Saturday, April 3, 2010
Once again we wanted to say that we had a wonderful time in Athens yesterday. This is our forth time to this city. Our first visit was in the 1990’s and at that point in time we found the city to be lacking in some areas and on the dirty side. When we visited again in 2005 on the Crystal Serenity we saw first hand so many improvements that had been as a result of Athens hosting the 2004 Olympics. It’s nice to see that the city has continued to keep to the standards that they established for the Olympics.
The city had a somewhat different feel given that yesterday was Good Friday. Getting around the city was much easier with so many of the locals and others visiting the city from nearby cities who were in Church.
In terms of the economy we spoke with one local who said that it was quite challenging at this point in time. We noticed that some items such as gasoline were quite expensive. Her observation was that one of the problems is that many of the people extended themselves quite a bit (a familiar them to the USA but possibly on an even larger scale) and that many people did not pay taxes and that there is no IRS like institution in Greece to followup on this.
As is always the case, the port of Athens is quite busy and there are various cruise ships in port and also many passengers traveling to and from Athens on the Ferry.
We had a wonderful time on the ship last evening.
The Cruise Director and Assistant Director joined us for dinner in the Main Dining Room and we enjoyed a superb meal. Last night we were celebrating a special day for us. In addition, our Head Waiter is going on vacation at the end of this leg of the cruise and last night represented the last evening for this leg and he has wanted to prepare a special meal for us. So the timing for all of this worked out perfectly.
As everyone knows on most evenings we have fish as our entrée and we have fruit for dessert.
This was not the case last evening. We enjoyed a nice appetizer and entrée and even a sweet for dessert.
We greatly appreciate the Cruise Director and the Assistant Cruise Director joining us for dinner and we thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful conversation with the two of them. We each hugged Head Waiter Agusto since he is now heading home and we look forward to seeing him again.
After dinner we went to a variety show, which featured two top performers whose individual shows we attended during this leg of the World Cruise. Last evenings show featured Award Winning Musical Impressionist Greg London and Celebrity Ventriloquist Ronn Lucas. They were both wonderful and we truly enjoyed their show. Greg London sang a variety of songs that are well known having been recorded by several well known singers including Neil Diamond, Billy Joel, Johnny Cash, Elvis Presley along with a few others. Ronn Lucas entertained us with a few of his puppets and he once again brought on stage the same guest who was selected out of the audience the other evening and he had everyone in tears from all of the laughter. This is the first time that each of these two professional entertainers have performed for Crystal Cruises and they were magnificent.
It was another wonderful evening.
Today marks the conclusion of the fifth leg of the World Cruise and the beginning of the sixth leg.
As we have mentioned from time to time this has been the best of our World Cruises for a variety of reasons and we will try to sum this up when the journey comes to an end. In the meantime, we wanted to note that the itinerary for these two last legs of the World Cruise has been extraordinary. We realize that there were some who questioned why such a large portion of the itinerary was devoted to The Middle East and there were some who questioned why certain countries and ports of call were included on this adventure. We have to say that we are thrilled that Crystal Cruises chose to include all of these sites on the itinerary. After all, it would have been far easier for Crystal Cruises to return to only those sites that they have visited before because of their familiarity and because little risk would be involved. After all, when you add new countries and new ports of call to the itinerary there is the added expense of the logistics associated with this from the coordination required for clearance of the ship, to the costs and research to pull together the shore excursion program to the issues of securing docking space and all of the other first time coordination that is required. There is also some added risk in general not knowing for sure how the guests will perceive the itinerary and how the overall experience will turn out. At the same time a few of the ports of call had some controversy associated with them so rather than take some risk it would have been far easier for Crystal to have gone with the status quo.
We applaud Crystal Cruises for being bold and for providing an opportunity for those taking one or more legs of this cruise to be able to see these sites themselves and for pulling together not only a wonderful itinerary but other related items such as an outstanding list of shore excursion and land programs for all of us to choose from in order to maximize our time in each of these ports of call. On top of this, Crystal brought in not one, not two but several extraordinary guest lecturers who could tie together their lectures with the ports of call that we will visited. Adding to all of this is that the lecturers were complemented one another as one lecturer might talk about the destination, while another lecturer spoke about its history while still another lecturer spoke about its politics. This is all part of enrichment and providing the guest with the opportunity to learn more and to discover other areas of the world.
After all, while we might not agree with the politics or the practices of certain countries around the world we know more and can come to better conclusions when we are much more informed. We truly believe we are better off to see things first hand through our own eyes. To us it’s no different than watching the news. In the “old” days, we would watch the news on television and the folks in the newsroom would just report the news. As they say, “just the facts.” We could then do additional research and/or take the facts and draw our own conclusions. Today, rather than reporting the news there are some news programs that either report one side of the news or they just give a few pieces of information and then try to analyze it all for us and provide their own opinion rather than just letting us get the facts and come to our own conclusions.
Seeing these places through our own eyes has given us a chance to collect the facts and to come to our own conclusions. We do realize as we have said from time to time that we cannot draw 100% firm conclusions about any place in the world from one visit as we realize that seeing a place from a tourist perspective is not the same as living there on a permanent basis. Nevertheless, we have been able to find some patterns and draw a few conclusions as we have seen many of the places around the Middle East.
We have observed the following.
-Clearly for the time being oil is king and whether we agree or not agree the reality is that many of us are indeed fueling the economies of some Middle East countries given our high demand and strong dependence on oil. While oil will not last forever, it has made the economies of several of the countries that we visited extremely strong and has allowed some countries to build cities in years versus decades or even centuries that occurred in other parts of the world. There is no question that for the time being that some of these countries are experiencing tremendous growth and prosperity.
-Our visit also reinforced our belief that the problems are not always with the people of a particular country but rather with their governments. In time, if we can get beyond this and provide opportunities for more interaction between people from different areas of the world we can find more common ground.
-We feel that we now understand the challenge that Israel has with several of its neighbors. We used to feel that most of the hatred towards Israel stemmed from religion. While religion is a factor as we have reflected on what we have seen we think that today’s differences are less about religion but more about culture. For example, Israel is all about the 21st Century and is very Western. One could argue that they are more advanced than even some of the Western Nations as they provide high levels of education and healthcare to all their people and have developed an economic strength in several areas including the technology arena. In general the women have the same rights as the men. The women do not have to cover their faces and they are equal in most ways including the fact that they must serve in the military, as do the men except those who are part of the faith who do not believe in the military. In some of the countries we visited the issue of equality between men and women is clearly not the case. Some of these countries are trying to conduct their day to day lives similar to the way that they were conducted hundreds of year ago or more. In some of these countries the women are not treated as equals in a variety of ways whether it’s the requirement to not drive a vehicle, or to cover their faces and/or their heads/hair in public. In many instances the women are not provided much in the way of education and in some of these cultures men can have several wives. Putting this all together we started to come to the conclusion that some of these countries see Israel as a Western Country and are concerned that the practices of Israel could spread to their own countries and for these leaders they are concerned what impact this will have on their ability to rule their respective nations.
-Whether we agree or disagree with the practices of some of the countries we visited we have come to the conclusion is irrelevant in many ways. What is relevant is that this is the way these countries are and that they are indeed quite different from the practices of our own country. Just as we see them as being different they see us as being different as well. This also means that we each see things from different perspectives and that we can’t expect them to change overnight and they can’t expect us to change overnight either.
All in all the itineraries that we visited on these two legs of the world cruise exceeded all of our expectations and we applaud Crystal Cruises for having the courage and the vision and for devoting the necessary resources to allow us to visit these very extraordinary places. This World Cruise was appropriately names the “Exploration of Ancient Empires” and these two legs of the World Cruise included many ancient empires, as will some of the places we will visit shortly.
During the fifth leg of the World Cruise we sailed from Dubai of the UAE to Athens, Greece. We sailed 4,431 nautical miles or the equivalent of 5,096 land miles.
During this sixth leg of the world cruise we will sail from Athens, Greece, to Rome, Italy. We will stop at several ports of call that we have never visited before. This includes Odessa, Yalta and Sochi which will be our first time visiting these ports. We will also visit Istanbul, Kusadasi, Catania, Naples and Civitavecchia, which we have visited before.
This morning Keith woke up extra early and worked out at the Fitness Center. He got to the center at 4:30 AM and of course at that hour was the first person there. He worked out on the Elliptical Machine for his longest stretch of the World Cruise. The last couple of weeks one of the television stations that has been broadcast is VOA (Voice of America) and he has been able to catch a variety of programs including nightly news from PBS and other programs from C-SPAN which has been nice for him to watch. As usual, he stopped by the Lido Café for some coffee after his workout. Keith spoke with a few of the Lido Deck Stewards including Clark. Anne Marie worked out at the Fitness Center as well and like me brought some coffee back to the room.
Approximately 250 passengers left the ship today. Some were up quite early and some started leaving the ship at 2:00 AM as they had very early flights to catch.
We both enjoyed a wonderful breakfast in our room and then we got ready to go back into Athens.
We met friends Bob and Glo and then we walked from the pier to an area that we saw on our return yesterday.
We walked for about two and one half hours. The weather was beautiful. Our walk included stops at a couple of bakeries, a meat and fish market, a fruit and vegetable market and we walked by many other shops and cafes and passed by several churches. The weather was perfect and it was just fun to stroll around the town.
When we got back to the ship we enjoyed another nice lunch in the Lido Café. We ate outside and enjoyed the beautiful scenery that was all around us.
This afternoon Anne Marie took care of some errands and Keith did some writing and also spoke with some fellow passengers.
Before dinner there was a mandatory muster drill for all passengers including those who have been on one or more previous cruises.
We will have dinner in the Main Dining Room and will post about that tomorrow.
TODAY’S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY
“The highest form of ignorance s to reject something you know nothing about.”
Keith ad Anne Marie
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