Tuesday, March 30, 2010
We wanted to begin by sharing a few more observations about our time in Alexandria, Egypt. While far less chaotic than Cairo it is clearly a bustling city and the roads are full of motor vehicles of all sorts and shapes and ages including buses, vans, taxis, cars and truck but this is compounded by many people walking in the streets and not many traffic lights. We sat in the front of the bus and it is truly amazing that we did not run over any people or hit another vehicle. The buildings in the city vary from beautiful and modern buildings to others that are very much run down. Because of its location off the sea greater maintenance is required for the facades of buildings but in some cases the facades are in disrepair.
The library was amazing and is clearly a model for other libraries to emulate around the world. It is very futuristic not only in its design but in terms of the approach that the library is taking to move books over to the internet but to do this with very high quality results. They showed us a demonstration of how this works and we were quite impressed. The library is also large in scale and has a very large support group comprised of 2,000 people who work in a variety of roles at the library.
In addition to housing an unprecedented number of books it also has several areas of historical items that one would normally find in a museum. There was also a nice section on their former President Sadat. Adjacent to the library is a Planetarium.
This is our third time to this city and there is so much to do and to see here.
As we mentioned, since we had a shore excursion that did not get back until the time we normally dine in the Main Dining Room we decided to go to Silk Road for dinner. We love the food at Silk Road (no surprise to those of you following our travels) and we enjoyed another delicious meal. While last evening was the start of Passover given that there were many all day tours including one that visited the Pyramids in Cairo, we will have the Passover Seder this evening.
It was fun to just enjoy a nice dinner at Silk Road with just the two of us. Alberto, our waiter superbly served us Along with our assistant waiter Sonny, and the Sommelier Oleg. We let Alberto order the entire meal for us because he knows what we enjoy. We also appreciate the assistance provided by Head Waiter Sigi and the Maître d’ Antonio and we spoke with each of them for a little while before our dinner was served.
When we arrived back to our room we set the clocks forward one hour, as we will be sailing into a new time zone.
We woke up early this morning for another nice start of the day. Keith arrived to the Fitness Center precisely at the moment that one of the other regulars arrived and enjoyed a great workout on the Elliptical Machine. Since he will not be working out tomorrow as we have a full day and evening of activities planned in Israel, he did a super long workout on the Elliptical Machine Afterwards, it was Anne Marie’s turn and she worked out for an hour on the Treadmill. Each of us stopped by the Lido Café on our return back to the room to get some coffee.
At 8:00 AM there was a knock on the door by Alexander who brought our morning breakfast of Oatmeal and Fresh Fruit. As we do on most sea days we watched the Crystal Cruises Daily Morning Show as we ate our breakfast.
During Captain Glenn’s morning talk from the bridge he mentioned that the weather for today and tomorrow was quite good and he also shared with us a great thought for the day that goes like this.
“Remember what is right isn’t always popular and what is popular isn’t always right.”
In the morning Keith had the opportunity to talk with Hugh Downs for a few minutes. During their conversation Keith conveyed to him his admiration for his career in broadcasting and the nice memories that Keith has about watching the Today Show and the game show Concentration when Keith was a young boy while Hugh Downs was on both of these shows.
There were three very good lectures today.
In the morning a lecture was given by destination lecturer Profess Jean Pierre Isbout who presented Jerusalem the Golden. After this presentation special interest lecturer Thomas Lippman presented Creating Israel” How the CIA Got It Wrong.”
We enjoyed lunch on the Lido Deck and each made a salad entrée. We find that this approach works very well for us and there is always a very nice selection of salad related items for us to enjoy. Since we are now in the Mediterranean there lunch featured the Sun Buffet which features flavors of the Mediterranean. The buffet includes regional specialties from Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Sicily, Greece, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Israel, Egypt, and Tunisia/Algeria/Morocco. As you can imagine there were so many delicious items to choose from.
In the afternoon, Hugh Downs presented “Old Then, Younger Now – A guide to successful ageing.”. Hugh Downs also conducted a question and answer session following his talk.
In between all of these activities we got ready for tomorrow’s journey to Israel, read, wrote, did some laundry and spoke with some fellow passengers and crew.
This evening we celebrated Passover on the ship. On our two other sailings that occurred over the Passover Holiday the Seder was conducted in the area around the indoor pool. This is because we had too many guests signed up for the Seder that exceeded the capacity of Prego. Since we have less total passengers on the ship this time around we were able to have the Seder in Prego, which really works out nicely since the kitchen facilities are right there.
The Rabbi did a wonderful job conducting the service as he always does. There were slightly more than 100 guests in attendance. Some non-Jewish guests attended who had never been to a Seder, which was a wonderful experience for everyone. This adds to the spirit of family and community throughout the ship.
Passover begins on the 15th of the Hebrew month of Nisan and is observed for seven days. There are some that observe this holiday for eight days. Passover is celebrated as a remembrance for the exodus of the Israelites from Egyptian slavery. It has been observed for thousands of years.
The timing of Passover took on even more significance for us given that our ship has left Egypt and is on its way to Israel it is very special to be celebrating the Passover Holiday in this area of the World.
The food on the table included all of the traditional food items that are part of the Seder. The meal was terrific as are all meals prepared by Crystal. Some of the items included chopped liver, nice vegetables, gefilte fish, hard boiled eggs, matzah, and a half a kosher chicken for each person. Why a half chicken you ask? This way each person gets both white and dark meet and can eat either white, dark or both based on their preference. We had macaroons for desert.
We read from the Haggadah, which tells the story of the Exodus and includes the story, prayers, songs and other rituals that are all part of the Passover Seder and Celebration.
We had a lovely evening.
We will be unable to post tomorrow as we have a full day and we do mean a full day. We will be up early to go through Israeli customs and then we will be on an all day tour and following the tour we will go to a special event for those passengers on the full World Cruise. We will not get back to the ship until after 10:00 PM.
Believe it or not we will both not workout in the morning.
Therefore, we will post more two days from now.
TODAY’S THOUGHT FOR THE DAY…..
“All we are saying is give peace a chance.”
Keith and Anne Marie
1 comment:
For the two of you NOT to work out this morning tells alot. As much as I enjoyed your descriptions of Egypt, I am so anxious to hear about Israel......especially during Passover. Can't wait to read your journal.
Shalom, shalom.
Patti
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