El Alamein

Monday December 20, 2010 Day 173

Today we went west of Alexandria in search of the El Alamein battlefield museum. We were the only bus going on this tour. We had an Egyptian military escort again - we were followed by a jeep driven by an Egyptian soldier, with two more armed soldiers in the back of the jeep. Additionally there was a security officer on our bus. I am sure they were totally bored the entire trip - we saw them texting on their cell phones at one point.

Yesterday when we boarded the bus, we were provided with a generous snack pack which we barely needed because the tour included a large buffet lunch stop. Today’s tour was not as well-provisioned; in fact, we were provided nothing. The guide did mention that the driver had water and soft drinks available for a dollar or a Euro each. Otherwise we were on our own. We had brought one bottle of water from yesterday’s excursion.

First stop was the Commonwealth Nations cemetery. It was much as many of the war cemeteries we visited in other nations, with row upon row of headstones marked with the name, date of birth, date of death, rank, and perhaps some other information about the deceased soldier. The primary difference is that this is a desert cemetery so there is no grass. No poppies blow between the crosses, row on row in this burial ground, only sand. There are some lovely bougainvillea vines but the main visual is sand, sand, sand.

Commonwealth Nations cemetery



Commonwealth Nations cemetery - a more distant view. I love the tree in the center.

Next came the El Alamein Military Museum where we viewed a description of the struggle for north Africa between the Allied forces and the Axis troops over a period of almost two years depicted on a table in six stages, then saw various military relics including guns, armaments, clothing, and war paraphernalia inside the museum. Afterward we went outside for a visit to larger equipment including tanks, heavy artillery, a few personnel carriers and an airplane. The museum was small and had an equally small coffee/gift shop attached. It appeared that the only food available was a small selection of chips, cookies, crackers, candy and soft drinks or water. We bought a bag of chips to share and a candy bar each. As we got on the bus, we bought a soft drink each from the driver - the first Coca Cola I have had in ages - probably only the second one since we arrived in France.

Peace sculpture in the courtyard of the museum

Some of the dummies inside the display cases had pretty funny expressions:
"What do you mean you put pigeon poop in these biscuits?"

Another mannequin with an amusing expression.

Roger enjoyed these war toys tremendously

The bus took us next to the German monument - an ossuary. This is a very small affair - an eight-sided building made of local stone, built to resemble a medieval fortress. Inside is a large obelisk. The remains themselves are buried beneath large symbolic caskets, one for each German state.

Inside the German ossuary

Roger outside the ossuary walls

Next was the Italian memorial, different again from the other two. This one is an 80-foot or so tower atop a mausoleum. The approach to the mausoleum is a 500 feet of alleyway lined with bougainvillea in pink and gold and white. Inside the bottom floor of the tower are crypts, one for each soldier. Each crypt bears only the name and rank of the soldier - no dates. There are roughly 4,000 soldiers buried there. A huge cross soars along the inside north wall of the tower, which overlooks the Mediterranean. The memorial is constructed of Carrera marble from Italy. The memorial stands also in tribute to the roughly 30,000 Italians whose bodies were never found.

View of the mausoluem from the road

So many lives lost

Stairs up the tower to the glass-and-brick ceiling

The cross on the wall opposite the stairs

Beautiful bouganvilla lining the alleyway to the mausoleum

Roger was disappointed not to be able to visit the actual battlefields, but we were told that they are strewn with thousands of mines and are therefore too dangerous to visit.

We were back on the bus by about 3:00 and at the ship before 4:00. We headed upstairs for a late lunch. We were pooped after two days of excursions and napped in our room for a time before walking some and having dinner. The evening’s entertainment was a magic show by a husband-and-wife magician team called Sander and Allison. They were quite good, and apparently came on board with about a dozen doves, a huge yellow snake, a white rabbit and a white cat. Part of his act included the use of fire, which I am sure did not thrill the captain!

Cairo - the pyramids and the poverty

Sunday December 19, 2010 Day 172

We boarded the bus early for a long excursion day - more of an ordeal, as it lasted in excess of thirteen hours. The tour started with a three-hour drive through the desert from the Alexandria port to Cairo. As we got on, we were given small snack packs which included water, and were told that we could have another bottle of water from the front of the bus if we desired. Throughout the day we snacked on most of the contents, which contained an apple, a banana, a pack of crackers, a chocolate wafer candy bar, a bottle of water, a napkin and two wipes, with more water available if we needed it.

Security was tight - security personnel rode on every bus. Additionally, our 20-bus convoy from Alexandria to Cairo was escorted front and back by the Egyptian military. In Cairo, some of the buses followed agendas different from others, and I think that each separate tour had its own escort.

Poverty abounds in Alexandria and Cairo. As we left Alexandria, we passed a dirt road with a large canopy along side it under which a market was held. Along the dirt road next to the market was a man riding a donkey cart. We saw several other donkey carts in and around Cairo. The parts that we saw were mostly ugly - hundreds upon hundreds of unfinished apartment buildings, trash in the streets, trash in the canals, garbage and refuse and rubble piled everywhere, often with people picking through the garbage. There are laws in effect in Egypt which impose a tax on apartment buildings (and maybe office buildings too, I am not sure) once they are finished. As a result, apartment buildings are simply not finished, but are mostly erected, then tenants are allowed to move in. This results in blocks and blocks of hideous buildings. International hotels are usually completed buildings, and they look lovely, but they stand cheek by jowl with the unsightly, incomplete buildings and the juxtaposition is jarring. There were thousands of cars more than twenty years old on the streets, still operating. My Western mind was unable to rise above the poverty and hideousness of the city to find any beauty in Cairo.

Several unfinished building dot the skyline

One of the unfinished buildings, in all its stark ugliness

Once we arrived in Cairo, our first stop was the great pyramids - three of them, along with several lesser pyramids. They were truly awesome - rising out of the desert with the smog and poverty of Cairo on two sides, and the desert on the other two sides. The vendors outside the buses were very aggressive. We were warned by NCL not to even make eye contact with them if we did not intend to buy their wares, as they would pursue us relentlessly. In trying to avoid the vendors, we got “conned” by local military who guard the pyramids and have little to do all day except stand around and make sure that tourists do not cross the ropes and climb on the pyramids. A soldier offered to take our photo, and put us in a couple of silly poses. Then not only did he expect a Euro for himself, but he also wanted one for his buddy who did nothing but stand around. At least the con was cheap. We boarded the bus again, traveled a short distance, and arrived at the Great Sphinx - another amazing sight.

Roger and me at the Pyramids viewing point

Camel rides were available, but we did not indulge





We happened to capture this dust devil whirling across the desert

The Great Pyramid of Giza and the Sphinx

The pyramids were faced with granite or similar rock. Much of it was removed by the Arabs in the 600s CE to be used as building material in constructing Cairo. Some of it remains atop the Great Pyramid of Giza, and more of it lies at the base of the pyramid.

Facing rock leaning against the base of the pyramid

A view up the side of the pyramid to the facing rock at the top.

Our next stop was the Papyrus Institute, where we saw a papyrus-making demonstration, and had a chance to buy pictures on papyrus, cartouches and other Egyptian artifacts. From here we drove another short distance, probably 15 minutes, and arrived at our lunch venue - a large hotel standing near enough to the pyramids that they were visible through the palm trees. Lunch was a large buffet in the ballroom consisting mostly of western foods. It was good. The hotel was reputed by our tour guide to be a five-star hotel. It was certainly beautiful - there were giant chandeliers more than a story high, and an opulence that stood in stark contrast to the poverty outside its walls.

Roger and me on the stairs of the hotel where we lunched

The view from the hotel grounds

After lunch, we had more than an hour drive through crowded Cairo streets to the Egyptian National Museum, where we saw the King Tut exhibit. The museum is old, and the exhibits were not displayed to their best effect. Comment cards in the cases are so old that they were prepared on typewriters. This did not keep the collection from being absolutely stunning. So much stuff! Carter must have been continually awe-struck as he explored the tomb for the first time and uncovered more and more of the treasure there. We spent an hour and a half there, and only brushed the surface.

We had to undergo another hour of rush-hour traffic in Cairo before reaching the outskirts, then we convoyed back to Alexandria and the ship. We probably spent more than eight hours traveling on the bus, and we were exhausted when we got back to the ship. Some of the staff, including the cruise director, was outside the ship and greeted us as we arrived. I guess they were relieved to see us - it isn’t every day that the excursions roll away from the ship under the protection of the army! We went upstairs to the self-serve restaurant for a bit to eat, then went to bed.

NCL is taking special precautions to prevent gastroenteritis, because they apparently had a small outbreak of the illness last time the cruise ship visited Egypt. We were warned to eat only fresh fruit or sealed packages of food such as chips, crackers, or candy bars off the ship, or to eat only at designated food stops, and to avoid eating local foods. There was a sheet on our bed yesterday evening encouraging extra hand-washing precautions. When we returned to the ship in the evening, and for 24 hours after we sailed away from Egypt, there was no self-serve option in the self-serve restaurant at the top of the ship - we were handed plates and wrapped silver and went from station to station indicating what we wanted and servers put the food on our plates. We were not even allowed to draw our drinks ourselves and there was no salt and pepper on the tables - if we wanted those, we so indicated and were handed those ubiquitous tiny packets of salt and pepper. Apparently these measures paid off, as the restaurant returned to self-serve once we had been away from the port for 24 hours.

Yet another sea day

Saturday December 18, 2010 Day 171

Another sea day - after breakfast I went for a gaming lesson on the strategies of betting in blackjack, such as doubling down and splitting, neither concept of which I understood. Apparently at this time of day the casino is not busy and the dealers are happy to instruct players in the finer arts of blackjack. While I was there, Roger picked up our passports (which were confiscated at the time of embarkation) and went for a walk on the deck. When I finished my lesson, I joined him in a full circumnavigation of the deck. We tried to walk a good deal on sea days.

On the way down to the harbor yesterday we saw this bust of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, founder of the Republic of Turkey and its first Turkish president.

Later I sat in on Art 102 while Roger attended a chat with the cruise director. After lunch, we joined a few other people for some bridge. Unfortunately, it was set up in a restaurant whose balcony overlooks the art auction area, and there was an art auction going on for most of the two hours we played bridge. The bridge was good enough, but the din going on around us was distracting.


Even later in the afternoon, we tried some cha-cha dance lessons. The instructor called this Urban cha-cha, and it was done without a dance partner - something of a line dance with a cha-cha beat. About half-way through, I quit after the same girl stepped on my feet twice, and she wasn’t even my partner!

The evening’s entertainment was the Maestranza Spanish Ballet - three women and one man in a very energetic series of dances. I think the women went through no less than 15 costume changes during the 45-minute performance. They were great - very enjoyable. Still later, Pau Adams returned for another comedy routine, this one in a lounge at the top of the ship. Very funny guy.

Izmir, Turkey, and the ancient city of Ehpesus

Friday December 17, 2010 Day 170

We docked at Izmir, Turkey, this morning. Looking across the pier, we saw sections of large electricity-generation windmills. We were not sure whether these were for import or export. I think I forgot to mention that our cruise ship is the Norwegian Jade, a part of the Norwegian Cruise Lines (NCL) fleet.

Our home away from home for 12 days

We boarded a bus for our excursion to the ruins at Ephesus, an ancient Greek city, and later a major Roman city, on the west coast of Turkey and of Asia Minor. It contains the largest collection of Roman ruins in the Eastern Mediterranean. The city has a long, history, having already been inhabited during the Neolithic age. The city was famed for the Temple of Artemis (completed around 550 BC), one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. The temple was destroyed in 401 CE by a mob - not sure what they were protesting but they must have been pretty mad! Our tour guide passed out radio headphones again, which I have come to appreciate greatly. Someone ought to tell those Cretans about these things!

The site was crowded - I think about 20 buses came from our ship alone, and then there were other non-NCL visitors as well. It was impossible to get pictures which were not populated with strangers! The site, which covers more than ten acres, was littered (pardon the pun) with cats, many of them very tame and quite willing to be petted or even picked up. I had the misfortune to be petting one when it suddenly turned on me with both claws and teeth. Ouch! I immediately rinsed the puncture holes with water and spread Neosporin on them (thanks, Neo-to-go!) and hoped they would not get infected.

One of the many cats that roamed the site



Roger and me at the top of the ruins
This one is for you, Alicia

The tour starts at the top of a long, wide street which slopes down past ruins and more ruins and still more ruins. This street alone is more than a mile long. At the bottom of the street is the Library of Celsus, the façade of which has been carefully reconstructed from all original pieces. It was build around 145 CE and once held 12,000 scrolls. From the library, we turned right and went into an amphitheatre, which has been updated and is still used today for concerts. It is believed to be the largest outdoor theater in the ancient world.

Looking down from near the top of the street

 

Our tour guide, standing beneath winged Nike

 

Carved ornamental stone littered the site

 

Beautiful mosaic tile work along former shop floors



The reconstructed facade of the library

The whole site is a mish-mash of different styles, sometimes one on top of another - apparently the Turks built on top of what the Byzantines had erected, who built atop what the Romans erected, who built atop the Greek installations. It is all there - just waiting for interpretation. Actually, it is estimated that only 15% of the site has been excavated, so the full excavation site will be vast. On the whole, it was a pretty amazing place, another huge stone graveyard just waiting to be unearthed and resurrected.

 

One style of column, built right on top of another



Amphitheatre, used for concerts today

Roger and me in front of the library

Stone graveyard with amphitheatre in the background

This sign sort of says it all!

 On the way back from Ephesus, our bus stopped at a rug-making school where young people are trained in the art of making rugs of silk, wool, cotton, or a combination of the three. We watched silk being unwound from cocoons, learned a bit about the dying process, then watched a woman demonstrating one of the weaving techniques. Because the process is hard on the eyes, the weavers can only work two hours a day. Then we were ushered into a showroom where several men laid out carpet after carpet after carpet, in splendid colors and patterns. The carpets were absolutely gorgeous, and often I saw one which I thought was my favorite, but it was soon surpassed by one that I liked even more! Supposedly they were authorized to make us a good price on the carpets, and I assume that some of the passengers did buy rugs, but we were not in the market. The visit did give me a new respect for those beautiful, intricately-woven rugs.

Silk cocoons with silk strands being unwound from them.

Roger remarked that he has now been on both sides of Asia, as he visited Shanghai, China several years ago on business.

As we left the harbor this morning, and again on our return, we saw some colored grain silos standing near the port. We were unable to determine what they held, but they were quite lovely - very different from the huge cream-colored sentinels of my experience.

Grain silos near the harbor

The evening’s entertainment was sort of the Jade’s version of American Idol, really designed to showcase the talents of four of their professional staff performers, because the “contestants” were not amateurs nor were they passengers on the ship. They performed a couple of times each, and one by one they got “voted off” (but not off the ship!) by the audience. Cute, but I guess that is damning them with faint praise.

Iraklion and the Palace at Knossos

Thursday December 16, 2010 Day 169

From our breakfast table, we watched the start of the docking process, as we did not dock in Iraklion until after 9:00. When we left the dining room, we went outside to stroll on the deck and watch more of the docking. Roger suggested that the tie-down ropes are Kevlar, because of their golden yellow color.

Crete

Iraklion, on the island of Crete

We boarded a tour bus again, this time for a trip to the ruins of the palace at Knossos. Our guide was a woman who spoke reasonably good English, but unfortunately the idea of the radio headphones has not made it to Crete, and at Knossos, we had to stand around in the rain and try to hear what she had to say. At the entrance to the palace, Roger bought an umbrella for five euros since we did not bring one on the cruise; in fact, we seem to have mislaid ours completely.

Palace at Knossos in the rain

 The palace covers some six acres, and included a theatre, a main entrance on each of its four cardinal faces, and extensive storerooms called magazines. Some of the storerooms contained pithoi,or large clay vases which held oil, grains, dried fish, beans, and olives. The palace had grain mills, oil presses, and wine presses. Beneath the pithoi were stone holes used to store more valuable objects, such as gold. Other parts of the palace include a throne room and a numerous bedroom, miscellaneous rooms, a toilet and bathtub. The palace had a complex system of fresh water, runoff water management and sewers.

Storage jars

The ruins were discovered in 1878 by a Cretan merchant, and were fully excavated by Sir Arthur Evans starting in 1900. There is much controversy regarding his excavation, particularly his theories about the purpose of many things, and regarding his restoration. For instance, he turned the painting of the throne room over to a father-and-son team of artists, and their “restorations” are said to be almost complete inventions of theirs.

The tour lasted too long, particularly because we were not always able to hear our guide. On the way back, we got the tour director to let us off the bus in front of an electronics store, and we went in and found a universal charger for Roger’s netbook.On our walk back to the ship, we passed a store with a solar water heater on display out front. As we looked around, we saw several of them on rooftops.

Our tour did not leave the ship until 11:00, which was poor timing, as no lunch stop was included and we did not return to the ship until after 3:00. We were rather hungry by the time we got back on board the ship.

The evening entertainment was a comedian named Paul Adams. Our itinerary called for the ship to collect him in Athens and discharge him the next day in Izmir. Because of the port change he had to get from Athens to Crete. Somewhere between Gatwick Airport and Crete his luggage disappeared. He appeared on stage in blue jeans, tennis shoes and a blue and white plaid shirt, all quite new-looking. A good deal of this comic routine centered around his lost luggage and his clothing. He was quite funny, and gets extra points for a clean, family-oriented performance.

Another sea day

Wednesday December 15, 2010 Day 168

We lost an hour last night due to our eastward travel, so we slept late this morning and didn’t get to breakfast until almost 9:30. We were not alone, however - the self-serve dining room was as crowded as usual. After breakfast, we went to the bridge viewing room and watch the ship pass through the Messina Strait between Italy and Sicily.

In Rome, while awaiting our bus, we happened to see a bride
crossing the street in all her wedding finery - she is
in the crosswalk in the very center of the photo

Clouds moved in and the sea picked up this afternoon, going from moderate this morning to rough after lunch. There was a lot more sway all over the ship and we didn’t always walk directly where we were headed. Roger went to a lecture on ancient Greece and Ephesus while I blogged and spent time on the computer. Later we felt the need for some exercise, so went up to the top of the ship for country line dance lessons. They were energetic and they really warmed us up, but the dance floor is small and quite crowded.

We closed out the evening with a performer named Gary Lovin. He was an excellent violinist and quite a showman as well. The advance notices simply referred to him by name, billing the performance as "a spectacular, energetic and entertaining musical show with a difference" and did not mention his talent. During the day, I heard someone speculating that he was a comedian. After the show, he admitted that he specifically requested of the cruise director not to announce the nature of his show, but just to post his name and photo. At the end of the show, which the audience clearly enjoyed, he asked how many would have come if he had been billed as a violinist or fiddler, and much of the audience admitted that they would have stayed away. Interesting that a violinist has to disguise the nature of his art in order to get people to come see him.

Rome

Tuesday December 14, 2010 Day 167

I slept really well last night; Roger, not so much. I think he was worried about waking up on time for our excursion, even though we had left a wake-up call. He said that once, when he reached over to check the time on the phone, I asked him what time it was, but I was already snoring again before he could tell me!

Our excursion today was to Rome, and we reached our assembly point on the ship with plenty of time to spare. We exited the ship and boarded a bus which took us into Rome, an hour or so away from the port of Civitavecchia. On the way in, we saw the Italian countryside, including a solar farm of several acres. We also saw the first of many umbrella pines, which are quiet lovely.

Note the umbrella pines in front of the colosseum

Our tour called for us to go to the Colosseum in the morning and St. Peter’s Basilica in the afternoon, but our tour guide reversed the visiting points because of some protests which were scheduled. Indeed, as we moved through Rome, we saw a group of demonstrators holding up traffic bound in the other direction. Before we exited the bus, our guide distributed small radio receivers with headphones and she conducted the tour into her microphone, which was broadcast into our receivers. It took us a good 20 minutes of standing in line for security to enter Vatican City. From there we went into St. Peter’s Basilica, which was truly huge. It was so big, however, that it was hard to get a perspective on its true size. Our tour guide pointed out that some lettering around the lower portion of the dome was five feet high and this helped a bit.

St. Peter's Square in Vatican City
with St. Peter's Basilica in the background

Inside the basilica, looking up at the dome

Nativity figures await the completion of the St. Peter's creche

Swiss guards provide security for the Vatican

After the obligatory visit to the gift shop, we reboarded our bus and headed to a restaurant for lunch, where we had some lasagna, red or white wine, a salad, some pork and potatoes, and finished with tiramisu and coffee. The food was nothing to blog about - mediocre at beset. We sat with a French couple - the first we have seen or heard on the cruise. Our cruise mates seem to be mostly U.S. and Canadian citizens, although there are a fair number of Orientals. The French couple, Madeline and Jean-Claude, actually reside in Tahiti, where they retired from teaching. We conversed in a mixture of French and English throughout the meal and afterward as well.

The bus took us to the Colosseum next, where we disembarked and spent about twenty minutes viewing the outside of the Colosseum and other Roman ruins surrounding it. Some of our group was disappointed that we could not enter the Colosseum, but there was no time on our tour. If we had wanted to tour the interior of the Colosseum, there was a tour for that, but it was not available on our particular tour. The ride back to the ship was quiet. We had a lovely view of the sunset and many of our fellow passengers slept. We did not get to throw our coins in the Trevi fountain to secure our return to Rome. I am not too worried, however, because a return to Rome is on our agenda (if it can be said that we have such a thing as an agenda) some time before we leave France in June.

The departure of our ship was slightly delayed because of the late return of one of the excursion buses. Apparently it got caught up in some of the demonstrations. As we discussed our day with other passengers, one couple talked about how they took the train in and found themselves trapped inside the station for a time, unable to go where they wanted to go because of the demonstrations. Fortunately the found another way out of the station.

I feel that we only lightly brushed the top of Rome, but then I suppose one always does with only a few hours to see an entire historic city. Roger said he expected much worse traffic than we encountered. The city was clean, and we had lovely (cool) weather. He was surprised that everything was bunched up around the Colosseum. He also remarked that it must be hard to excavate in Rome for a foundation for a new building or a subway because one is apt to strike ancient ruins and be delayed indefinitely!

Among the passengers on our excursion was a woman who accompanied her blind mother and a Down Syndrome man. What a challenge! She had another companion as well, however - a woman apparently hired for the trip to assist in caring for the other two. We learned later that the blind woman did not receive her luggage before she boarded the ship in Barcelona. What a pain!

When we returned to our room, we found a note regarding an itinerary change. Because the Greek unions continue to take part in general strikes, the political unrest makes Athens less than stable, so our next port of call would be Crete in place of Athens. Along with the note was an explanation of five different excursions offered on Crete and instructions on how to order up the excursion of our choice.

We postponed dinner for the early show in the theater, which was a Beatles Celebration - four guys dressed as the Beatles singing all their old songs - well, 15 or so of them. Not bad for four guys who have never seen the guys they are imitating - much of the audience was singing along; after all, most of them experienced the Beatles in their youth. Afterward, while waiting for dinner, we watched the sea go by the side of the ship. I noted that we seemed to be moving faster than we did the first day at sea, and Roger remarked that the ship had farther to go to her next stop and that she had picked up her skirts and was running along.

Panic time for Roger! When I got my new netbook computer in November, Roger remarked that the charger for his computer fit mine. So when we packed for the cruise, we just threw in my charger. Unfortunately, the computer for my charger does not fit his computer. Roger had preloaded his computer with plenty of reading material. He is now exploring his options, including using my computer to read and checking out books from the ship’s library.