It is Spain's second
biggest city and is quite different from Madrid. I found it to be more
cosmopolitan and the architecture is certainly more imaginative, while Madrid
excels in its sense of history and its fantastic art galleries.
Posted at 10:16 AM Read More Feedback
Tuesday - April 12, 2005
Italy: Naples
Mike and I dithered for awhile as to what we
should do on our day in Naples. We could visit the city, go to Pompeii or
Herculaneum, take a drive down the Amalfi coast, or hop a hyrdofoil over to the
Isle of Capri, just to name a few of the options. Seeing as I have visited this
area many times and we will be back in this neighborhood in October when I bring
a group over, we didn't feel compelled to do much of anything. But we settled on
a leisurely day in Capri and it turned out to be just the right choice.
Posted at 05:58 AM Read More Feedback
Sunday - April 10, 2005
Turkey: Marmaris
When I first saw on our itinerary that we would
be stopping in Marmaris, Turkey, I thought, "Where???" I had to get out a map
and look it up. I then got out a guide book and noticed that it warranted a
couple of lines about being a popular resort town on the southern coast of
Turkey in an area called the Turquoise Coast, quite close to Bodrum. All this
left me rather underwhelmed at the prospect of a day in Marmaris. Boy, was I
wrong!
Posted at 03:55 AM Read More Feedback
Thursday - April 07, 2005
Egypt: Suez Canal
This entry is going to be short because I have to
say that transiting the Suez Canal is not nearly as exciting as passing through
the Panama Canal. For one thing, there are no locks. And although there is
civilization and some farming along one side of the 117 mile canal, the other
side is the Sinai Peninsula, which is basically desert.
Posted at 11:19 AM Read More Feedback
Thursday - April 07, 2005
Egypt: Cairo
On April 4, the Queen Elizabeth 2 had the honor
of being the very first tourist ship to dock at the new port of Ain Sokhna. We
were also the first tourists to use the highway that the military built from Ain
Sokhna to Cairo. The port went all out to welcome us. We were met by a band and
male dancers dressed in multi-colored overskirts that they would take off and
swirl over their heads as they twirled around like whirling dervishes. (And we
were entertained with a wonderful display of fireworks as the tugs pulled us
away in the evening.) There was a real sense of excitement in the air as we
boarded our busses for the two-hour trip into Cairo. We were going to see the
pyramids of Egypt! And not even the facts that we had to travel in a convoy
escorted by cars of armed guards and that our muscles were still aching from
Petra could dampen our enthusiasm.
Posted at 10:46 AM Read More Feedback
Thursday - April 07, 2005
Jordon: Petra
The rose-red walls of Petra, half as old as
time...
These words describe the ancient
city of Petra perfectly. There is nothing in the world that compares with this
magical place. Its ornate tombs, temples, and houses were carved from the
rose-colored sandstone cliffs by the Nabateans over 2,000 years ago, and lay
hidden beneath desert sands until the early 1800s.
Posted at 08:42 AM Read More Feedback
Wednesday - March 30, 2005
Oman: Muscat and Salalah
<>
Because we left Dubai 8 hours later than
scheduled, the Captain had to use all the speed that the QE2 can supply to get
us to Oman on time. We passed through the Straits of Hormuz to arrive at Muscat
on the North shore, the smallest capital city in the world. Amazingly, we were
just a half hour late. Oman is known as the Land of Frankincense, as it has been
exporting the scent for centuries. It is a relatively unknown land in terms of
tourism, and made us think that this must be what Dubai was like before it began
its tourism boom. I think it is the very first country we have visited where we
did not see a McDonald's, a Kentucky Fried Chicken, or a Seven-11!
Posted at 05:20 AM Read More Feedback