Read more about Penny & Harvey's Silverseas cruise as they travelled from Jeddah, to Egypt, then Jordan and towards the Suez Canal ...

 

Hi everyone. 

We had an interesting time in Jeddah - a very modern and cosmopolitan city in Saudi Arabia. As mentioned, Western tourists are rare here.  We didn't encounter any problems and felt welcome - at least by the souq (market) vendors in the old part of the city. The joke was that all the women on tour from the ship looked the same in our black abayas making it difficult for husbands to recognize their wives in a crowd!    Abayas are like school uniforms - a great "equalizer" (not to mention the fact that they hide lots of figure flaws)!

We then sailed and docked in Safaga, Egypt for two days.  We drove by motor coach into Luxor, Egypt and stayed overnight right on the Nile. The drive from the port of Safaga to Luxor and back is approximately 3 hours each way.  Due to security all the tour buses now travel together at designated tourism bus convoy times. We had a security officer on the motor coach and passed through various armed security check-points along the way. This is the normal way of travel here and didn't alarm us as it is to our benefit.  The first day we visited the Karnak and Luxor Temples located in Luxor.  The next day we crossed the Nile to the West Bank and visited the Valley of the Kings area which includes funeral tombs of all the pharaohs including King Tut and Ramses the Great, among other Kings from the New Kingdom. After a long day visiting ancient ruins one of the highlights for me was to watch the sunset at a outdoor café on the banks of the Nile River, watching the sails boats quietly glide by. 

After Egypt we visited Jordan and the ancient Petra site.  We drove through the desert which enabled us to see the sights along the way.  I thought desert was just sand dunes - not so.  In Jordan it consists of granite or limestone mountains - the barren looking desert has a stark beauty and the sun changes the colors of the mountains..  We sometimes glimpsed a group Bedouins along the way along with their goats, camels and sheep…never a dull moment!  Petra was most amazing and truly one of the highlights of the cruise.  We walked about 3 km roundtrip though the twists and turns of narrow gorges, marveling at the rock formations and listening to our expert tour guide tell us about the ancient civilization that once inhabited this area. Petra is an absolute must-see site for visitors to Jordan.  

A sister ship - the Silver Shadow has been on her 110 day world cruise since January and just happened to match our itinerary in Safaga, Aqaba, Sharm El Sheik and Athens.  We were fortunate to be able to visit the ship, and have lunch with some clients that I booked on the world cruise as the ship was docked right next to the Silver Cloud. Our ship was docked at the port of Aqaba at the southernmost tip of Jordan, where we could see the lights of Eliat, Israel in the not too far distance.

We left Sharm at 2 PM and entered the Gulf of Suez.  All of a sudden the seas became quite rough (prior to this the seas were very calm). Our Captain came on the P.A. system to announce that in this area, the southern entry to the Gulf of Suez (check your maps!) is narrower that the rest of the gulf so the wind comes down from the north and picks up velocity. We were bucking a 35 knot headwind, hence the rough ride.  Our ship was due to arrive in the anchorage area at the southern end of the canal about 1:30 AM.  At 6 AM we would join the convoy of ships heading north through the Suez Canal.  The canal passage would take most of a day prior to exiting the canal at Port Said and heading into the Mediterranean Sea.

Bye for now,

Harvey & Penny