Author: donhall930

Marco Polo liked the place.

                             He even had a home there.

                   Whenever he and his friends went swimming in the canal, they would call out MARCO!

                   But he remained silent.

                   This really confused his friends because he was the one who invented this game!

                   We called out his name every time we crossed over a bridge (and with 430 of them, we passed over a lot!)  yesterday with the same result. 

 No Marco.

                   What we did find was a city that has changed remarkably little since the days that Marco lived here.

          I need to post a disclaimer here for your viewing information. I took around 250 photographs of Venice and all of its hidden sights. No, I am not going to post all 250 photos here today, but if you think that I could choose just a small amount of them, you would be sorely mistaken! What I can tell you is that you will be treated to a view of Venice that not everyone gets unless you are a resident (or have one show you around!) There will be endless examples of the really photogenic hidden corners of Venice awaiting you if still care to read on!                  

                   So, without any more explanation, here comes Venice!

                   Walking through Venice is like being in a time-warp, there is really nothing modern about this city. Even the problems of today mirror the ones of long ago. Flooding, fresh water, sewage, and transportation in general, are all issues that will probably be with Venice for the next thousand years.

                   We had booked another private tour with Tours By Locals, as along with Jerusalem, this city is too important to trust to a general group tour. By now you know our feelings on group tours vs private tours and the outcome of yesterday just cemented our opinions of private tours.

                   For this tour we had Isabella as our guide. Isabella, or Isa for short, is a resident of Venice. And not just an outskirts-of-the-city dweller, she lives in the heart of this Waterway’s ‘R Us, canal-strewn, let’s build on some islands, little town.

                   There are 118 separate islands, all connected by 430 bridges that span the 26 miles of interconnecting canals. The Grand Canal, the large serpentine waterway that basically cuts the city in half, is almost three miles long and is 300 feet wide at its broadest point. The back water, smaller canals can be just a few feet deep, while the larger, main ones range from about 6 feet to 15 feet deep. You may have seen on the TV a few weeks ago, that “the canals of Venice are drying up”. It is impossible for the canals to dry up as they are connected to the Lagoon, which in turn, is connected to the Adriatic Sea. What did happen was a combination of tidal and meteorological factors. There was a lunar tide coupled with a strong offshore wind which pushed the waters of the Lagoon towards the Adriatic. This happens from time to time, and it seems the only ones to make a big deal about it were the media folks. The Venetian’s use this fortuitous event to clean out some of the canals and do periodic maintenance.

                   Venice is a little over two hours north of us here in the port of Ravenna. Isa had her driver, Daniel, pick us up when our ship docked at 8 am. Daniel, possibly one of the most pleasant persons we’ve ever met, was a fountain of information about Italy and this region specifically. He made our drive north seem like it was just a hop and a skip away. Daniel was also our return driver later in the evening and we could not have been happier. The true professional that he is, he knew that we were exhausted from the day and courteously let us (me) doze off from time to time without interruption.

                   Our exhaustion was a very specific kind of tired, it is called V.S.F. or Very Satisfied Fatigue. Our requests to Isabella were detailed in their generalness….. Please get us into the places that the tours do not, or cannot, take people, but we need to see the Big Three, the Rialto Bridge, The Bridge of Sighs, and St. Mark’s Cathedral and Piazza.

                   These requests were met, and surpassed with results that I could not even imagine! I did not know how to get where we were going, even if I had had a clue! The accompanying blog photos will do it justice, I have no doubt!

The next seven photos are of the beautiful, tranquil, back canals. Think secret rabbit warren, accessed through small underpasses through buildings!

All of these alleys and canals led to some more inhabited areas. The Squares/Piazza’s were all very lively places as you may imagine on such a beautiful day!

We went all over the city, in and out of Piazza’s, through buildings, and up onto a portico that overlooked the entire city! As you can see, we had incredible weather for our day 🙂

We stopped for lunch at a local cafe where we elected to eat inside where the service was a bit quicker and there were no smokers! Isabella asked if we liked pizza! Paula declared, after finishing, that so far this day she has had the best croissant, pizza, and glass of wine she has ever had in her life! So, I guess that the trifecta had been hit! But there was still lots more to come, as we still had hours in front of us!

                             On top of bringing us to all the hidden gems and views, Isabella provided us with not only the necessary information that accompanies this kind of tour, but with some very specific insights and tid-bits of trivia that made the day even more special.

The coup ’de’ grace came when we visited the inside of St. Mark’s Cathedral. There are many ornate and majestic churches around the world and I would be hard-pressed to rank one over the other, but….. (here it comes, the statement after the word but is used 😊) I have yet to see a building where almost the entire interior is one giant mosaic, and a grand one at that! Here Isabella was at her best. This was not just some random tour guide’s knowledge picked up over time, this was a deep-rooted Biblical knowledge that sewed all of the scenes together seamlessly. Laser pointer in hand, she step-by-step started with Genesis and wound her way into the New Testament with ease, and when needed, referred back again to show a prophecy come true.

The next few photos show the interior of St. Mark’s. All of what you see are gold-gilded mosaics! Probably millions of tiny squares on the ceilings and walls all tell the stories that the people of the day came to church to learn. Think of it as an “Illustrated Bible”. Isabell’s laser-pointer was quite necessary to point things out so high up above!

          And then we went upstairs!

          What a view, both inside and out!

We then made our way outside and through St. Mark’s Piazza, over to the edge of the Lagoon where we met Marco, our water taxi driver. It was just the three of us in the gorgeous mahogany-trimmed boat for this end-of-the-day event. Microphone in hand, Isa showed Paula and me (who were perched on the back of the boat like visiting Royalty) the sights that can only be seen by being in, and around, the incredible canals of Venice.

          The water-taxi ride lasted about an hour and brought us back to where we had first met Isa that morning. Daniel was waiting there for us, and after some good-bye hugs and sincere thanks we were on our way back to the ship, where we arrived at about 8:30 PM.

                   A tea, cold glass of milk, and a piece of chocolate cake later, we called it a day.

                   Nope!

                   We called it a V.S.F. day!

Oh, and we found Marco playing in the pool when we got back on board!

Well Armchair Travelers, this is your lucky day!

                   Today you will not be treated to the deafening silence that has been the stalwart of the latest posts, that of the Historical Monologue.

                   Today, there will be an extremely short explanation of this day’s foray out onto the coast of southern Greece, for this day we visited the “tied” island of Monemvasia, “tied” meaning that is actually tied to the mainland by a very narrow strip of crumbled rocks and earth, (now with a paved causeway).

                   Monemvasia means One (Monem) Way or Road (Vasia).

                   Its genesis is rooted in the 6^th century AD and as you may imagine, has been fought over, and tugged back and forth between various conquering peoples such as the Ottomans, Venetians, and Byzantines.

                   Thankfully now the only conquerors are the tourists who have been visiting  here since the 1970’s. This was another pleasant surprise for us as it was one of the only Excursions left for us to choose from and we only thought that it was just a seaside town, an apparently cute one at that. We had no idea that it was medieval in origin or that it has maintained this stamp of the past ever since.

                   So, without further ado, may I please introduce to you, the delightful little island and town of Monemvasia, our next home!  😊

The next several photos will show you the various views of our neighborhood and beyond!

“A Reading from the letter of St. Paul to the Ephesians, Brothers and Sisters…..”

                   This was my knowledge of the Ephesians, never knowing when or where they were located. Along comes our World Cruise and one of our ports is that of the seaside town of Kusadasi in Turkey.

                   Now we’ve never heard of Kusadasi (have you?) or many other places located here except maybe Istanbul. The next step after looking at our Itinerary was to examine each Port Guide and see if any of the proposed Shore Excursions were something that would interest us. Half the time we just guess at something and if the excursions are filling up fast, we just pick something so that we are not just stuck on the ship!

                   The description read, “Ultimate Ephesus: Tour the old ruins, see the Terrace Houses, visit the site of the Basilica of St. John and his resting place, and visit the House of Mary. You will be dropped off at the Grand Bazaar for a Rug Factory Tour and shopping before your short walk back to your ship. A private lunch is included in this full day excursion.”

                   Hoo-boy! Lunch is included! Now we’re talkin’!

                   So off we went with Harold and Sherry’s assurances that we would like what we were going to see. They’ve been here before, so they did something different. Luckily, our Buddies for the day, the illustrious “Red 23” Group, was somewhat smaller in number and only filled up half of the bus, and here’s the best part….no Mobility-Challenged Tourons! Our group hopped, skipped, and ran like a slew of kindergarteners when our Tour Leader, Oz, let us free.

                   Almost. We needed to mind the hopping, skipping, and running as practically all of our tour was on the very uneven stone slab constructed old Roman Ruins.

                   The first stop was at the ruins of St. John’s Basilica. This church was built by Justinian I in the 6^th century AD on the former site of a chapel long dedicated to St. John. St. John, who Jesus had entrusted the safety of his Mother to, traveled to the Ephesus region shortly after Jesus’s time in Jerusalem. It was here that he was imprisoned, set free, and finally assumed into Heaven, much like the Virgin Mary was. This is backed up by the fact that no church has laid claim to any relic of St. John. All the other Apostles have left some bodily relic behind to be venerated. Anyway, this is the place that St. John was last seen before a blinding light came and he was no longer there.

                             You make the call!

                             This is some of the subject matter that Aladdin spoke about. Being a professional archeologist it is impossible, on that level, to prove that many of these beliefs and teachings are what and where they purportedly happened. His answers to this dilemma make sense.

                             “Tradition” especially the kinds that are handed down from generation to generation locally are the foundations of all of these mystical stories and parables. In a way, you need to ask yourself, “Why would these stories change over the years? Why would someone say that this spot here, is the site of XXXX, when everyone else at that time knows that it’s really there. Mix in a few known facts like, generally known other corroborative locations that can help give credence to the argument and you come up with a possible/probable story.

                             There’s an old saying that everyone learns in Archeology 101, that states, “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

                             We can debate this for eons, but this is not the forum for that! This argument is for illustrative purposes only because many of the sites in this area, especially when connected with the Bible, rely on this mix of tradition and Archeology to make a case for a particular setting.

                   Such is the issue with our next stop, The House of the Virgin Mary. Tradition has it that Mary went with St. John to Ephesus where she lived out the rest of her mortal live. The trail kind of ends there until the middle of the 1800’s when a German Nun, Sister Anne Catherine Emmerich (now Blessed) had several visions. She was a known mystic in her homeland and had never visited the Ephesus region. Her visions were recorded and later referred to by a Franciscan Friar who undertook a journey to Ephesus to try and locate the house using Emmerich’s descriptions of the area. He was successful on a certain level, but his efforts fell by the wayside until ten years hence, another attempt was made by a nun and two priests, using the same narratives as guides. They re-discovered the old stone foundation that the first Franciscan did and upon further local examination, they learned that this place was called Panaya Kapulu or The Doorway to the Virgin.

 Here’s the kicker, this nomenclature was bestowed on this site not by the folks of the day, but by the ancestors of the little local town, whose inhabitants had lived there since the days of the early Christians of Ephesus.

          Why would they call it that?

          What would drive them to do that?

          Is all of this possible?….. definitely!

          Is all of it probable?…. Maybe!

          Again, when the puzzle pieces fall into place by accident, you start to wonder  😊

          Once more, you make the call.

          After our visit to Mary’s House, we ventured down the hill to the still-evolving archeological site of Ephesus. This city, started back in the day by Greeks and then modernized by the Romans is quite the sight!

                   Let’s pretend that we are visitors from a foreign land, and we’ve come to Ephesus to do some business. Better yet, let’s pretend that we are the businessmen in Ephesus wanting to show off for these caller’s from afar.

                   What would we have constructed?

What would we like to make sure that every person that came to Ephesus knew beyond a shadow of a doubt?

We want them to think and know how successful we are!

          So, we need to build an incredibly grand city, clad it, not in limestone, but in marble! We need unbelievable Mosaics in our places of business and homes, and not just any mosaics, we need them to be in “black and white” because colored stones are a denarius a dozen, whilst black (and white) ones are very rare, so lets get a bunch of these!

          We also need wide plazas and corridors linking all of the homes and buildings. Hey! Let’s line everything with majestic marble columns to add some stature! And while our guests are here, we need to treat them to a show, so we need an amphitheater, a really big one! And we should have a stadium too, even bigger!

That’s what we found when we visited Ephesus.

The evidence of grandeur was everywhere.

Ephesus sits between two large hills that over the years, buried the old city with the debris of many an earthquake. If recent seismic activity is any indication, we can see how this can happen!

          “Modern” Ephesus dates back to about 1000 BC and the Roman Era started in 129 BC. It is the location of the Temple of Artemis, one of the original Seven Wonders of the World. Ephesus was located on the shores of the Aegean Sea which made its trade importance the center of its claim to fame. Enter the natural process of the silting up of a shore, add a few tremors, and soon (relatively) you end up with a receding shoreline, and a decreasing trade importance.

          Oh well. Buried and somewhat forgotten, Ephesus lived on in those Letters of St. Paul and eventually in the hard work of the archeologists that are still toiling here to bring this ancient city back to life. Their work is on-going as you can see from the accompanying photos. It is financed in a large part by the many visitors that come to bear witness to those ancient visitors from long, long, ago who marveled at these sights in all their intended magnificence.

          In a way, they are just as magnificent today as they were back then!

Jerusalem.

                             I really don’t know where to start.

                             There’s still way too much wrangling around in my head after our visit there. I know that I usually start these things with a lesson, or a funny or two, but somehow it seems that is not the way for me to begin.

                             So, I will begin at the beginning. I know exactly when this yearning to visit Jerusalem began, it was in the last week of November in 1964 and I remember it like it was yesterday because that is when the December issue of National Geographic arrived in its signature brown paper wrapper. This is the issue that introduced me to the Holy Sites of this city. I remember looking at the photographs and wishing that I could see these places in person. I was in the 4^th Grade in St. John Fisher School in California and Bible History was a part of the curriculum….. and my favorite.

                             The yearning at its genesis.

                             The rest is history.

                              Rome is the Eternal City, and I believe that Jerusalem is called the Holy City and for good reason. Two of the top five religions of the world have their roots here and those are Christians and Moslems. The third religion centered here, and maybe the one with the best claim for being here, is Judaism, nothing political, just the “age” facts. The Jewish faith has been centered here since 1000 BC and Jerusalem is obviously the capital of Israel, but when you are there, on a certain level, the three faiths seem to get along just fine.

                             If you keep the politics out.

                             We (Paula, Sherry, Harold, and I) walked all of the quarters of the Old City seamlessly, some differences noted, such as dress and religious places of worship, but all of the faiths live, work, and co-mingle in all of the sections without any problems.

                   We had another wonderful tour by a private guide from Tours By Locals.  We are getting spoiled by these types of tours and while on one level the expense is greater, we feel that the experience level is intensified exponentially, therefore rendering that expense level increase moot.

                   Oh, and by the way, his name is Aladdin 😊

                   A magic carpet, unfortunately…..no

                   A magic experience, definitely…. yes!

                   Aladdin may be the perfect person to provide a person  with the best understanding of Jerusalem, past and present. He is the product of a mixed religious household, one parent Jewish, the other Catholic. He was brought up in two of the family businesses, one was selling antiquities to tourists starting when he was just seven years old. This gave him his language skills, especially English (because at home, Hebrew and Arabic were spoken) and his other job was assisting his archeologist brother with some of the important digs around Jerusalem.

In fact, Aladdin has an archeology degree himself. Couple all of this with a firm grasp of what the Bible says, combined with oral tradition, and science-based facts, and you come up with someone whose depth and breadth of Jerusalem based knowledge would seem to be unsurpassed. Oh, and his current affairs base is as solid as his knowledge of the past. We had the opportunity to experience this, as our tour took place on the very day that the demonstrations erupted over Mr. Netanyahu’s decisions to further change his government, were being tested. The citizens of Israel are scared to death that their hard-won freedoms are being dissolved by a powerful minority. I do not believe that they will stand for this, and if these very effective demonstrations have anything to do with it, they will succeed. They basically shut down the area, even to the point of our dockworkers walking off and leaving us with no one to cast off the lines to let us disembark. We eventually set sail about three hours late, but not until Mr. Netanyahu backed off a bit on his stance.

                   It made for an interesting day.

                   But the action was still in Old Jerusalem for us!

          We arrived here in maybe one of the worst (best?) times to be here for a traveler, that of the combined religious holidays of Ramadan, Lent, and Passover. To say the least, there were an incredible number of busses, not necessarily from our ship, but from a multitude of land tours.

                   The allegory-based metaphor of sheep and a shepherd seemed somehow to fit our surroundings. Tour leading shepherds with their “staffs” held high for all of their flocks to follow was almost comical to see. For us, all we needed to do was follow Aladdin who had conveniently dressed himself in a red jacket and carried a yellow backpack!

                   Our tour started on the outskirts of Jerusalem, looking down from the Mount of Olives, gazing at sights seen by travelers going back to, and before, Jesus’s time. Albeit there were less buildings then and I dare say no antennas, but the thrill of looking down on the walls of this city sent chills through me.

                   Aladdin was able to maneuver his car and get us closer to viewpoints than any bus was able to. He lightly beeped his horn and parted the multitudes like Moses parted the Red Sea…. as we sailed to the front of the line. This trick worked many a time as we progressed closer and closer to the walls of Jerusalem. We walked down the Damascus Road towards the Damascus Gate, the one that Jesus used to enter the City on what would in the future be known as Palm Sunday. But first was an all-important stop at the Garden of Gethsemane where there are ancient olive trees, one that is over 2000 years old. If only that tree could talk as it is the only living thing left that was an eyewitness to the events that transpired on that Thursday so many millennia ago.

                   Our trail was next directed towards Bethlehem and the West Bank. We did not go to Bethlehem proper, but to its outskirts where the local Christian communities have their Olivewood Shops and cooperatives. In order to get there, we need to pass through The Wall. This wall runs for hundreds of miles and is no joke. Checkpoints along the way are guarded by machine-gun toting Israeli soldiers. Getting out is not a problem getting back in is not a guarantee.

                   Aladdin explained that it was the Christian community here that has suffered the most from The Wall. Access to this area is obviously curtailed and that makes for bad business. I haven’t met a tour guide yet that hasn’t tried to “help” out his acquaintances that own shops and venues, but in this case, we were all too happy to contribute to the cause. The workmanship is truly magnificent and well worth the visit. The Shop Keepers were genuinely happy to see us, and you could tell that the throngs of olivewood buyers were a thing of the past. After the shop we needed to get back on the other side of The Wall. Aladdin joked about telling us to “run” when he directed so… and even though the guards were very threatening, they were also very thorough, and we had all of the prescribed documentation that allowed us free access to Israel.

                   We waved at the guards as we passed through.

          We then went back to the Damascus Gate for entry into the Holy City. Aladdin explained that the present city is built on the ruins of the previous versions of Jerusalem and while much of the roads and sites are where they have been for thousands of years, the actual roads, etc. are buried beneath….. hence the archaeology.

The historic and Holy sites were built around 300 AD when Constantine sent his mother, Helen to find, verify, and then construct churches over these sites. So these have escaped the build up that has gone on around them. Quite often one must descend into a site as it is at a much lower level.

                   The throngs were at their zenith as we tried to enter the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This many-faceted church encompasses  several important places at once. First is Golgotha, the rocky mount that was used for crucifixions, just outside the then city walls. Just around the corner from here is an old Jewish cemetery where Joseph of Arimathea owned a tomb, and right outside the tomb is the slab of stone that was used for the anointing of the bodies before burial. So here enclosed, at several different levels, we have the site of Jesus’ crucifixion, the anointing and clothing of his body, and the crypt where he was buried.

                   For Christianity, there is no holier place on the planet, and it is attended by several Christian sects, the Catholics, the Armenians, The Greek Orthodox, and to a lesser extent the Coptic’s, Ethiopians, and Syriac Orthodox churches. The best part of all of this (on a somewhat comical level) is that none of these orders trusts the others enough, nor wants to give the appearance of being exalted, to be the Keeper of the Keys to this important shrine. So, guess who holds, and has held, the keys for the last 800 years?

A Muslim family!

Yes, every morning at 5 AM they come and open the church and every evening they come back at 10 PM to lock it up. You just can’t make this stuff up!

As I mentioned before, we walked from the Moslem Quarter to the Christian Quarter, and to the Jewish Quarter without any issues. We traveled though some very tight little alleys lined with butcher shops, vegetable stands, and just about anything else you can think of. Aladdin bought a package of giant zip-ties from one vendor. Coming to junctions in this labyrinth, turning one way or the other, was the key to finding the next section and the treasures within.

                   The Jewish Quarter is the most modern, but it still “fits” as everything (by decree) is still made of white limestone so the buildings all mesh and glow at the same time.

                   Our destination was the Western, or Wailing, Wall. This is that last part of the Temple that was there during Jesus’ time. It was constructed by Herod and in 70 AD it was destroyed by the Romans who had had just about enough of these monotheistic peoples. This is the time that everyone went “underground” with their religions and beliefs until Constantine was converted and came to power in the 300’s. The Western Wall has two worshiping sides, one for the men and the other for the women. While we were there, we witnessed several Bar Mitzvahs going on….. dancing in the streets was the order of the day! On a somber note, the Western Wall was the only place that we went that we needed to go through a security checkpoint. I guess that someone with nefarious intentions could make the throngs at this site a likely target.

                   You’ve all heard of the Crusades, which were ostensibly driven by the desire to wrest back control of the Holy Land from the relatively new Moslems, but they were as much about political and trade driven reasons as any religious ones. But Islam was here to stay and one of its holiest sites is smack dab in the heart of Jerusalem, practically on top of the Temple Mount and close to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher. This site is the Dome of the Rock, and it houses the rock that they believe that Abraham (almost) sacrificed his son Isaac on. This is also where Mohammed is said to have started his Night Journey, not to mention that this where Adam was supposed to have ben “Created”. So, you can see how all of these three important holy sites well within “sight” of each other, have caused both unity and consternation over the years.

                             To be honest, I may have found the city that that 4th Grade kid would need to come back to. All along, as we meet folks we get asked, “Which one is your favorite place?” and we have problems answering that one because all of our ports have been really good. Tahiti is idyllic, Singapore mysterious, Dubai is eye-popping, in other words, each one has been unique in its own special way.

                             Except Jerusalem.

                             Jerusalem is unique in many special ways.

                             And on so many levels……

                            

          Alrighty then!

                             Let’s all gather ‘round for another episode of:

 Quirky Conundrums Curiously Contained in Querying Concentrations

                                                          or

More Geographical and Historical Lessons from The Insomniac Voyager

                   Let us begin:

                   Thousands, yes…. thousands of years ago, when Pyramids and the like were the latest things to have, mainly because you had slave labor and you were the Pharaoh, someone said, “Let’s dig some ditches and see if we can connect our favorite river, the Nile, with all that water to our east, namely the Red Sea!”

                   And so it was.

                   The more we travel around and “discover” things, we find that someone was here before us and already had thought of the stuff that seems like it took us the rest of eternity to come up with ……..

 “Yea, been there, done that, dug the Canal, and got the tee-shirt.” (Egyptian cotton of course!)

          It turns out that way back in the day, like when Ramses II and his buddies were around, various projects with various levels of success, were tried at various times. Variously complicated plans were tried, failed, and then shelved because they did not work out for various reasons, leading to those various levels of success that I alluded to.

                   Water levels waxing and waning, silt build-up at the confluences of these various waterways led to the various projects being actually workable or not. (There will be no more usage of the word various for the remainder of this report!) But, let it be known that those guys back in 1859 were not the genius’s that everyone thought that they were, they were in fact, just copy-cats with better tools!      

However, some honesty should be sworn to the guys that really needed this canal but had neither the money, nor influences, to make it happen. I am speaking here of the Spice Traders of Venice, for it was back in the 1400’s when a Portuguese explorer wondered what was on the other side of Africa, that a direct trade route was established around the Cape of Good Hope and the overland routes (remember the guys in Petra?) became obsolete.          The Venetian’s did try and negotiate with the then current Sultan in Egypt, but those Ottoman’s and their conquest of Egypt (and sofa building 😊) kept anything from coming of it.

          Fast-forward 400 years and we come to the middle of the 1800’s when the Brits (again!) decided that it was not a good idea to build a canal because they already controlled the trade routes and if a canal was built (and the opinion of the day was to have it available to all nations) it would deprive them of their exclusivity of these obvious advantages.

          Not surprising, the French said,  “Just hold on there Monsieur’s, we’ve studied the elevations of both sides of this proposed canal and have found that a sea-level waterway can be constructed, we just need to dig it!” Apparently, Mr. Napoleon had some extensive studies done (much earlier) and came just this close to starting the project!

The British, along with a few allies, continued to oppose the plan, but the French, along with their friends formed a company, the Suez Canal Company, and in 1859 started to dig. It took ten years to complete and at any one time up to 30,000 workers were to be found laboring on it.

          So now we’ve got a navigable waterway that connects the Indian Ocean (via the Red Sea) with the Mediterranean Sea and onward to the North Atlantic.

          Is everybody happy???!!!

          Nope.

          It’s all well and good to have this project finished and marine traffic flowing, but the estimated costs of the construction were off by double! (Some things never change!) So, someone had their hand out asking, “How and When?” which are the questions that the typical financiers will always ask.

          The cost to transit the canal and therefore generate the income needed to pay off the bondholders and others, never mind pay for the running and upkeep of the canal, are derived from ‘how much you carry on board’ and /or ‘how big is your ship’? Which brings us to yet another question!

          How do they figure all of this out, not only here, but all around the world. It’s all about how much a ship weighs, how much interior (volume) it has, how much water it displaces when it sits in the water, and combinations of all of the aforementioned. The arguments over the years have led to different systems being used around the world but the most used one at this point is GRT or Gross Registered Tonnage. GRT is the total of all of the cargo on board. It does not include the weight of fuel, water, supplies, or the crew and passengers. The GRT Certificate is issued to each vessel at the time of its building. Each Port and/or Authority (canal) gets to assess vessels at its own rate. So, if your vessel has a GRT of 20,000 and the Port has a $5.00 per ton fee, then your Port/Canal Fee is $100,000. There are varying degrees of this, including some length and width calculations thrown in for fun, but you get the idea.

          For Cruise Ships, which we obviously all know and love 😊, the tonnage is determined by interior volume alone. So, when a new Gigundo Ship is announced by the Gargantuan Cruise Line and it lists the tonnage at XXX,XXX and is now the largest in the world you start to wonder….” Hey its’s no longer or wider than the ships sailing now”…. but wait! Take a look at how much of that ship is built over and above the waterline, you know, the ones that look like floating apartment buildings. Now figure out the volume of that baby and you can see how it’s the Biggest Ever! And usually the ugliest, but that’s a subject for another post!

          But way back in 1873, right after the canal was built and the financial issues were staring it in the face, a special international agreement having to do with this way of determining tonnage was agreed on by all the parties involved and it is still in effect today.

          In the meantime, the Brits managed to get themselves appointed by one of the old school Egyptian Rulers, as the protectors of Egypt and Sudan. In 1888, the Convention of Constantinople declared the Canal was under the protection of the British and it remained that way through WWII. The canal never fell into the hands of the Axis countries, so it was never used by them to channel warships during that war.

          After this time it gets really dicey in the Sinai Peninsula and the Canal Zone. Egypt started to get cozy with the Soviet Union which really pissed off Great Britain and the USA. Both told Egypt that they were going to not help Egypt with the financing of its big project at the time, the Aswan High Dam on the Nile, which was really important to Egypt for flood control and water.

          The Egyptian president , Mr. Nasser, said “Oh yea? Well I’m gonna just nationalize the Canal and you can all just go home ‘cuz it’s mine now!”

This all took place over a several year period in the mid to late 1950’s and it gets worse, much worse! You know how these playground bullies and gangs work, it’s all about the one-upmanship’s and threatening overtures, lots of saber-rattling, until someone pushes too far and the fists start flying.

          The year was 1956 and the gangs all lined up, with France, the UK, and here it comes… Israel lined up on one side after Egypt blockaded a waterway that Israel used at the bottom of the Sinai Peninsula. Israel invaded Sinai, the other two rushed to the rescue (mainly to save the canal).

          Let the fighting begin! Guns, cannons, and bombs were sent flying all around the region, the most devastating part of this was the ships that Egypt sank in the Canal, rendering it useless to the rest of the world. An important guy from Canada, Mr. Pearson, was the only clear-thinking guy around and he proposed that the UN get involved which resulted in the first UN sponsored Peace Keeping Force being sent to the canal while Egypt and Israel worked out their differences. Thankfully Mr. Pearson was eventually awarded the Nobel Peace Prize!

We all remember the Six-Day War in 1967 and the next skirmish in 1973, the latter resulting in OPEC raising prices and putting embargoes in place against the US and it’s allies. What a mess!

So, let’s “cut to the chase” here and summarize the next bunch of years. The UN force didn’t work out and was refused to be extended by a Syria-requested Soviet Union Veto in the Security Council, so then there was another multi-national force put into place that still remains there to this day.

Phewf!

Since then, the only big deal was almost exactly two years ago when the Evergreen Lines biggie, the container ship Ever Given, got wedged across the canal for about nine days which resulted in the obvious back up as the canal transits about fifty ships a day. The doom-sayers predicted a global crisis but that did not happen and when the ship was cleared it only took a few days for everything to settle down as some ships had already made other arrangements. The 450 ships in the back-logged queue went through without an incident.

                   Including us! (two years later)

                   We were the first ship in our convoy on the day that we passed through. Convoys are used so they can be staggered and kept in holding areas when the opposing convoy meets up and needs to use the same channel. This practice has been hugely minimalized by the addition of parallel canals being dug over the last ten years or so. There are just a few areas that cannot be by-passed and guess what happened with the Ever Given? Yup! It got stuck in one of the areas that bottle everything up!

                   Our day was bright, a little overcast at times, but there was always something to see. Other ships, shoreline defenses, weird concentrations of unused apartments, and a big festival area used once year for a big party celebrating the canal’s “nationalizing” way back in the day.

                   There was no party for our transit ☹

                   Except in the Bars!

“You have chosen…… wisely.”

                                      These are the words quietly spoken by the Third Grail Knight to Indiana Jones after Indy chooses the correct chalice from a roomful of imposters set out there to confuse the “impure of heart”.

                             We hope to have chosen wisely as the destination for today is Petra, who all will recognize as the setting for The Temple of the Sun in Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade. The façade used in the movie is that of The Treasury, the most famous of the hundreds of buildings, tombs, residences, a monastery, an amphitheater, and a Byzantine church, to name a few, that are strewn up and down this long cleft in the Jordanian wastelands.

                             The  first thing that we did after when we signed up for this cruise was to reserve our places on this particular Shore Excursion fearing that it would sell out quickly. That may or may not have been necessary as I believe that most of the ship is venturing to  Al-Batra ( in Arabic) for a glimpse of this UNESCO World Heritage site. This may not be the most satisfying visit to an archeological site that we could have, just for that reason. The top factor of the dangers to the preservation of this place is that of over-tourism, and we are as guilty as any of the thousands, (like just shy of a million) of visitors every year.

                   It is quite obvious that we cannot be the only people at Petra when we visit. In fact, now that we are part of an organized tour that has a set starting time, we do not have the luxury of making our own plans. Had we been here on our own, we would have gotten up really early and hiked in to be the first ones there, just waiting for some sunlight in order to capture these sites without the hordes of people invading the photographs. Yes, I do have Photoshop, but I do not have a clue as how to work it.  So, the peeps will stay in the photos. But I will do my best to minimize them, short of using a Taser. 😊

                   This area of the world has seen its share of Pre-Biblical strife, then over the subsequent years came the usual wars between the Who-Cares-ites and the We-Were-Here-First-ites, and the skirmishes were usually over those favorite trading items that we’ve come to know in these parts, and those are the spices! Turmoil was the order of the day, week, year, and century. It was a miracle that anyone had anytime to accomplish anything!

                   Until…. The Nabataeans arrived!

                   In about 100 BC (yes, I still use the old AD and BC nomenclature!) These Nabataeans filtered in and took control. Up until then we had the usuals from the area doing the usual things that these guys usually did like overrunning their neighbors, conquering, and dividing, enslaving for a while, but just until the next gang moved into the ‘hood and took over. All of these different peoples are all familiar to us ‘cuz we’re going to go back to our World History again!  Let’s reintroduce ourselves to the teams and players of the day,  we’ve got (again) the Assyrians, Babylonians, Elamites, and even the Phoenicians managed to insert themselves into the mix.

                   A few hundred years went by with all of these guys vying for the position of Grand Poo-Bah in the region. Deals were made and broken, kids fought their parents, lesser brothers toppled their Big Brothers in charge, the next guy, smelling blood, swooped in and either took them over completely or, liking what they saw, just annexed them as vassals and demanded tribute. This went on for hundreds of years and even those pesky Canaanites got a few jabs in every now and then.  Well, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, but I kind of doubt that you need or want any more information than that as I am quite sure that you get the gist of all of this.

                   We’re going to go back to the beginning of the paragraph before last…. In about 100 BC our hero’s, the Nabateaens, fought, cajoled, twisted arms, and generally emerged as the victors and finally had some time to make this place into what it is today……

                   I kind of doubt that any of their forward-thinking leaders sat around the temple and said, “Hey, let’s build a really cool place that millions of tourists will want to visit someday, and just maybe we’ll get named to some futuristic list of places that need to be saved from all of this fighting!” But who knows? I was not privy to those meetings as I just ran the local camel burger joint in my former life.

                   The Nabataeans were at the right place at the right time. Their location was basically at the intersection of all the main drags of the time. We have here the convergence of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Remember how I said in a post or so before this that the areas around here were so small and close together (think the Northeast States of the USA) that trade was just a ship or camel caravan ride away? Well, things were even better than that and business went crazy good! Those spices and other trade items flowed in and through Petra with such a velocity that the Naba’s were flush with cash!

 And what do we all do when we get a boatload of money?

We build really big houses that are better than our neighbors!

 Not only are we going to build some mansions, we’re going to show how powerful we are and carve them out of solid rock! (Yea, I know it was sandstone, but still!)

Things went well for a few hundred years until the clouds on the horizon began to form, and just like the Hobbits could see those ominous signs of future problems hanging in the air over Mordor, The Naba’s were powerless to resist the powers coming from the north….

Namely the Romans and the Byzantines.

                   With those guys swooping in, the Nabateaens eventually were assimilated into the conquerors and ceased to exist as an entity. But things were on the decline anyway because the shipping industry eventually took enough of a share of those highly profitable trade routes and like any business left on old Route 66 when the modern Interstate came through, just like ‘Radiator Springs’ in the movie Cars, grand old Petra slipped slowly into obscurity. Eventually the area came under the control of the Muslims and Christians who fought back and forth for control until the Ottoman-Turks moved in and stayed in power until the early 20^th century when Peter O’Toole, as our hero T.E. Lawrence (better known as the British military guy in these parts, Lawrence of Arabia) Sir Alec Guinness, Claude Rains, Anthony Quinn, and Omar Sharif swooped in made an Academy Award winning epic of a movie. Well, first, before anyone could make a movie about him, the real T.E. Lawrence needed to pull all of these different peoples apart and then put them back together again. It is quite the story and well worth the three-hours plus needed to watch! All these actions brought an obviously short-lived peace to the region.

                   That brings us to today, literally!

          We boarded one of about twenty(!) buses filled with all of us passengers eager for a glimpse of one of the highlights of this cruise, The Lost City of Petra. We had all seen the photos, but who needs them when the real thing is just a two-hour bus ride away! Rumors abounded about what we would encounter when we arrived. With all of the communicative technology available to us you would think that there would not be such a discrepancy about the distances and topography needed to traverse in order to get there.

                   No one really knew anything.

                   Stories filtered back to us via internet sites and posts, and they had us either walking up to ten miles (uphill both ways) or “One mile in and two miles out”. Yes, that is a quote.

                   We wondered if someone had moved that guy’s bus a mile further than where he was dropped off! Anyway, there were so many different distances associated with all of this that we just went with some averages. We knew that we needed to walk in about a mile, walk around the site, and then walk back out. It is 100% uphill for the entire way out, and then some sick-o made way too many steps to get up to the parking lot!

                   The Secret Entrance to this marvelous place is called the “Siq”, (translated, means literally ‘the shaft’) which is a very deep and narrow cleft cut through the sandstone. While it looks a lot like a slot canyon, the Siq is actually a geologic fault that has split the rocks that were then worn smooth and shaped by water (as a real slot canyon is) If any of you have ever been to the Slot Canyons of Page, Arizona, or southern Utah, you will have an idea of what it looks like. For the rest of you I will provide a nice photo!

                   Someone had a plan as there could not be a more dramatic entrance to such a highly anticipated site as this! After about a mile (or two if you’re that other guy!) of walking through the seemingly endless ever-winding passageway of the Siq, a glimpse of your destination comes filtering through the dimly lit canyon.

                   The twist and turns of this softly lit dungeon of a trail cleverly hide the grandeur of your Golden Fleece of a moment until at last the rocks burst open to reveal the Treasury building directly in front of you!

                   Bathed in the morning sunlight, it shone its rosy sandstone portico with all of the grandeur that you can possibly imagine!

                   The trip was worthwhile, and the all the photos ever taken of this edifice can never do it the justice, and fulfillment, that it gives you when you first glimpse it.

                   Then the fun starts!

                   Just staring at it, taking in its centuries worn details, dreaming of what life was like here when this place was the center of its local universe just boggles your mind.

                   It has to have an effect on you!

The Treasury was not by any stretch the only thing to see here. The main pathway through this ancient city has so many different buildings and structures that you have to keep turning around to look in every direction in order to find them all! And they are all carved out of the rock and into the hillsides! Assorted examples to follow!

                   Now reality sets in and you realize that you are there with thousands of folks just like you. Some are there because it’s something to do, maybe check off their “cool things to do” list. Others are there to experience it in all its glory, and after thinking about it, maybe there should be signs around asking everyone to speak in whispers, if at all, like there are in the Giant Redwood forests of Muir Woods National Monument in California.

                   Instead, be ready for locals selling everything from Aladdin’s Lamps to rides and photo-ops on camels. In reality, bedlam ensued giving the place a Middle East bazaar-like atmosphere that was not entirely bad considering we were in the Middle East!

                   Remember those twenty buses that left the Island Princess bound for Petra? Well, they were going there because apparently there was a Bus Convention or something, for when we arrived there were probably another hundred (100 x 40 seats! ) or so of their brethren disgorging eager passengers, all with the same goal.

                             A selfie in front of The Treasury.

                             With a camel in the photo!

          For me, my quandary was how to get some significant photos without the rest of the known world posing in front of me. This was the issue that had me in a tither for longer than I would care to share with you, however it was significant. But, as usual, the reality did not meet my delusional expectation’s and I found myriads of ways to try and just capture all of these magnificent buildings in their solitary glory. I will include some ‘Peoples Photos’ both for scale and to illustrate how popular this place is!

                   After thinking (or brooding) about this, I have come to the conclusion that the shear impact and grandness of this wonder far overshadows any reticence that I had with visiting here.

                   There is only one Petra, and it is still here, after all these years, waiting for you to come and get a selfie with The Treasury.

And when you meet the old Monk, he too can whisper to you….

                             “You have chosen…… wisely.”

          Every morning when I arrive at my office in Horizon Court, I turn on my laptop. After it wakes up and blinks its sleepy eyes, it settles on the web page that is used to connect me to the satellite-based internet system that we have on board. This system really is good, even with all things like being in the middle of whatever ocean we happen to be sailing through considered.

                             I have found only one problem with it.

                             It has a “Countdown”.

                             Since this service is subscription based and depends on being on this voyage, it counts down the remaining days, hours, and minutes left until it goes Poof!

                             In 37 days, 2 hours, and 46 minutes, our existence in this idyllic daydream will cease.

                   This is not an event that we are looking forward to.

                   Now please don’t take me wrong here, it’s not that we don’t miss all of you! We really do. We love any contact with you, phone calls when they can get through on WhatsApp, emails, and the always there, Face Book and Instagram messages.

                   Will we miss four months of not having to shop for food, cook, do dishes, clean the motorhome, make our own beds, clean our bathrooms, order our beverages of choice from an app on our phones, and/or do basically anything that we want to do, at any time that fits our (busy?) schedule?

                   You bet we will! 😊

                   But do you know what we will miss the most?

                   It’s the one that is not listed there, the one thing that we warned about in the very beginning of the cruise by Cole, our awesome first Cruise Director.

                   It’s the friends that we have met on board.

                   Cole said and I quote, “You will make life-long friends on this voyage.”

                   And he was correct. In reality I guess that it is hard to evaluate life-long in such as short period of time, but remember, our time spent with some of these folks is like a normal friend-making experience on steroids!

                   Now it’s not like we all don’t make friends all the time. New folks in the workplace, new people coming to church, the new kid in school, a new neighbor moving in, you all get the idea. These are all great examples of how we meet new friends.

                   In our case, all of these are true, but when you mix all these together, and throw in a little excitement, a slew of adventures, relaxing times spent reminiscing about these new adventures, sharing your previous “Life Journeys” with these new acquaintances, and then toss in three social mealtimes per day for all these days…….. well, it gets rather special.

                   Would I have to admit that this (as I said earlier) idyllic setting makes it easier to experience this?

                   Absolutely!

                   Would I have to admit that when the polish comes off of the shiny stainless steel and brass trim (that’s on board) that some of these relationships will fade with time and distance?

                   Absolutely!

                   But I am as positive as I can possibly be that there are some really special ones that will stand that test of time and distance!

                   There is one really obvious reason that will facilitate this positiveness that I have……

                   We live in a motorhome and can show up at these friends’ homes and just park in their driveway!

                   “Hi! We’re here!!!

                             I hope we get a nice reception 😊

          So, with the countdown in full force now, and the days dwindling quickly, we have a lot more ports to visit!

                             This leg of our itinerary is going to be challenging because there are many ports that go back, to back, to back, and then some!

                             Sea Days are a luxury, and sometimes a little necessary as a respite and regroup. You know, lounging around playing card games, going to Trivia Time, and eating! We love Sea Days!

                   So, here is how the rest of our voyage will pan out, unless of course, there are extenuating circumstances such as, storms, civil wars, or other natural disasters that would prevent any of these future ports from becoming a reality.  We have 21 ports yet to visit, crammed into 30 days (because the last seven days will be spent crossing the Atlantic ocean). There is a time coming up that there are 10 ports in 10 days, so I will beg your forgiveness in advance because it usually takes me two days to put a post together and that’s when there are Sea Days in between!

                   So, without further ado, here are the rest of our ports to visit:                  

We are currently in the Red Sea which is about 1200 miles long and we need to get to the northern end of it in order to get to Petra, our next port. This will take another three days at sea. Then…..

Petra, Jordan

Suez Canal

Jerusalem

Ephesus, Turkey

Monemvasia, Greece

Venice

Ljubljana, Slovenia

Split, Croatia

Kotor, Montenegro

Island of Malta

Sicily

Sorrento and the Amalfi Coast

Rome

French Riviera, Monte Carlo, and Monaco

Marseilles

Barcelona

Grenada

Casablanca, Morocco

Lanzarote, Canary Islands

Santa Cruz de La Palma, Canary Islands

Atlantic Ocean Crossing

Home

So, don’t put your traveling shoes away just yet! There are some really great things to come, especially since we have contracted with our new best friends at Tours By Locals to enhance our travelling experiences! Most of these ports are being shared with the two couples that we have become the closest to over the last three months, Darla and Sandra and Sherry and Harold.

          We are all looking forward to these adventures!

We will be visiting Oman today, specifically the port of Muscat. There is just a tad of apprehension about this port because scuttlebutt has it that the folks here are not very friendly towards us. I don’t know if us is just our group from the USA, or us as in all Westerners. Time will tell and the report will follow a bit later when we return from our excursion. This will be our second time using Tours by Locals and we feel a bit more relaxed as we are hoping that at least our guide, Samir, will be friendly!

We’re paying him so at least he can fake it!

          Getting the real story from Samir will be difficult. Oman is the oldest absolute monarchy in the world, with the Sultan having  well, absolute (I can hear it now, “What part of ‘absolute’ do you not understand Mr. Hall?” ) powers. There is a constitution of sorts, there are two houses of government, one appointed by the Sultan, the other one “elected” but everything is subject to the (here it comes again) absolute power of the Sultan. I’m hoping that we can get along here…. The Sultan and I are almost the exact same age, I’m just eleven days older than he is, so maybe…….?

                             This is the most “Arabic” country that we will be visiting, so we are looking forward to witnessing a culture that has its roots back in the Arabian Nights times and before. These guys, while not particularly an ally of ours, have had a relationship with the Brits (again!) who exercised some influence up until, and including, present day. It was the Omanis who helped secure the release of some British sailors captured by Iran in 2007. In fact, Oman has no qualms about showing its independence from everyone as it still remains friendly towards Iran, even when its Arab neighbors have dissed Iran. So far, no one on the planet has been able to convince the Sultan to distance themselves from Iran. Remember he is absolute……

                             Human Rights in Oman are questionable.

                Especially if, and when, you are foolish enough to question.

                   While the standard of living is reportedly pretty good for this area of the world, one must toe the line when it comes to any criticism of the government or the Sultan. Women’s rights are fairly non-existent and since researching this stuff I am going to amend that statement and say the women’s rights are totally non-existent.

Such is life under an Absolute Monarch and Sharia Law.

                   The list goes on and on, and the word totalitarian comes to mind. Nothing that the Sultan doesn’t like, or want to have, is allowed. I’m going to go out on a limb here and say that until a Sultan comes to power, or is appointed by the presently ruling one, (the line is hereditary unless the Sultan dies with no male heirs as the one before this guy did) that has a milder view and stance on all of these rights, not much will change.

                   Sometimes I wonder if visiting here is a good idea. I’m not worried about safety or anything like that, it’s just that going here as a tourist would seem to (in a way) justify their stance on basic human rights as we see them. I’m not foolish enough to think that we ae going to exercise any influence over Omani rules, but maybe just by showing some interest and putting our best Western foot forward, we can at least demonstrate to Samir that we are not the evil infidels. I know, probably just more “tilting at windmills”, but I think we’ll give it a go!

                                      My Report on Oman by Donald Hall

                                      Mrs. McGillicuddy

                                      Grade Six

                    I told you the report would follow!

                   We could not have been more pleased with either the reception that we received or the tour that Salim provided us with! I will report that despite us being the same age, the Sultan did not have time for me, nor did he even want to speak with me. He was too busy not using his (largest I’ve ever seen) yacht and not being in the one  Palace that we visited, he was at one of his four other ones. Interestingly, Salim did let slip a few times his displeasure (?) at such opulence wasted by non-use, and that this wealth would be better used for the people. Folks, this is the start of that growing garden that is begun by sowing just a few seeds of discontent. Based on what I had read, we did not think that we would get any “comments” from our guide.

We were wrong.

Salim picked us up at the Port Entrance. Our first stop was at the Grand Mosque, a few miles up the road, in what may be called “new” Muscat. Muscat is both the capital and largest city in Oman. Most of the government buildings and anything that has been built in the last thirty years or so are located out there. The roads were great, and traffic was non-existent.

We have never been to mosque before, Grand or otherwise, so for now our basis of comparison is slim. What I can tell you is that this particular mosque was, in fact, GRAND in its simplicity. My only comparisons here could be to other denominations’ houses of worship, namely Christian, as I’ve only been in one synagogue for a funeral once.  

The Grand Mosque is about thirty years old and was built by, and current expense funded by, the government. The stats are quite impressive, and I will relate them as best I can. According to Salim the Women’s Mosque can hold a tad over 600 women at a time. This is because, and I quote here, “the women’s place is in the home” so they can worship there when needed. (Don’t be mad at me, I’m just the reporter!) In Islam, one does not need to attend any services in order to be faithful. I am here to report that the Women’s Mosque was very nice.

          Until we visited the Men’s Mosque.

This one will hold over six thousand worshippers at a time. The carpet was woven simultaneously by six hundred women from Iran (formerly Persia, as in Persian Rugs) and it took four years to complete, and has, hold onto your calculators here, 1,600,000,000 knots! (that’s one billion, 600 million!) Do not ask me more than that as it was hard enough to wrap our heads around that single fact alone! All of the wood for the ceiling came from Burma (Myanmar) and the chandelier was made by the Italian company, Faustig.

          Here are the stats:

          Largest in the world (at the time of its construction) standing at 45’ tall and 26’wide and weighs in at over eight tons.

          It is made up of over 600,000 thousand Swarovski gold-trimmed crystals, and has a stairway built into the center for its maintenance.

          It has 24-carat gold plating and took over four years to complete. I guess they worked on it at the same time as the carpet!

          Salim did his best to convert us without being obnoxious about it. It was exactly what we had come here for, to learn about someone else’s culture and way of life. We were successful, Salim was not. 😊

But, no hard feelings, he was very gracious and we really liked him more and more as we all became comfortable with each other. We plied him with all the usual questions, kids, marriage, laws, customs, vacations, and traveling. To sum it all up, I would say that he is content with his life, he did not openly complain and we were treated to only those few remarks about the wasting of money and resources gone unused by the Sultan.

          We then went to a local fish market and a souk. The market was as clean as any fish market I’ve ever been in, definitely cleaner than the Fulton Market ion NYC. The souk was as traditional as they get and this one thankfully was all enclosed, the tunnels hiding us from the heat of the sun. But there was no hiding from the merchants standing in front of their stores! The “to be expected salesmanship” rituals were in full force. It’s not so bad once you get used to it, it’s the way that they do business!

In general, I would have to say that the merchants we met and watched going about their business seemed content enough, they had smiles on their faces and were laughing as they talked amongst themselves. We encountered, nor observed any amount of animosity directed towards us or anyone else.

At one point, when we were at the Palace, Salim turned to me and asked, “Does Mr. Biden have any houses like this?” I replied, “No, he lives in the White House, and it is owned by the four of us,” indicating, Paula, Harold, Sherry, and myself. Adding, “And if we don’t like what he does, we get to kick him out at the end of four years.” He smiled at this; I think he liked my answer.

So, I am happy to report that our initial misgivings about visiting here were unfounded. And after speaking with some fellow shipmates that shared our original feelings about this port, they too felt much better after their visit. It would appear, as in many other regimes, that if you obey the laws, you have nothing to fear, with nothing being a relative word, as freedom is not something to fear.

Well, that was a record setting day yesterday! We needed to be in the Princess Theatre at 7:15 am in order to meet our Tour Group for the day, the illustrious (or notorious!) Purple 3 Gang. Thankfully, Purple 3 was devoid of any mobility-challenged passengers which made this tour move along at the speed that only an age-challenged group could muster! When that Tour was complete, around 2:15 pm, we went back on board for a grand total of 45 minutes until we met Shah, our Tours-by-Locals guide at 3:00 pm. Back out we went, and we didn’t get back aboard for the night until after 9:00 pm. But what an adventure!

                   I will warn you in advance that this is going to be an extended post, and the rights to turn it into a mini-series are being negotiated as I write this.

Forewarned is forearmed!  😊

Ok, so it’s Geo-Political Class today!

                   What in the name of all that’s oily and sandy is an ‘emirate’?

                   Why would it be united and why would the Arab aspect of it be of any significance?

                   These and many more questions that you never needed to know the answers to, or even cared that you did, or didn’t know, will be revealed in short order.

                   First, a word from our sponsor, we’ll be right back after this:

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                   Run, don’t walk to your nearest phone, and call this number:

                             1-800-What-the-…….

Operators will be standing by as soon as they stop laughing at you!

                   Now back to our regularly scheduled programming.

(Hey! Someone’s got to pay for this trip!)

Let’s talk about those emirates.

What are they and why do they exist?

Emirates are geopolitical regions ruled over by an emir, a title of importance in the Muslim world. There aren’t many of these types of entities left in the world anymore. Most have been absorbed by larger countries and have gone the way of the camel caravan. But there are just a few left, both Kuwait and Qatar are emirates, and there is a tiny spot at the bottom of Afghanistan that is claiming this title but is unrecognized. Our biggie for today is the U.A.E. or the United Arab Emirates. This collection of individual emirates (states) has been somewhat united since 1971. I say somewhat because they all still can’t get along all the time! This would be akin to Illinois fighting with Ohio and Indiana not having the power (or interest) to intervene. Such is the way when the rulers of these emirates are the heads of the families that have been in power for centuries!

There are seven different emirates, and I could list them all, but you really don’t care and would never remember all their names anyway, so let’s just concentrate on the most famous one, that of Dubai.

Dubai is both the name of the Emirate and name of the capital city. It is the most populous city and state of the U.A.E. but not the largest. That honor belongs to the one other emirate that you may recognize, Abu Dhabi, whose capital is also named Abu Dhabi. I guess they like to keep things simple over there!

Dubai has been around for a long time, like centuries, but the modern day descendent had its start as a lowly fishing village back in the 18^th century. (1700’s) If you harken back to your Bible History lessons and World History classes, you will remember that human occupation of this area of the world has been well documented for millennia. Trading links between Mesopotamia (remember that one?) and the Indus Valley ran through this area. Even the pearl merchants of Venice knew about Dubai in the 1700’s because of its renowned pearling industry. Apparently, this region of the Persian Gulf was once a good nursery for oysters. Even the good ol’ Sumerians liked it here because of the metals that could be found and worked, namely copper and bronze. Remember, the size of the Middle East is relatively small. The distance between Jerusalem and Dubai is similar to a drive from NYC to Miami, so these old wanderers and civilizations intertwined with frightening regularity.

In the early 1800’s, Dubai was still that little fishing port with only about a thousand inhabitants. It was off the main drag, with only two paths leading out of town. One went down to the creek and the other one went the other way and eventually hooked up with a few caravan routes. The families of the influential folks were fighting from time to time (as was their custom) when the big guy of the day, Mr. Maktoum, beat up his neighbors and became the ruler of the area. The Maktoum Dynasty is still the Ruling Family of Dubai, so I guess this guy had, and has, some power!

          Enter the Brits (It’s always the Brits!) in the mid 1800’s who were trying to secure trade routes and the only way to do this was to try and get all these warring families to settle down and cooperate. With the help of the British, the united (not United) families were able to defeat a rival family (that eventually became part of the whole) and Britain then agreed to help with the defense of Dubai and its buddies in return for the usual trade concessions and exclusivities.

          Ok, now we’re gaining some momentum! In 1901, Maktoum al Basher Maktoum (that’s Sheik Maktoum to you!) a descendent of our original Mr. Maktoum, decided to make Dubai a free port! You all remember from the Singapore post what happens when a port gets an identity as free?

 Yahoo! Free Trade! Lets’ all go to Dubai!

Evidence of the success of this policy can be found in the travels of just one example of the many ships that plied these seas. A steamer from the Bombay and Persia Steamship Company used to make only five visits per year in 1901. This escalated to twenty-five visits a year by 1906 and made Dubai the port of choice amongst the emirates. But all was not great forever in Dubby-Land. A storm crippled their pearl fleet and the Great Depression, along with the emergence of cultured pearls further hindered that industry.

“So Don, when do we get to all the oil and that kind of stuff?”

Funny you should ask that. Dubai never had a lot of oil. It was extremely jealous of its unfriendly (and relative on Mom’s side) neighbor, Abu Dhabi, who had gazillions of barrels within its borders. Dubai searched in vain for years, finally coming up with relatively small deposit of crude just offshore. That did not happen until 1966!

Up until then, the forethinking Sheik Rashid Maktoum (same family!) tried his best to modernize and keep Dubai in the forefront of the region’s, if not the world’s commerce. After the pearls went south, he used his influence to secure some loans for the building of modern utilities, phones, water, and electricity all came to Dubai. With these in place, buildings followed, foreign interests became “interested”, a modern airport was constructed and slowly but surely, the world came to Dubai.

Let’s fast-forward a few years and jump to ‘present’ day or so. Things really started jumping in the 90’s and 2000’s. Business was good, lots of international monies flowed in and out of Dubai and many top corporations made their “vacation” homes here. As I said, business was good. The Sheik redoubled his efforts to make Dubai the envy of the region and a go-to modern city both for business and pleasure. They restructured their coastline, making artificial islands in the shapes of palm trees and a map of the world made up of many, islands. It is quite the sight as you will see!

          However, this expansion did not come without some negative press. It seems that several of the companies that were contracted to build everything confiscated the passports of their imported (Indonesian) workers so that they could not leave the country, even if they did not like the working conditions.

          Think indentured servitude.

          Oh, and the Sheik owns 97% of the interests in the buildings and companies. Speaking of owning property here, you must be a Dubai national in order to own property anywhere, but there are a few caveats in favor of expatriates. Dubai has set aside some areas called freehold sections that foreigners are allowed to buy into with leases up to 99 years, so I guess you sort of own property but not forever? Everyone else must rent their places. But, if you are from Dubai and you get married, the Sheik will give you enough money to buy your first house. But only to the guy.

          Women’s rights have come a long way here, but still have a long way to go. Just a small example of this is in their transit system. Back in the day it was difficult for a lady to travel unaccompanied, that is, without her husband or escort. Today there are “women only” cars on the trams and there is a fleet of pink taxis that are reserved for women traveling alone….. and they are driven by women!  Step by step…..

          This is what comes of a culture deeply seated in Islamic traditions, and Dubai is not as strict as some of the other countries in this region. We will be visiting Muscat in Oman in a few days so we will be able to gauge the difference between a more liberal leaning country and a stricter one. Report to follow!

          Let’s move on to one of the primary reasons that people flock to this city.

          The architecture! (as modern as that may be!)

One of the first buildings to capture the eye of the world is that of the Burj Al Arab Hotel. This is the one that looks like a sail from a sailboat. But not just any sailboat, they wanted to use the sail of the most majestic and iconic sailboats ever to ply the waters of the world. Those are the J-Class boats used in the America’s Cup races during the 1920’s and 1930’s. The design emulates the spinnakers, the sail that billows out in front of the boat on a downwind leg. I can’t help it; I’m going to show you one here as these boats are my absolute favorites of all time!

Just so you can see the resemblance!  😊

This hotel is an engineering marvel, not only for its design, but also for its construction. Back in the hey-day of Middle East oil and new-found global wealth someone decided that they wanted to build a 1000-foot-high hotel on the shores of a windy sea. But that’s not hard enough! Let’s pour some sand in the water and make an artificial island! You know, like down the shore at the beach where everything is about as unstable as it gets! The result is a building put together by an international collaboration of the best architects, engineers, and building designers ever assembled.

Before we get to the next one, guess what the word burj means? Give up?

          Tower!

Burj sounds so much more, I don’t know….. something!

Having the coolest hotel design in the world was not enough for our Sheik guy. Nope, let’s build the tallest building in the world! Nope, still not good enough. Let’s blow away all the rest of the other “loser” towers and really make it something that will last as the tallest for a really long time!

So, we’re gonna make it 2717’ high!

 Almost 700’ higher than the next tallest (at the time), the Shanghai Tower in China.

Hah! We’ll show ‘em!

Hence, the Burj Khalifa. The very same building that was highlighted by our sponsors in the beginning of this post!

          Just as a frame of reference for us East Coasters, the Empire State Building stands at 1200’ tall. So that makes the Burj Khalifa more than twice as high! But not as famous! Until someone remakes “An Affair to Remember” (Cary Grant, Deborah Kerr) or “Sleepless in Seattle” ( Meg Ryan, Tom Hanks) with the Burj Khalifa as the meeting point it doesn’t stand a chance! And with the way “Public Displays of Affection” and romance are frowned upon over here it’s not gonna happen!

           Harold and Sherry, (Sherry was here back in 2006) were our travel companions all day, including Purple 3. They were also with us with Shah. As I said, it was a long day but what the heck! We had the entire next day to recover! Having a local guide in this part of the world was probably the best thing that we could have done. With customs and traditions so foreign to us Westerners, Shah was able to bridge any differences, give us insights, and ensure that our visit here was as memorable as it could be!

                             We gleaned many a tasty tid-bit of information from both our morning guide and Shah. One theme that came bursting through was that both of these guys, one from Jordan, the other from India, could not have been prouder or more supportive of a country that has yet to “adopt” them, even though they have both been here for an average of about ten years. The locals, or Emiratis, as they are called, only make up about 25% of the population, leaving the rest to everyone else. But in speaking about their home-away-from-home, they were quick to extol its virtues and praise the ruler, the Emir, the Sheik, the current Mr. Maktoum, Rashid.

                             And we could see why.

                             Without going into a dissertation on the benefits of, or negatives to, the differences between a democracy and dictatorship, we will just highlight some of the facts about living here.

                             Zero percent unemployment. If you don’t have a job, thank you, go home!

                             Zero percent violent crime. If you’re bad, you go before the Shia Court, and if you are not an Emeriti, thank you, go home. If you are an Emeriti, you may just disappear. The result is the same, no murders, no rape, no muggings, no break-ins, no nothing.

                             Zero percent (almost!) traffic issues. Not that there isn’t traffic, its just that they don’t tolerate “Road Rage”, running traffic lights, blocking intersections, speeding, or anything! Hence everyone is “courteous” whether they are that by nature or not.

                             There are many other examples of social programs and educational programs that they both recited. A lot of these plans were once only available to the Locals, but little by little, things are changing for the rest of the people who live here and most of them are not citizens! Visas are the norm, but these “visitors” love being here! I guess that when it’s all said and done, we may have the perfect example of Benevolent Dictator that I’ve ever seen, with the most positive attributes of both of those terms being applied to the Emir.

                             But we’re here for only a day and a half, so our ability to garner all the facts is limited. I will state that the place is cleaner than Singapore which is saying something! The urban planning is mind-boggling, and the architecture reminds me of the first time that Dorothy and her companions come out of the Woods and gaze across the fields of poppies at Oz. That is not an exaggeration! There is a haze over, and about the city stirred up by the winds of the area lifting teeny-tiny, microscopic bits of sand that give the whole city a surreal look. It definitely looks Middle East and if you’ve ever seen any of David Roberts engravings and illustration’s from the 1850’s you will know what I mean. Hopefully some of the photos will demonstrate this.

                   Our primary destination in the morning was the Burj Khalifa, that crazy tall building. We went to the 124^th level which is way up there! We were lucky that on this particular day, those pesky particulates that I referred to were at a minimum, so it gave us a relatively rare opportunity to have a really good viewing experience from our vantage point. Our guide told us that these days are few and far between, like maybe a handful a year. We’ll take it!

                   Our other stops in the morning included some “Drive-By’s” of mosques and impressive buildings for photo ops.

We also visited two incredible malls. The Mall of the Emirates and the Mall of Dubai are something that need to be experienced. Even if you are not into malls and shopping, these monolithic examples of retail houses of worship were something to behold.

                   And they were crowded.

                   And it was the morning of weekday.

                   We came to realize that with the sweltering weather here, any type of outdoor leisure activity is not going to happen. So, indoor, air-conditioned, trips to these multi-multi-leveled sprawling destinations is a nice respite from what ails you.

                   Some frames of reference for you:

                   Dubai Mall was once the largest in the world. It has since been surpassed by many malls, primarily in China and Southeast Asia. The huge Mall of America in Minnesota is about 75% of the size of it and for local contrast, Willowbrook Mall in Wayne, which was once one of the largest in the world when it was constructed back in ’69, is seven times smaller! We won’t even try to slide Rockaway Mall into the equation.  But size isn’t everything it’s the total mount and quality of the chocolate shops that are tenants that make the difference! In the Dubai Mall, right smack dab in the center atrium where two of the best chocolatiers around! See’s Candies (1921) out of California (my domestic favorite) and Neuhaus (1857) out of Belgium (the finest in the world according to me) were directly across from each other! Nirvana!

                   Our tour with Shah was nothing short of incredible. He brought us to little spots that were hidden but gave us the best views of some of the local sights and sites.

He was a veritable fountain of information as he drove us around. The day was still on the magnificent side, but the cool of the evening could not come soon enough. It arrived at the perfect time when we travelled to Old Dubai, several miles outside the metropolistic (Little Miss Spell-Check is having a baby ‘cuz I made that word up!) part of town. Here is where all the worker-bees live and congregate.

Read, “real people.”

Our destinations were someplace to eat and some local souks, or markets. You haven’t experienced shopping until you’ve visited a third world type market. It is a sensory overload experience! And if you’re not a bargainer, don’t even try to purchase anything!

We first had dinner at an outdoor place which was on the side of that old creek that I mentioned back in the beginning. But the old, small creek has been “enhanced” over the centuries and is now part of a very navigable arm of the Persian Gulf. Dinner was interesting, lots of pointing to pictures in the menu, and getting explanations of everything from Shah, who remained with us at dinner as our guest. Wraps were the order of the day and one must be careful when visiting these parts of the world because things are not always what they seem, or look like. Ask Paula about the “pickle” that she popped into her mouth only to find out that it was “pepper” way hotter than a jalapeno, and she bit into, and chomped on it before she realized (too late! ) what it wasn’t! What it was, was a great source of entertainment for the rest of us!

          When that fiasco was over, we piled into one of the water taxis that constantly cross this creek. These are old wooden boats from the middle of the twentieth century, that still ferry folks back and forth. We were headed to the souks, one spices and textiles, the other gold. 

          This might have been the highlight of the day! Not that the rest of the day was disappointing, quite the contrary, but as I alluded to in the previous post about being a “tourist” or a traveler, this experience thrust us into the belly of the beast and emerge as Travelers! There is nothing that I can compare this to so a few photos will have to do, and I recommend that when and if you get to a country that has deep ethnic market traditions, that you embrace these experiences and just visit them, at least once!

Turning north after sailing around the bottom of India, we all knew what gauntlets lay ahead.

                                      The Arabian Sea.

The Gulf of Oman.

 The Strait of Hormuz and the Persian Gulf.

The Gulf of Aden.

And eventually we would enter the Red Sea, a thousand-mile-long body of treacherous waters that in order to enter, you must first sail through the Bab al-Mandab Strait, a narrow passageway with Yemen and Somalia on either side, that makes the Strait of Hormuz seem like a wide-open freeway….

                             Beginning in the mid 1600’s, generally considered to be the beginnings of the age of piracy, this area of the world has “shivered the timbers” of many a seafaring man.

                             Nothing has changed.

                             The first signs of our ship being prepared for this exciting time came the other day. While walking the Promenade Deck on Deck 7, we noticed some of our maintenance crew setting up some type of apparatus. We thought at first that they may be getting ready to wash the large “picture windows” that line the public areas of Deck 6 as there were hoses involved.

                             Upon further inspection, we realized that these were not the usual maintenance workers that can be seen daily on the Promenade Deck chipping paint and then repainting. These were our Security Team dressed in white coveralls for this job. Looking even closer it was determined that the hoses were of the “Firehose” kind, you know BIG. Now, we all knew that those windows on Deck 6 needed some pretty heavy cleaning and rinsing, but not that much!

                                      The word spread quickly among the passengers.

                                      Pirate Precautions!

                   This “scuttlebutt” was further verified when our daily newspaper, the Princess Patter, was published the next day with the usual daily log of fun activities listed. There it was, surreptitiously nestled between ‘Bingo’ and ‘Trivia Time’…….

                                      “Piracy Drill”!!!

                                      Unfortunately, it went on to explain that it was for the ‘crew only’ and that us passengers were not needed to be involved. There were visible signs of dejection written all over most of the male passengers faces. You could tell that some of the older fellows were just itching to be involved. You know, a bunch of overweight guys dreaming of their glory days when they (we) were practically invincible! Some of the former military retirees could be seen quietly planning a response strategy if needed.

                                      The actions necessary to repel pirates involves various tactics. The most effective are those already installed high-pressure fire hoses that can be laced with an eye-stinging soapy solution for further effect, and the use of sonic cannons, emitting screamingly loud and /or ultra-sonic sounds that incapacitate anyone that it is directed at.

                   Back to our dejectedness.

                   When the Hour of Anti-Piracy Practice commenced, the Captain got on the ship-wide public address system. It began with those usual tonal notes that are the prelude to an Important Announcement.

                             “Ladies and gentlemen, this is the Captain speaking,” (we already knew that but it’s good to hear it anyway) “As you all know, we are going to conduct our Anti-Piracy Drill. This is just a drill, but bearing in mind that we are now entering a relatively more dangerous zone of waters, it makes sense for us to be prepared. Ladies and gentlemen, the accounts of maritime piracy have fallen off in recent years, but these things can pop back up at any time, and there have been a few reports of coastal unrest in the past few months, hence our drill. This drill is for the Crew only, but…. If…. anyone else wants to participate you are welcome to.”

                   An obvious stir was detected among the passengers as the Captain’s words reached our ears.

 Yes!

We could be part of the action!

          “The best thing that you can do is vacate your outer staterooms, first locking your sliding door, and then secure yourselves in the hallway. If you are in one of our public areas, especially near the outside of the ship, please find your way to an interior room and stay with your fellow passengers.”

                             Another audible sigh of displeasure was heard, this is not what we were waiting for!

                             “Unless”…… the Captain continued….

                             “Unless you would like to be part of the Repelling Team. If this is so, please proceed to Deck 4 down by the Infirmary and report to the Master-at-Arms who will issue you the appropriate weapon according to your experience level. Your weapon rental and ammo will be charged to your onboard account. There is a limited amount of grenade launchers available on a first-come, first-served basis. You must report there now and register so that there is no delay when the time comes to act.”

                                      Now this is more like it! That audible buzz was now reaching levels that rivaled the nightly opening of the Dining Room!

                                      One guy in our cards-playing group couldn’t hold it in any longer, “This is awesome! We were on a cruise back in ’98, a whole flotilla of those Somali bastards, oops, sorry ladies! Well anyway, these guys, they came flyin’ across the water in those high-speed little boats, the Captain sounded the alarm, and those guys didn’t have a clue as to what they were in for! I had an RPG and had rented the optional scope with it and some extra ammo! The guy next to me had an AK-47 with tracer bullets in it! What a sight it was! All of us passengers we blew those pirates to pieces! Even my kid bagged two of them! This is gonna be great!”

                             Luckily, I was one of the first to arrive at the Master-at Arms, so I was able to procure a very nice Gulf War Era Grenade Launcher, and yes, I did get the optional scope.

 My eyes aren’t what they used to be, and I wouldn’t want to fire on Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom, or Kiera Knightly by mistake!