12 hours ahead (Day 5 at sea)

We started this journey in Barcelona, where the time difference between Portland and Barcelona was 9 hours - not super awesome, but we managed to get ourselves somewhat acclimated, although I fully attribute the car sleepytime in Egypt (which was usually 10am-noon) fully to jetleg.

After we left Safaga on our way to Jordan, we needed to go one hour forward to catch up timewise - not the funnest thing ever when you have to get up early and do something, but it was fine - at the same time, the US went off daylight savings, so the time difference magically went from 9 to 11 hours.  Made figuring out what time it was simpler, that's for sure!  Last night, we picked up our final hour to align with Dubai time, which is 12 hours ahead of PST.....makes the time change SUPER simple, but DANG, I am not looking forward to trying to get back to "normal" time.   The changes we usually deal with are 3-9 hours, and those are usually managable.  We've also dealt with the 18-20 hours ahead, which wasn't too bad either.  But 12 hours?  This is going to suck going home I think.   We are due to arrive in Portland about noon on Tuesday, but our bodyclocks will think its midnight and we will have been traveling for 24 hours.  So this should be very interesting........

As for what is happening today - pretty much the same as yesterday, except today I took the ipad out to the pool to get caught up on things.  Also made an interesting discovery...if you are wearing polarized sunglasses, you can't see the ipad screen.  There's a fun fact for you!

Here's our current location, taken when I left the room a few hours back.

Sun and sea...and more sun (or Day 4 at Sea)

I could totally get used to this lifestyle I think - get up, get dressed and stop by the cafe to get some breakfast (that I don't have to cook!) and then head out to the pool deck, where there are clean towels, padded deck chairs and many wandering bartenders to bring me drinks.  And a pool to cool off in.  And a nice breeze to keep it from getting too hot.  And while I'm relaxing by the pool, someone has cleaned our room and made the bed.  This is our fantasy world for the next few days, then back to reality.....

Today was pretty low key, just sat by the pool and enjoyed the weather, attempted to stay cool and ignore the party band, who range from ok to terrible, depending on the song.   They just sang "Killing me softly" (ok) followed by a Pitbull song (terrible.)  and now we're into reggae....also in the terrible category.  They only play for an hour, and then it switches to something else, like a guitar player, so at least they aren't playing all day.  The ipod can come in handy......!

We had dinner in the Tuscan Grille, which is the ship's steakhouse, italian style.  We tried this place on our last trip and weren't terribly impressed with either the food or service, but since 2 specialty restaurants were included in our suite package, we decided to try it again.  Glad we did, as it was much better than last time.

I could spend the whole time just eating the appetizer platter which includes fresh proscuto, olives, parmesan cheese (the good kind!) mini tomatoes, mozarella balls and melon.  Let alone the bread basket....always my downfall.

We ordered a braised ravioli and caprese salad to start, then a small portion of the spaghetti and Chris had the caprese.  The salads were good, but both pasta dishes were beyond excellent.  Then onto the main dishes - a ribeye for Chris, and the filet for me.  Both were very good, but the filet was slightly more cooked than I prefer, although only in parts.  Dessert was a chocolate fondue (awesome!) and a gelato assortment (mango, raspberry and hazelnut) which was also good.

I think next time (unless I felt like a steak) I'd stick with the pasta dishes and the proscuitto platter....and the bread of course!

Have to love these signs, they are posted all over the ship after dark.  

A bit more time at our favorite bar, then off to bed, for tomorrow is another day by the pool......!

Post election at Sea

Well, the Presidential election is over for another 4 years.  One of the few things I try not to have lengthy discussions about are politics (the other thing is religion) because the are so many viewpoints and everyone wants to argue them to death, but this was the first time I have been outside of the US for an election, and it was really interesting how many people, both from the ship and the countries we visited, were completely interested in what was going on, and really wanted to ask questions, so I thought it was important to mention.

A few of the most popular...

-Who are you/did you vote for? (I declined to answer, although I did say I had voted)

-Will you be back in time for the election? (nope, I voted prior to leaving)

-You can vote in advance, even if you aren't there? (yes, it's called an absentee ballot)

The people on the ship (mostly Brits, Australians and Scots) were curious about the election, who we thought would win, asked questions about the electoral college, that kind of thing.

When we were in Egypt and Jordan, the questions were more about who we thought would win and questions about the process itself, with the biggest surprise being on the ability to prevote AND the confidence it would count even though we were not there.  

So, when we woke up this morning and flipped on the tv, every single news channel (cnbc,fox news,CNN, bbc,sky news) that we got on the ship were all focused on the election results that were coming in, and showing the same highlights (with completely different commentators of course!) and I was completely amazed. These are international news channels, and all they could talk about for the next 12 hours was the US presidential elections!

All of this made me realize how really lucky we are to have such confidence in our voting, and the ability to make a choice.  I'm not saying its a perfect system, but you know your vote is counted and you helped make the decision.  We may not like the choices we are presented with, but we can at least make them.

Day 3 at Sea

Not much to discuss today, ate, had some drinks, hung out by the pool and generally had a nice time.  The weather was quite good (it pretty much has been the whole trip) and we are trying to take advantage! Here's a photo of our current location 

Pretty enjoyable trip, weatherwise, it's been in the low-mid 80's and sunny.  We've picked up more of a breeze since we've turned northeast, so that has been pretty refreshing.  My next post will be some post election commentary about being out of the US for the election, it's been an interesting experience.

Day 2 at Sea, Part 2

So, where were we....ah, yes, Pirate Precautions and the pool! I successfully made it to my spa appointment (good thing, as my schedule was just PACKED....) and it was a very nice hour.  I've had a hot stone massage before, and this lady did a much better job.  The hot stones are nice because they store the heat (duh, hot stones!) and can be more comfortable than a regular massage.  Then I went back to the room and ordered some lunch - have to love room service when it shows up in about 15 minutes, delivered cheerily by your butler, who sets it up (with a tablecloth no less!) on your in room dining table.  I had some chicken noodle soup (awesome) and some pizza (not awesome) and an assortment of asian appetizers (egg roll and potsticker) which were pretty good.  Then it was time to get ready for dinner - after a long day of doing very little!!!

I did manage to take a few photos of our room, and here they are.  I'll try for some ship ones tomorrow, if I can fit it into my busy schedule.....

These are some pictures of our sitting and dining area

Balcony - with tub and lounger!

Bedroom

Master bath

We had chosen to have dinner at 6pm at one of the specialty restaurants known as Silk Harvest - they serve an assortment of asian(ish) dishes, but I wasn't sure if they were going to be favorite or not.  I shouldn't have worried, they were excellent.  Here's the menu -

Funniest part of the evening- we decided to have a glass of wine, and ended up with an Erath Pinot Blanc.  Why yes, I am 9000 miles from home and have a wine that was produced right around the corner......LOL. We started off with some appetizers, chicken egg rolls, some chicken lettuce wraps and my personal fave, cream cheese filled wontons.  I actually ate about 6 of them. We also sampled the "vegetarian" sushi roll (it had cucumber and carrot it it) and I can't say that I will be eating many sushi rolls in the future, as I didn't care for it.....

For the main dishes, everything is served family style, and we had some beef chow mein, pepper beef stir fry, orange chicken and chicken fried rice.  All were very excellent, although we didn't end up eating more than half of any dish.  I tried the cheesecake for dessert, but only could eat about half.  We then stumbled out about 745 and made our way back downstairs to the Martini bar to hang out with some of our friends.  We were going to go in at 930pm and grab some coffee and dessert (maybe!) with our waiter Joey, who had taken a few minutes around 630 to swing up to Silk Harvest to make sure we were being taken care of appropriately.   I thought that was very nice, so we returned the favor.  Then back out to the Martini bar and the Grand Foyer for the 60's Groovy party (somewhat lame, but good peoplewatching!) and then up to bed!  What a day, and another sea day tomorrow.

Day 2 at Sea

This morning, I was attempting to upload all the blog posts I've been working on and figured out that once I get past about 10 pictures in a post, it starts crashing the program and running really slowly....so I am going to have to redo the Luxor posts in a couple of sections, so I'm sorry, you'll just have to be patient.

So you'll see those updated more in a bit.

We got up and headed for the Oceanview cafe to grab a bite to eat - waffles, sausage, yogurt and some OJ for me.  I then decided that since I had gotten QUITE a bit of sun yesterday that I'd take it a little easy today and wandered over to the spa to make an appointment for their special of the day, a hot stone back massage with pressure point foot, leg and scalp massage. They had an opening at 1pm, so I would head back there then.

I went out to the pool deck (see photos from yesterday, it looks exactly the same today) Clear, sunny and about 87 degrees and found a nice chair in the shade to spend some time updating my blog posts (where I discovered the photo issue....) and had quite a bit of excitement going on....there was a call over the PA for the "crew only" with a code and to report to deck 12, in front of the stage on the pool deck.  Which was about 30 feet from where I was sitting, so this could be interesting - about 5 minutes later, a bunch of staff members come rushing by with a gurney and a wheelchair.  So I got up to check it out - appears some poor man slipped and had hurt his foot/ankle (they were bandaging it with a splint) out by the pool deck.  Didn't see them take him out, so they must have exited the other way.  Hope he's ok!

About noon or so, Chris notices there are a LOT of people on the other side of the pool deck looking out the windows down at the water, so he goes over to check it out.  About 10 minutes later, the ship's horn sounds.  When Chris came back, he said there were 2 small boats out there with nondescript looking white guys on them, 1 tied up, the other running parallel to us and they appeared to be unloading large cases onto our ship - he said they blew the horn once both ships had pulled away from us.  About 15 minutes later, the Captain came on and said that they were "unloading supplies for our military personal already on board"  Ahhhhh.  Pirate Precautions for sure.  Here's a current location....

Let's hope we don't need the "supplies".........

Day 1 at Sea

I don't have much to write about today, as we basically layed around by the pool and ordered drinks.  The weather was absolutely perfect - very level seas (so no movement on the ship) and then about 85 degrees.  I did manage to take a few photos to make everyone jealous...

The pool deck

looking out from the pool deck to the Red Sea - calm and clear!

Tonight was also formal night, so Chris and I got all dressed up and went to dinner.  We also saw our cabin butler, Jonathan, down there, so we all got a picture together.

I know, all so fancy!!!

We skipped the show this evening, as we had seen it last time we were on board and it wasn't that awesome then.  A couple of hours doing some people watching (always a good time!) and having some drinks, and then we were off to bed.