Sunday, October 2

Ashdod, Israel. I was supposed to take a ten hour tour to Jerusalem today, but after the heat and exhaustion of yesterday, I just wasn’t up to it, so Jerusalem will have to continue its existence without a visit from me. I should have known better than to schedule three full-day tours in a row...especially in a sweltering climate. Instead I just lazed around the ship with the mere handful of people still on board. I did have my ritual Myers and coke in honor of all my previous cruising buddies who aren’t with me on this trip.

Ashdod is a major port, and we were docked a fair ways out into it. I don’t even have any photos of Ashdod itself from the ship because we were docked in the middle of a veritable sea of newly minted cars, vans and buses as far as the eye can see...there must have been a couple of thousand of them. It was interesting to watch the various strange vehicles loading and unloading cars and container ships etc. There were several vehicles that I couldn’t tell what they did. One was a huge green monster that looked a bit like a folded up praying mantis on tracks that was loaded very slowly with much beeping onto a flat-bed semi and barely fit on it.

Jill had a great but very hot and shadeless tour of Jerusalem today including a walk through Old Jerusalem and a visit to the Western Wall as well as to several outstanding museums. She didn’t get back until after 7:00 p.m., and we didn’t sail until 11:00 p.m. We skipped dinner in favor of room service again.

I forgot to tell you about the Egyptian drivers. Riding on the Egyptian roads is very much like riding on the Paseo de la Reforma in Mexico City. An improvement in Egypt is that they do have lanes painted on the road, but as in Mexico City, none of the rivers seem to pay any attention to them. A road with two lanes going in one direction will commonly have the equivalent of thrree lanes of vehicles, and occasionally four, all zipping along! The only place I’ve seen with worse traffic was Ho Chi Minh City, and that was due to the millions of bicycles and motorbikes there. Yet another reason to be thankful for the convoy escort.

Monday, October 4

Haifa, Israel. This getting up at 5:45 a.m. has got to stop! But today is the last of my full-day tours, so that’s good. We did get a nice iew of docking in Haifa as the sun rose.

Today’s tour was of the “panoramic” sort which means “not much walking.” We went from Haifa past Har Megiddo (aka Armageddon). I always thought that it was a plain, but it turns out to be a small hill with a few trees on top that overlooks the Yizreel Valley. It was important because it was a stop with a well on the hill route north through this area. Our first brief stop was at an over look of the south end of the Sea of Galilee. We were at sea level, and Galilee was 600 feet below us as you can see.

Next we had a nice stop at the south end of Galilee at Yardenit, The Baptismal Site on the River Jordan. Since Galilee had been dammed at the south end, at that point Jordan is not a flowing river, but the gardens there were lovely. If you have time, you can pay a small fee to rent a white robe and get baptised in the Jordan. The Tourist Center there is very nice. and has a major tourist shop with, among other items, bottles of Jordan River water, jars of date honey, and stupid male tourists who can’t resist blowing on the souvenir shofars.

Then we headed up the east side of Galilee between it and the Golan heights. At the north end, the Jordan still flows into the sea. Our bus driver, Josef, had lightning reflexes and managed to save us all from a horrible accident when a truck which had apparently (but evidently not) pulled far to the right to let us pass, with no turn signal, suddenly tried to turn left directly into us. Thank you, Josef! Lanes on the roads here seem to be a somewhat stronger suggestion to drivers than in Egypt, but are still freuently disregarded.

We stopped at Capernaum where I opted to forego the hike to see whatever it was that everybody else went off to see. I stayed on the bus and was quite entertained. The parking area was very small, on a slant, and there were a LOT of BIG tourist buses as well as some small cars and tourists on foot dancing around in it. One bus would pull out, and immediately another would come in and maneuver to back into the vacant space with only a couple of feet to spare between buses. During the turning and backing process, even an extra coat of paint would have been too much! This “dance of the buses” went on the whole time we were there. I continue to be amazed at the skill of bus drivers.

Next we briefly visited the site of the Church of the Beatitudes, again with lovely gardens and a church maintained by (if I remember correctly) a convent of Carmelite nuns. On to lunch at a hotel called Nof Girosar owned and operated by a kibbutz. I even tried an Israeli beer (“our genuine taste since 1950," evidently it took two years to get the brewery built and running).

After lunch we passed through Tiberia, Cana, and Nazareth. In the latter, we did not stop to go into the Church of the Annunciation (see photo), but we did circle a roundabout several times to get a good view of it making most of us almost dizzy, but it was a lovely view. For some reason, I had never thought of Nazareth...or Cana, for that matter... as being on top of rather high hills, but they are. Most of the villages and towns are very compact...no yards or lawns...with sharp edges between the houses and the surrounding fields, and many are pn hilltops. This leaves the most of the arable land for growing things. Finally back to Haifa where we went up Mount Carmel to view the city, the harbor and, if you could fight through the other tourists, a view of the gorgeous Baha’i Gardens.

It was at this last stop that I discovered that there is now a screw loose in Israel. The screw in question adjusts and holds in place the right handle of my walker, and when the walker came off the bus for the lst time, it was just gone. After a completely lop-sided hike from the bus back to the ship, the Front Desk sent me a nice little ship’s carpenter who took my walker away and brought it back about 20 minutes later with a new screw complete with a wing nut for a handle. Not pretty, but quite effective.

We didn’t sail until 11:00 p.m., and after dinner Jill and I sat on our verandah and watched the many comings and goings in the harbor: several container ships leaving and arriving with their attendant tug boats and pilot boats, lots of navy vessels including a submarine and at least four little little patrol boat sized ships, and one little speed boat that we immediately dubbed “Zippy.” The navy ships were identifiable because they ghosted in with only the minimum red and green running lights on. Everything else was brightly lit up.

Tuesday, October 5

At sea. I haven’t posted in several days because we have had very low and slow internet reception while in Israel, and also during this afternoon at sea.

Today we slept in then headed for our favorite table in the shade on Lido Deck until after lunch. The Mediterranean is the calmest sea I’ve ever cruised on...not even much in the way of white caps, never mind any rolling motion.