Author: Jonathan

We awoke this morning with our ship headed south through the Suez Canal, about 20 miles south of Port Said. Ship traffic in the canal is one way at a time between Port Said and Ismailia. Since the northern half of the canal is only wide enough to accommodate one large ship at a time, ships move through the canal in convoys, two southbound and one northbound each day. The capacity of the canal was recently doubled to allow up to 96 ships to move through the canal every day. Three bridges cross the canal. They are the only land links between Africa and Asia. Although many of us thought it might be boring to go through the 120-mile long canal at only 9 mph, the transit turned out to be fascinating. More and more people congregated at the front end of the ship as the morning progressed. We sat and watched the constantly changing panorama, with Asia (the Sinai Peninsula) to our...

Today was our longest excursion to date--13-1/2 hours, about half of which was spent on the road coming or going between Port Said and Cairo. The highway south from the port paralleled the Suez Canal for about 35 miles. We passed groves of date palms and mango trees bursting with ripe fruit. Vendors parked their donkey carts laden with fruit and vegetables at random spots along the shoulder of the highway. We passed many pickup trucks transporting families. Kids waved at the buses as our convoy passed by. I say "convoy" because our buses traveled with police escort throughout our excursion. A plainclothes policeman sat in the front seat of the bus. When he stood up at one point, I noticed an Uzi holstered under his jacket. Egypt's economy depends heavily on tourism, and the country is taking extraordinary measures to ensure that tourists are kept safe. We passed one beat up old pickup truck in which two women dressed in full abbayas and...

One of our adventures in Haifa yesterday was putting ourselves at the mercy of the city’s taxi service, since we had decided to strike out on our own rather than taking the group tour. I’m an Uber guy at home. I like to know in advance what I’m paying, and the question of money never comes up with the driver. Taxis in Athens were a pleasant surprise, as the drivers were extremely friendly and the fares were very cheap. I neglected to ask before getting into the taxi at the port at Haifa how much the ride to the tour meeting point at the Baha’i World Centre was going to cost. I only had a $20 bill on me; I hadn’t had a chance to get to an ATM. A ride of that distance in Athens would have been less than 10 Euros. After all, we could see the place from the port! When we arrived, the driver said, “Twenty dollars.” A...

Hello from Haifa, the first stop on our voyage. It’s my first time in Israel, and I’m very glad to have had even a short time to see this remarkable country. Our bus tour on August 22 took us to Jerusalem and Bethlehem. I wasn’t quite sure what to expect, although I’ve certainly seen many photos over the years. Perhaps my first surprise was seeing stretches of the border wall between the Palestinian territory and Israel as we motored south along the highway to Jerusalem. Our guide, Elie, explained that Israelis see the wall as not to keep people out, but to protect people in Israel from arms fire coming across from the Palestinian territory. I pause here to mention that as with anything you hear about the Middle East situation, you have to take into consideration the frame of reference of the person who’s telling you the story. Everyone is telling you their truth. Reality is far too complex to be...

For those of you who haven’t been following us on Facebook, my wife Jane and I had a marvelous 4 days in Greece before beginning the main part of our journey. October 2 marks our 25th wedding anniversary, and we have been planning a special trip for a long, long time. We booked Viking’s “Voyage of Marco Polo” on April 14, 2017 and have been counting the days ever since. We took Viking’s Rhine River cruise seven years ago. We appreciated that Viking promotes these cruises as exploration, cultural, and learning journeys, rather than having its ships be floating casinos. When we started thinking about a silver anniversary cruise, we compared our bucket list of places to visit, and Viking’s itinerary looked too good to pass up. We began our trip on August 15, 2018 when we arrived for a 4-day extension based in Athens. By the time we make it back home on September 27, we will have visited: Greece: Athens Mycenae ...