Türkiye is the only country in the world that is located on two continents:  Europe and Asia.  It is separated by the Bosporus and the Dardanelles Straits.  The city of Istanbul is also located on two continents.  On the map below, you can see that there are two red dots indicating Istanbul—one on each side of the Bosporus Strait.

What a treat to be in Türkiye!  There’s green grass and blue water instead of tan rocks and sand, and the temperatures are only in the upper 80s.  Türkiye is a large country, and we’ve only seen the landscape from the airport to Istanbul (about an hour’s drive), but what we’ve seen is very pretty.  Here are pictures of Istanbul by day and by night, looking from one side of the Bosporus Strait to the other, from Asia to Europe.

Istanbul is apparently a very busy port for both commerce and pleasure.  At one point, as we looked through the Bosporus Strait, Ted and I counted at least 30 vessels in the water within our sight.  It was hard to be accurate, because they were all in motion.

Our first tour stop the next day was the Sultan Ahmed Mosque, also known as the Blue Mosque.  It’s one of the most majestic Ottoman mosques and is called the Blue Mosque because of the blue tiles that decorate the interior walls.  It also has blue domes.

Here are pictures of one of the mosque doorways and the main courtyard with a minaret in the background.  The number of minarets signifies the importance of a mosque:  one minaret indicates that the building is a mosque; two minarets are decorative; four minarets indicate a large mosque.  The Blue Mosque has six minarets.

The pictures below show the beautiful interior tiled walls.

Shoes are not allowed in mosques, so whenever we visited a mosque, we were given paper booties to put over our shoes. Worshippers must wash their feet before entering the mosque.  The picture below shows a wudu, or ablution area, for that purpose.  The worshipper sits on the brown-topped stool, rests his/her feet on the table against the wall, and then washes them with water from the spigot above the table.  This is part of an Islam ceremony of purity and cleanliness before worship.  It is traditional for Muslim men and women to pray separately either in different parts of a room or in different rooms.

After our time in the Blue Mosque, we walked about three-quarters of a mile to the nearby Topkapi Palace Museum.  Along the way, we walked down the avenue of trees shown below.  Aren’t those trees unusual?  No one I asked (including Google) knew what species of tree they are. The best I got from Google was “photo at Topkapi”; everyone else just said, “I don’t know.”  Given the light bark, maybe they are some kind of poplar.

On our way to the palace, I turned around and took this picture of the Blue Mosque.

The Topkapi Palace was built in 1465 and originally served as the administrative center of the Ottoman Empire and as the primary residence of its sultans.  In 1923, a government decree transformed the palace into a museum. The palace has four main courtyards, hundreds of rooms and chambers, and many smaller buildings within its walls.  This entrance to the palace is the Gate of Salutation. It leads to the second courtyard. 

The museum is a popular place and was very crowded.  Ted and I only went through two rooms—the armory and the jewels—before we decided to leave the hot, crowded building and walk around the grounds a bit before joining some of our fellow cruise members in a shady courtyard.  Pictures of some of the displays are below.

Our last stop of the day was the Grand Market.  It was definitely grand!  There were four long wings like the one pictured below.  The bazaar featured leather goods and jewelry, although there were a few shops offering other items.

I didn’t personally touch any of the leather goods to determine their quality, but from the appearance of the jewelry displays (definitely not Tiffany!), I doubt if it was high-quality leather.  As in Aswan, if we paused to look at the merchandise, a vendor was instantly at our side, coaxing us to come into the store.

The evening entertainment onboard our ship, the Viking Sky, was Turkish folk dancing and whirling dervishes.  A dervish is an initiate of the Sufi Muslim religious order who has taken vows of poverty and austerity.  The whirling is part of a Muslim ceremony to glorify God and to seek spiritual perfection.

The dancers were very good, but they weren’t as much fun as the whirling dervish who performed onboard our Nile River cruise ship.  When he finished his performance, he folded his decorated skirt into a bundle the size of a newborn and handed it to a young woman who than carried it around the room so that each of us could look, touch, and/or hold it.  I did all three and it was heavy!!—maybe 15-20 pounds.  Enjoy the video below.  I don’t know why I stopped recording when I did, but I wish I’d continued a little longer.  It has music, so turn on the sound. 

When Ted and I scheduled our 2023 BT for August and September, we knew it would be hot in Egypt.  St. Louis gets hot in the summer with lots of humidity as well, so we figured we could handle the dry heat of Egypt.  Not true!

Our first taste of heat was in Israel, and it was only a little worse than July in St. Louis.  It was obvious, however, that the natives went indoors during the hottest part of the day.  We, on the other hand, had an eight-hour tour every day of our stay in Jerusalem.  On the bright side, it wasn’t crowded outdoors in the afternoons.  The best we could do to stay cool was to stand in the shade as much as possible.  Yes, Jerusalem was pretty hot, but then we went to Cairo and learned what real heat is like.

Cairo, Giza, and New Orleans are all at 30^o north latitude, but unlike Cairo and Giza, New Orleans has greenery and water to cool it, even though the water adds humidity to the air.  Luxor is at 25^o north latitude, and Aswan is at 24^o north latitude, similar to Miami and Phoenix.  I think we can all agree that, relatively speaking, Miami with its water and greenery is relatively more comfortable in the summer than Phoenix in the Sonoran Desert.

Now, back to Egypt.  The Sahara Desert begins on the western edge of Cairo, within the city limits and not too far west of the Nile River, and Giza is a western suburb (in American terms) of Cairo.  The portion of Giza we visited was all sand and rock—no greenery, lakes, or rivers—and the only shade was beside a small desert building such as a ticket office, a rest room, or a souvenir stand (or under an umbrella, like the dogs in the photo below). 

The desert sand and rock have been exposed to sunlight for thousands of years and have been holding on to that absorbed heat for just as long.  As a result, while the sun beats down from above, all that rock and sand radiate stored heat from below.  Talk about a heat island!  Here’s what shade in Egypt looks like in the Valley of the Kings and at the Step Pyramid (dogs).

Viking was wonderful about supplying us with cool water at all times.  The tour buses had cases of bottled water in the luggage compartment and a refrigerator in the bus interior.  We were free to take as many bottles as we wanted.  Ted and I averaged about one bottle per hour each.  Fact:  None of the 82 people on our Nile River cruise suffered from dehydration.  Frequent rest room stops weren’t necessary—all of us sweated so much, we didn’t need them often.  

Here are the temperature forecasts for Cairo and Aswan while we were there.  We were told that, in Aswan, the temperature can reach 130 degrees in summer, but will drop below 110 degrees in September.  Whoopee!  (We were in Aswan on August 27.)  The numbers below do not include a heat index, nor do I even want to know what it was.  People told us that the temperatures would cool off quickly in September and you can see the truth of that in the Cairo forecast.  I took that screenshot on August 30.  My advice:  plan your trip to Egypt between September and April.  It was a relief to arrive in Türkiye, where the temperatures were only in the upper 80s and where there was water and greenery for cooling. 

Ted’s and my bar for “How hot is it?” has been Komodo Island (latitude 8^o south), where we took an excursion to a wooded area surrounded by water to see the Komodo dragons, and drank five bottles of water in an hour!   We had to change our bar to Egypt.  If it’s not as hot as Egypt, it’s not that bad.

Ted’s and my Nile River cruise ended in Luxor.  From there, we flew to Cairo and spent a night in a hotel with our fellow river cruisers.  It was our last day with this group of people.  We and three other couples exchanged email addresses so that we can stay in touch.  The following day, Viking took us all from the Cairo hotel to the airport to travel to our next destinations—home for most of the group; to Istanbul for Ted and me where we’ll embark on a 30-day Mediterranean cruise from Istanbul to Barcelona.

I was nervous about our arrival in Istanbul because of the lack of English we’d experienced in Israel and in Egypt as well as the absence of a Viking guide to walk us through the local security processes.  Ted and I agreed that most people at the airports go from the plane to the baggage terminal to the exit, so we decided to follow the crowd.  Sure enough, there were very few signs printed in English, but we followed the crowd, as planned.  If we got off-track, there was always someone in a staff uniform who used international gesture language to tell us where to go—one hand up with the palm out for “stop,” then an extended arm with a pointed index finger for “go over there.” 

At the terminal exit, there was a booth with English language signs (at last!) indicating we could boost the local economy by paying them to reserve a hotel, arrange a city tour, rent a car, etc. for us.  There was another English-language sign that said, “Spend as much as you can.  Leave Türkiye green.”  We gave the booth attendant the name of our transport service and he directed us to our transfer company just outside the exit door.  The transport agent also spoke English.  We showed him our printed reservations, we got on the indicated bus, and we arrived at our hotel.  Well, that was easy!  We set our travel bar for “Can we do it?” at “We made it through the Istanbul airport, so we can handle anything.”

For unknown reasons, Viking would not transfer us from a river cruise to an ocean cruise, but our travel agent made reservations for us at the hotel where all the guests for the Viking Mediterranean cruise were staying. That made it easy for us to board our bus for the Viking transfer to the ship the following day.  We knew for sure that we were in Türkiye when we entered the hotel lobby and saw the hookah at the door.

There was no problem checking in at the hotel, but the staff was adamant about refusing us the Viking group dinner and breakfast.  It took at least three or four different hotel staff members and another two Viking staff members to convince the hotel staff of our Viking group membership meal privileges.  We didn’t get the group dinner, but the restaurant dinner we had on our own that evening was the best meal of our entire trip, so no worries.

After we checked out of our room the next morning and were waiting for our Viking bus to take us to the ship, we walked around the public areas in the hotel lobby to pass the time.  At one point, a nice lady in an upper-level hotel uniform came up to us and said she would like to introduce us to the hotel manager.  We wondered how we rated that, but thought, “Oh, well, . . .” 

Three men in suits approached us and the lady introduced us to the manager.  We shook hands and then one of the other men introduced himself as the head of the accounting department.  Still puzzled at the attention, we smiled and shook his hand too.  We all chatted for a bit and then the third man said, “I apologize.  You aren’t who we thought you were,” and all three men abruptly left.  Huh??? 

The woman downplayed the (near house arrest?) incident by asking if we’d had a pleasant stay, if we’d enjoyed the full breakfast, and if everything about our stay had been good.  Ted and I decided that, in some way, we must have resembled someone who didn’t pay for the hotel charges.  It was weird.

We left the hotel on our assigned bus, boarded our ship, and had lunch, followed by a relaxing afternoon onboard with some time spent unpacking our things for our 30-day stay.

On our fourth day in Cairo, we visited the Church of the Virgin Mary, aka, the “Hanging Church,” in Old Cairo.  This part of Cairo is also called Coptic Cairo because it was a stronghold of Christianity in Egypt before and during the Islamic era.  (Coptic is a generic term for Egyptian Christians.)  The church was probably built around 690-692.

The courtyard at the entrance to the church has decorations scattered on its surface.

This is the front entrance to the church.

The Hanging Church is not actually suspended.  The nave of the church is built on top of the gates of an old Roman fortress and there is an open passage between the gates and beneath the church.  You can’t see the open passage through the scratched plexiglass in the photo below, but it’s there.

The church is beautifully ornate inside.  Here is an icon of the Virgin Mary at the altar.

This is one of the stained-glass windows in the building.

Here are two of the church ceilings.

In the first century, women did not have equal stature to men, so they had to remain out of sight of the men.  (On a personal note, 20 centuries later, we’re still waiting for equal stature.)  “Windows,” like the brown box in the left photo below, allowed women to look into the church’s courtyard without being seen by the men. 

This picture shows the window box from the inside.  From my photo distance, you can see blue sky and a darker building beneath it, but if you go up to the window to look through the openings, it’s possible to identify things in the courtyard.

As we were driving back to our hotel, we passed this cemetery.  The box-like structures are burial units.  Families of the deceased add “rooms” to the units over time, much like the pharaohs did with their tombs and temples, but in a far more humble manner.  Some of these rooms are currently used by homeless people for shelter.  According to Hanan, homelessness is not a great problem in Egypt because there are laws requiring the wealthy to care for the poor, and because other laws prohibit demolishing any structure that is more than 100 years old.  Homeless people are allowed to live in vacant structures and, in Cairo, there are over 1,200 areas designated for “irregular dwellings” that do not need to meet building codes.  As a result, homeless people may build shacks or other structures in those areas without penalties.  There is, mathematically, more housing than is needed in Egypt, but not all of it includes a safe environment, safe drinking water, or wastewater treatment.  Even though these residents may not be homeless, they do not necessarily have a good quality of life.

Every city and country has monuments to its heroes.  This memorial honors the unknown soldiers who died to defend Egypt.

The tower on the right in this photo commemorates Egypt’s former president, Gamal Bidel Nasser.

We’ll be back in Cairo in nine days to fly to Istanbul but, first, we are going to fly to Luxor tomorrow to begin our eight-day cruise on the Nile River.  Here’s my favorite picture from the last four days.  I think it clearly says “Egypt.”

Ted and I saw some interesting vehicles on our BT.  Jerusalem has a desert climate, so rainfall is scarce.  As a result, Jerusalem is a very dusty city.  I think vehicle owners see no point in trying to keep their vehicles clean, so they clear the windshield and go.  I’ve never seen as many dirty vehicles as Ted and I saw in Jerusalem on our 2023 BT.  I mean every car and every truck! It’s probably like living alongside a gravel road.  You can wash your car, but as soon as you take it on the road, it’s dirty again.  Practicality wins.

While Israeli vehicle styles tended to look like those in most major cities, Cairo and Aswan had a great variety of transportation modes, varying from sedans and large modern buses to three-wheeled mini-cars to donkey-drawn carts to handcarts propelled by human feet.  They all shared the streets with no apparent rules of the road.

The street in front of our Cairo hotel had four lanes of traffic moving in each direction.  There were no painted traffic lane lines, no stop signs or stop lights, and no marked crosswalks.  One couple in our group wanted to cross the street to stand on the banks of the Nile River and said it was like taking your life in your hands to do that.  Hanan told us later that “it’s easier to take a cab and make a u-turn than it is to cross the street in Cairo.”

The traffic seemed to move smoothly, but with the constant sound of horns—some long, some short—as cars moved forward, smoothly gliding from one lane to another, as if it was a dance.  From our upper-story hotel window, it looked like a video game.  I suspect there was a “horn code” with different horn signals to tell adjacent drivers, “Don’t change lanes because I’m passing you” and “Ok, thanks for letting me know.” 

There was likely to be a horse- or donkey-drawn vehicle or a handcart in the traffic, but it was generally ignored, and the cars just beeped their horns (probably in code) and went around it.  We occasionally saw a vehicle driving against the traffic in an outer lane, but the other drivers went around it as easily as they did the handcarts.  Other times, we saw vehicles parked in the outermost traffic lanes (either side of the road) and drivers of cars simply weaved around those as well.  If you needed to make a left turn, the secret seemed to be to do it with confidence.  If you entered the intersection with confidence, oncoming drivers slowed or stopped to allow you to turn, then proceeded with their weaving and horn-honking.  I asked Hanan what kind of traffic laws were in effect, and she said that, basically, you just drive as you please, but speed limits are very strictly enforced. 

Mini-sized vehicles were everywhere in Egypt.  I saw several at a single intersection in Aswan.  Notice the absence of lane markings and stop lights at the corner.

In Esna, we saw this horse-drawn buggy. The cart on the right is donkey-drawn.  Heavy traffic didn’t bother them.  I wish I’d been able to photograph at least one of the manual pushcarts we saw.

This donkey-drawn wagon was rolling along in Aswan.

Little trucks were plentiful too.  This vehicle looks like the front half of a motorcycle with a two-wheeled wagon attached.

This little truck in Athens is also three-wheeled, but includes a cab.  We saw a lot of these carrying loads higher than the side rails.  As long as the load was balanced, there seemed to be no height limit.  Sometimes, there were people sitting on top of the loads, even if the load was higher than the truck bed.

This truck in Qena, with three men sitting on the top, is underloaded, compared to others we saw.  Maybe they just completed a delivery.

Mini vehicles transporting large numbers of people were also a common sight.  Is there a contest to see how many people fit on a motorcycle?  The motorcycle in the photo below has only four people on it.  (The mom is holding the baby.)  We saw no helmets and no visible fear of traffic danger.  During one of our pre-excursion onboard talks, the speaker told a joke about motorcycles in Egypt.

A policeman stops a motorcycle and asks the driver, “Do you know you have six people on this motorcycle?”  The astonished driver replies, “Six?!  What happened to Ahmed?!”

If a vehicle is too full, people simply hang outside of it, like these folks in Aswan. 

We saw so many station wagons like this one that I asked what they were.  I learned that this is an Egyptian national taxi service.  You can go to the taxi station and buy a ticket to travel to any city in Egypt in these cars.  There were a lot of these on the roads in the early mornings and late afternoons, so I think they might also be used as local taxis for people going to work and coming home afterward.

Thank goodness we always had a professional driver for our excursions, so that we didn’t have to figure out the roadway protocols in Egypt, or ride with five other people on a motorcycle.

Our Nile River cruise excursion today took us to the Aswan High Dam, one of the top 10 dams in the world.  As we went from place to place in Egypt, it was nice to see lots of beautifully colorful bougainvillea along the road on our routes.

The Aswan High Dam, which formed Lake Nassar, is an engineering feat that protects the fertile land along the Nile River from flooding.  At 300 miles long, Lake Nassar is the second-largest man-made lake in the world.  The photo below shows Lake Nassar behind the Aswan High Dam. We were standing on the dam, so it was impossible to take a picture of it.  The dam is made of granite, not concrete, so it’s technically a 365-foot-high pile of rocks.  Granite from this area was shipped downriver from Aswan to Cairo to build the Great Pyramids of Giza. 

The SUE (Soviet Union-Egypt) Friendship Monument (below) is near the dam.  It represents the friendship between Egypt and Russia and commemorates Russia’s assistance in constructing the Aswan High Dam.  Although the U.S. and some European countries contributed to the cost of the Aswan High Dam, Russia was by far the largest contributor.  The monument’s shape suggests the lotus flower which closes at night and goes beneath the water, then rises again to open the next day.

After visiting the dam, we went into downtown Aswan and stopped at a spice market.  It smelled wonderful! I was surprised that Aswan appeared to be a cleaner, more dynamic, and more prosperous city than Cairo, Egypt’s capital city.

The indoor store must have offered every spice imaginable.  The photo below shows about half of the store.

The main downtown market was the nicest and largest one we’ve seen so far (photo below).  It was similar to an outdoor shopping mall in the U.S., but with Egyptian products and determined vendors.  The market is two miles long, with shops on both sides of the walkway. The lattice top keeps the walkway (relatively) cool, making it pleasant to walk and browse.  Of course, the vendors had to do their thing, so if we even glanced into their shops—and it’s hard to avoid looking—they rushed out to the walkway to offer us their wares.  Unlike the foot vendors we’ve encountered, these shop vendors were less aggressive and did not follow us down the walkway—they needed to tend the goods in their shops.

After our time in the market, we sailed for an hour on the Nile River in a felucca—a wooden, single-sail boat like those in the photo below.  While we were sailing, a half dozen boys 8-10 years old swam out to our boat on paddleboards, put their arms over the sides of the felucca to anchor themselves, and sang to us.

The awning over the boat and the river breeze through the open sides provided us with a lovely ride. Even here, we couldn’t escape the vendors.  The table in the right center of the photo below has a cloth over it covering items that were later revealed for sale.

Our felucca passed the Old Cataract Hotel and Elephant Island, named for its rocks (below).  Aswan is at the first of six cataracts (waterfalls) on the Nile River. The rocks on Elephant Island reminded me of those in Elephant Rocks State Park in Missouri.

The Aswan dam was the southernmost point of our Nile River cruise so, after our felucca cruise, our ship turned back to the north, heading downstream toward Luxor.  On the way to our Edfu stop, we passed the Kom Ombo Temple of Sobek. Say “Kom Ombo” aloud.  Pronounce it the way it looks.  Isn’t it fun?  Doesn’t it sound African? 

We docked in Kom Ombo that night, but did not go on any organized excursions in the city, so I took a picture at the dock where there was—what else?—a market.

Whew!  For our BT, Ted and I woke up at 4:00 a.m. on Tuesday, and arrived in Tel Aviv just before noon, local time, on Wednesday.  We spent Thursday, Friday, and Saturday taking daily eight-hour tours in Jerusalem and Bethlehem in upper-90s heat.  Sunday was a travel day from Jerusalem to Cairo.  Monday and Tuesday included two more consecutive days of 8-hour tours in Cairo and Giza with temperatures in the low 100s.  On Wednesday, we were awake at 4:00 a.m. again to fly from Cairo to Luxor and, upon our midday arrival, headed out in the 108-degree heat for a four-hour tour in Luxor before boarding our ship to begin our Nile River cruise on Thursday.  Can you spell “exhausted”? 

Hanan told our group that “you aren’t here for vacation; you’re here to learn.”  I can’t speak for anyone else in the group, but Ted and I were there for a vacation, hoping to learn new things from our travels. 

Today featured a tour of a nearby temple, but after ten long days of travel and walking outdoors in the heat, Ted and I chose to take the day off.  Besides, we toured the second largest ancient temple in the world (Karnak) two days ago.  We had a wonderfully relaxing and quiet day onboard the ship with a half dozen other people who also chose to skip today’s temple tour.

Because we took the day off, I have no tour information to share, but here are a few notes about Egypt in general.

• The restrooms on our Egyptian tours have been—interesting.  Hanan tells us in advance which ones are awful and should be avoided and where a (relatively) nicer alternate is located.  Most of the restrooms don’t have toilet paper, so Hanan told us to always carry some with us.  An attendant sits outside the restroom door, offering a roll of toilet paper for users to take inside and to return when they leave.  You don’t get the roll until you pay the tip—about $1.00.  Instead of giving the attendant a tip, we were told to simply say “Viking” and to make a “V” with our fingers so the attendants would know we were with the Viking cruise group and would give us the roll of toilet paper tip-free.  Before leaving, our three guides paid the attendants a flat fee for the restroom use.  Even so, some of the attendants asked us for more money.  I guess it doesn’t hurt to try, does it?

• Many places in Egypt still farm and produce goods using the same methods they used 5,000 years ago.  That explains the hand-pushed carts we saw on the busy streets, along with the cars and the buses.

• A lot of buildings have rebar extending out of the rooftops.  Most buildings had rugs and/or laundry hanging on the railings, indicating that the buildings were inhabited, but I couldn’t figure out a reason for the rebar, so I finally asked Hanan if she knew its purpose.  Well, . . . not surprisingly, no one anywhere, including Egypt, likes to pay taxes and everyone everywhere uses any tax loopholes they can.  Egypt’s tax laws don’t tax buildings that are unfinished.  If rebar extends above the top of the building, the building is technically ready to add another story, thus qualifying the building as incomplete–even if it’s inhabited–and making it tax-free.  It’s not very attractive, but it’s cost-saving for the building owners!

• As we drove from place to place during our river cruise excursions, we saw banana trees and papyrus.  Papyrus likes to grow in the marshy soil along the banks of the Nile River. Yes, papyrus is still used to make specialty writing paper, especially for artists and calligraphers.

• Vendors were annoying in Egypt.  I understand that they are trying to make a living, but they’re so aggressive!  Their prices are very flexible, and bargaining downward is easy, but very time-consuming.  For example, Ted and I wanted to purchase a mini pyramid as a souvenir of Egypt.  The vendor immediately went into his spiel.  We politely listened, then offered what we thought it would be worth in the U.S. (about half the vendor’s price). The vendor pretty much ignored our offer and, instead, became chatty with us.  “How many women live in your house? How many children?” etc. Our answers were “one” and “zero” at this time. Then he went into his story about how many women and children he supports, and why he needed us to pay more for the pyramid.  (I think the message was that, even though he knew the product wasn’t worth the price, he wanted more money out of sympathy for his plight.) 

We liked the pyramid we’d selected and we wanted to purchase it, but it was nearly a 30-minute process before he came down and we went up to an agreeable price.  I’ve heard people say they love doing that kind of bargaining, but I’m not fond of shopping.  I like to know what I’m after, go where I know I’ll find it, pick it up, pay for it, and go home.  I don’t like bargaining, and I hate buying a car just because of that.  On the bright side, as my Aunt Ruth would say, if stuff like this didn’t happen, we wouldn’t have stories to tell, and I just told a little story.

• I like the picture below.  It provides a glimpse of what we saw in the small Egyptian cities.  Naturally, there are buildings with exposed rebar on the roofs.

Today started very early for some of the people on our Nile River cruise.  I’m not sure how far away the hot air balloon ride was, but the bus leaving for the balloon site departed from our dock at 3:30 a.m.  The balloon ride excursion was weather-dependent, and the go-no-go decision wouldn’t be made until the departure time.  Luckily, the weather was good, so our friends didn’t get up early for nothing. Ted and I have already experienced (1) a hot air balloon ride; (2) the Great Forest Park Balloon Race; and (3) the Albuquerque Balloon Festival, so we slept in until 6:30.  When we got up, we saw hot air balloons across the Nile from us.  Maybe some of our group members were in them.  We couldn’t ride in them like the early birds did, but we could enjoy how beautiful and peaceful they looked.

Today was another major highlight of our visit to Egypt.  We visited the Valley of the Kings and the Valley of the Queens near Luxor.  On our way, we passed the excavation sites pictured below, as well as many others.  As Hanan said, “There is something under everything in Egypt.”  As a result, excavations usually yield results.  In fact, the Egyptian government is moving people out of the Valley of the Kings to allow for more excavation.  The picture below shows part of the excavation of the Lost Golden City at Aten. 

I don’t know what’s being re-discovered in this photo, but that’s pretty much what the landscape looked like all the way along our route in the Sahara Desert.

When we were at the Step Pyramid and I learned that we were going to go into the tomb, my first thought was “Great!  It will be cooler down there.”  That was so-o-o-o not true!  I was hoping for cave-like temperatures of 55 degrees (I would have settled for 85 degrees), but that was not to be.  The reasons:  (1) There’s a lot of heat in the air; (2) there is probably at least as much heat in the sand and the rocks that hold the desert heat; (3) the tombs have little air circulation inside; and (4) the tombs have been storing heat over the centuries just like the sand and the rocks.  The result:  It’s even hotter underground.  Amazingly, it was a relief to come out of the tombs into the 110-degree heat!

The kings chose this area for their tombs because it was hidden and would therefore prevent robbers from finding the treasures in the tombs.  By this time, the pharaohs had given up on labor-intensive pyramids.  In addition, pyramids were essentially a beacon to grave-robbers, clearly announcing “Come in, come in.  There’s a lot of good stuff in here for you to steal!”  There are more than 60 pyramid-less tombs carved into the rocky hills in the Valley of the Kings.  Our first stop was King Tutankhamun’s tomb (photo below).  The pyramid-shaped pile of sand and rock over the entrance was added after the excavation of the tomb.

Typically, kings added to their tombs over the years of their reigns.  King Tut died when he was 19, having ruled for only nine years, so his tomb is small.  The photo below shows King Tut’s sarcophagus.  The tomb was discovered in 1922 and, after scientifically examining the mummy, the mummy was replaced in 1926 and is still inside the sarcophagus.

Three coffins were discovered inside King Tut’s sarcophagus.  The outer two were made of wood, covered in gold and semiprecious stones.  The third (inner) coffin held the king’s mummified body and was made of solid gold.  The image of a pharaoh is that of a god, and the gods were thought to have skin of gold, bones of silver, and hair of lapis lazuli, so the death mask of Tut that we are familiar with shows him in his divine form in the afterlife.  It is regarded as one of the masterpieces of Egyptian art.  (It was one of the things we could not take pictures of in the Egyptian Museum in Cairo.) Below are pictures of some of the hieroglyphs inside King Tut’s tomb.  King Tut’s tomb is less splendid than many of the other tombs.  Its main claim to fame is that it is the only tomb archeologists found intact, with a literal treasure trove of artifacts inside, as well as the undisturbed mummy.

The next tomb we visited was that of Ramses II.  He lived to be around 90 years old and reigned as pharaoh for 66 years, so it’s not surprising that his is one of the largest tombs (26 rooms) in the Valley of the Kings.  All of those rooms were cut into the subterranean rock!

Ramses II was one of the greatest pharaohs of Egypt and ruled during Egypt’s Golden Age.  He is known for his military and cultural accomplishments, his good leadership, and the monuments and temples he built, including the Karnak Temple.  On a personal note, he had over 200 wives and over 100 children.  It makes you wonder when he had time to do any of those other things he is remembered for.

In the photo below, you can see a hallway in Ramses II’s tomb.  The tomb is so large, there are other hallways branching off from this one.

Here are close-ups of some of the beautifully detailed hieroglyphics in Ramses II’s tomb.

We left the Valley of the Kings and moved on to the Valley of the Queens, where over 90 tombs have been discovered so far.  The queens had to be buried separately from the kings, so the Valley of the Queens is on the opposite side of the mountain from the Valley of the Kings.  It was originally intended to serve as the burial grounds for the royal queens of ancient Egypt, but princes, princesses, and other high-ranking nobility are also buried in the Valley of the Queens.  Question:  Does anyone besides me think it’s odd that the men liked women enough to have 200+ wives and to father 100+ children, but could not tolerate women enough to be buried beside them after they were dead?

The most beautiful and best-preserved of all the tombs in the Valley of the Queens is that of Nefertari, the first of the Great Royal Wives of Ramses II.  Nefertari always wanted to be a man and wore men’s clothing; as a queen, she wore a king’s crown.  There were other queens in Egypt, but Nefertari was the only female pharaoh, and she very successfully ruled Egypt for 20 years.

Nefertari’s tomb has been described as the “Sistine Chapel of Ancient Egypt.”  All the hieroglyphs we’ve seen in the tombs we’ve visited are in their original state.  The dry climate of Egypt and the fact that the tombs are underground provide ideal conditions for preserving artifacts like these.  Some of my photos of Nefertari’s tomb are below.  It is, beyond a doubt, an extremely beautiful place to visit—more like an art museum than a tomb.

After spending most of the day admiring hieroglyphs underground, we came up for (hot) air and visited the Colossi of Memnon, two massive stone statues of Pharaoh Amenhotep III that have stood in front of the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III to guard it since 1350 BCE.  The temple was originally the largest and most opulent in Ancient Egypt (larger than Karnak), but very little of it is left today, except for the Colossi.  Now, I guess they guard the temple ruins.

Our last stop of the day was at the house of British archeologist and Egyptologist, Howard Carter, the man who led the team that discovered the tomb of King Tut.  The house was not remarkable, so I didn’t take any pictures of it.  The best thing about the Carter House was that it was surprisingly cool inside (relatively speaking), with spacious rooms and a lovely breeze—yes, a real breeze! —on the front porch.

And that concluded our time in the Valleys of the Kings and the Queens.  I mentioned in an earlier post that much of the stone for the Great Pyramids was quarried near Luxor and shipped to Giza.  Obviously, the desert is filled with sandstone and granite, but this area also has a great deal of alabaster, and alabaster factories are plentiful.  One of them is shown in my picture below. 

You need a lot of extra time to deal with security checks at the airports in Israel and Egypt, so today, Ted and I had to wake up at 4:00 a.m. (yawn) for our private charter flight from Cairo to Luxor.  I’ve never been on a charter or a private flight before, and our flights from Jerusalem to Cairo and from Cairo to Luxor qualified for both.  We’ll have another private chartered flight from Luxor back to Cairo at the end of our Nile River cruise.

A private chartered flight sounds awesome but, in reality, it was a well-used ordinary passenger plane from a commercial charter company—there were no lounge chairs, no gold fixtures in the bathrooms, no fully-reclining seats, nor any other luxury amenities.  The private part of the flight was that it was a small jet and, including Viking personnel and 80 cruisers-to-be, we filled the plane.  The good part was that, even though the flight took less than two hours, we were served a full, hot meal for lunch.  It seemed like a treat at the time, but I suspect the meal was included as a time-saver because, when we arrived, we put our luggage on one bus and rode in a different one.  Our luggage went to the ship for our Nile River cruise; we passengers embarked on a four-hour tour of the Karnak Temple—one of the Egyptian sites our guide, Hanan, helped to excavate. 

As we drove from the airport to the temple, we crossed the Avenue of the Sphinxes which was buried under sand for centuries.  This avenue includes 1,050 sphinxes in the 2.25 miles it traverses between the Karnak Temple and the Luxor Temple.  Sphinxes originated in Egypt and had three distinct types:  The Androsphinx had a lion’s body with a person’s head; the Criosphinx had a lion’s body with a ram’s head; and the Hieracosphinx had a lion’s body with a falcon’s or a hawk’s head.  Here’s a photo of one part of the Avenue of the Sphinxes.

Luxor has been the spiritual capital of Egypt for 15 centuries.  The visitor’s center outside the temple complex had a model of the Karnak Temple (photo below).  This temple is the second-largest in the world (the largest is in Cambodia) and was embellished for 1,500 years by 30 pharaohs.  The entire complex includes 26 temples and could fit the equivalent of ten cathedrals within its walls.  It also had a huge sacred lake (the blue rectangle in the photo below).  Most of its construction is not unique, but its size and the number of its features are vast.

The building in the photo below was near an entrance to the temple.  The columns are described as “megaliths.”  Well-named.

The part of the temple shown below is referred to as the ancient avenue.  If you look at the photo of the model (above), this view looks through the left wing of the temple.

The obelisks shown below are called tekhenu and are usually placed at the entrance to a temple.  The Karnak Temple originally had approximately 20 obelisks; these two are the largest to survive.

The columns in the photo below were in the Great Hypostyle Hall.  They are decorated with religious scenes showing the pharaohs in the company of Egypt’s gods.  There is a progression of scenes on every wall, column, and gateway in this hall.  The hall has 134 massive columns arranged in 16 rows.  Most of them are 33 feet high, but 12 of them are 69 feet high and 10 feet in diameter.  They once supported a towering ceiling.

These criosphinxes (ram-headed) signify the god Amun, lord of Karnak.

This small room was a place for high-ranking personnel (priests and pharaohs) to pray and/or to meditate.  The shaft of light probably has some religious meaning.  There is also a sun god’s shrine in the Karnak Temple complex.  It was built to focus sunlight on the shrine at the winter solstice, but we were there in August, so we didn’t see that.

The statues in this hall are “Ramses II as Osiris.”  Ramses II was one of the pharaohs who enlarged the Temple of Karnak.  He commissioned this hall in which he is portrayed (repeatedly, in case the gods didn’t get the message) as Osiris’ mummy.  Osiris, the god of the dead, was one of the most worshipped and respected gods in the Egyptian religion, and was the first mummy in history; therefore, every mummified body afterward followed in the steps of Osiris.  One of the prevailing tenets of the Egyptian religion was the desire to enter the realm of Osiris after death, and these statues illustrate Ramses II’s desire to do that. 

Ted and I quickly learned that, in the Sahara Desert, the sun has been warming the sand and rocks for millennia, and the sand and rocks have been efficiently storing that heat.  In Egypt, while the sun beats down at 110 degrees, the heat also reflects upward.  The natives we saw didn’t seem to be suffering (i.e., sweating or tiring) as much as we were, so acclimatization probably makes a big difference in tolerance for the heat.

Having been a member of the excavation team at the Karnak temple, Hanan is justifiably proud of what has been discovered at this site.  After we’d walked around the temple for the scheduled four hours in the 108-degree afternoon heat, Hanan offered additional supplemental information to anyone who was interested and would like to follow her.  She also suggested that some of us might prefer to wait on the bus.  I hope her feelings weren’t hurt when all of us headed for the bus.  In our defense, we’d all been up since 4:00 a.m. for our flight to Luxor. The bus took us to our air-conditioned river ship where we unpacked our things for our eight-day cruise, showered, and enjoyed a delicious onboard dinner with our friends.

Our third day in Egypt took us to Giza, directly across the Nile River from Cairo, where we saw pyramids and sphinxes.  Pyramids were built as temples to the gods to glorify life after death, most famously as monuments to house the tombs of the pharaohs.  There are 118 pyramids in Egypt.  In Egyptian culture, a sphinx represents the solar deity and symbolizes royalty and sacred status.  There are thousands of sphinxes in Egypt.  Their purpose is to guard the tombs and to ward off tomb raiders.  Given the number of tombs available for tours, that didn’t work out too well.

It was date season, and we saw lots of ripe dates hanging from the date palm trees all along the route to Giza.  Dates are a popular and important source of food in this part of the world because they dry and store well and, best of all, they’re said to be delicious.  (I don’t like dates.  Just give me some raisins, please.)  Egypt produces more dates than any other country in the world.

The first pyramid we saw today was the Pyramid of Djoser (silent “D”).  When it became visible from our bus windows, there was an audible, excited intake of breath from the group.  A pyramid! This is what we came to Egypt to see!  The Djoser Pyramid is usually referred to as the Step Pyramid, for obvious reasons.  (See the photo below.) 

The Step Pyramid was designed by the first named architect, Imhotep, around the 27^th century BCE.  Imhotep used stone in place of mud brick, wood, and reeds.  It was the first pyramid and the first stone building in history.  The burial chamber is at the end of a central shaft about 130 feet below the surface of the ground.  The pyramid was part of a complex described as a “vast city of the dead” with a mile-long wall that was originally 34 feet high.  Imhotep was later worshipped as a god for his remarkable craftsmanship in this complex, and today, this pyramid is the oldest important stone building in Egypt.  The photo below shows where we entered the tomb of the Step Pyramid.  There are wooden crossbars on the ramp to keep people from slipping on the steep ramp as they enter and exit the tomb.

After we reached the bottom of the ramp and some stairs, we walked through this tunnel/hallway, . . .

. . . to the central part of the tomb.

These are some of the hieroglyphics we saw inside the tomb.

The Collonade Entrance to the Djoser Complex was originally lined with 20 pair of columns.  This was the first appearance of stone columns in architecture—also designed by Imhotep.

Ted and I thought Jerusalem was hot, but that was before we came to Egypt.  Don’t tell me about dry heat!  When the temperature is above 100 degrees and the sun is reflecting off the rocks and the sand, I think dry heat might be worse than heat with high humidity.

We had a chance to cool off in our air-conditioned bus as we left the Step Pyramid and drove to a rug-weaving factory.  The factory hires children to do the weaving because these silk rugs have 400 stitches per square inch, and the children have small fingers that fit more easily between the vertical threads. (No one mentioned child labor laws and I wasn’t going to ask with all the security and rifles around.) 

These are some of the beautiful rugs these children weave.  Naturally, they were available for purchase.

After a delicious lunch, we headed for the highlights of the day:  the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.  The Great Pyramids of Giza are the last surviving Wonder of the Ancient World.  The first sight of them is breathtaking.  Pyramids, as I previously mentioned, are tombs.  These three pyramid/tombs were built for three generations of Egyptian kings:  Khufu, his son Khafre (the statue in the Egyptian Museum with the falcon on his head), and his grandson Menkaure.  Some smaller pyramids at Giza were constructed for these kings’ wives and mothers.

The Great Pyramids of Giza are unbelievably huge and took 27 years to build.  The largest was 481 feet tall (about 45 stories) but has lost 31 feet from its top and now stands at 450 feet tall.  You can see the flat top where the capstone is missing. 

There is consensus that the Great Pyramids were built by paid laborers, not by slaves.  Building them required 5.5 million tons of limestone, 8,000 tons of granite, and 500,000 tons of mortar.  The granite likely came from Aswan, 530 miles upstream on the Nile.  If you’re wondering how many stone blocks are in the largest pyramid, the answer is 2.3 million.  (I’m not the one who counted them.)  For scale, zoom the photo below to see people climbing on the pyramid below the large hole on its side and standing at its opening.

Here’s a close-up of one of the Great Pyramids.  The surface used to be covered with limestone to make it smooth, like it is near the top.

Near the Great Pyramids, it was possible to buy a ticket to ride a camel.  Several members of our group did that.

Until I saw it, I didn’t realize that the Great Sphinx was within walking distance of the Great Pyramids.  How handy for sightseers! 

The Great Sphinx was carved from a single piece of limestone.  It was built by Egyptian farmers who needed to be fed during the spring months of the annual Nile flooding, hundreds of years before the Israelites (slaves) came to Egypt.

Giza and Cairo are across the Nile River from each other, so we could see Cairo from Giza.

Hanan told us the vendors at the Great Pyramids are extremely aggressive.  She advised us to just say “no” and to keep walking.  Ted and I can testify to the vendors’ aggressiveness.  As we were walking away from the Pyramids to get a better picture of them, a man invited us to join him and his camel, Moses.  We said “no,” but then he offered to take our picture with the pyramids.  We kept saying “no” as we turned and began walking away from him.  At one point, he grabbed Ted’s arm and tried to position it so he could take a photo that would look like Ted’s hand was resting on the top of the Great Pyramid.  Things started getting very weird, so we just gave up on taking our picture and walked faster toward where Hanan was waiting.  (The vendors get in trouble if they get within a certain distance of a venue.)  We turned around at one point and saw the vendor bothering someone else.

Our tour group of 22 people flew together from Tel Aviv to Cairo today for our first of four days in that area.  At our hotel, we were joined by 58 more people who were taking the eight-day Nile River cruise with us.

The flight was smooth and on time, but not without problems.  One of the two airports managed to tear the main handle off my suitcase and lost my luggage ID tags as well.  Yes, they stripped the bolt out of the wooden frame of my lifetime-guaranteed suitcase.  I’m not worried about the repair; I can have that done at no cost at a shop that’s about 15 minutes from our house.  The annoying part of this is that we have eight flights on the BT and this was only the third one, so I’m stuck with a suitcase with a missing handle for five more flights.  At least the telescoping handle for rolling the suitcase still works, so once I pick up the suitcase, I can still haul it around.  This isn’t the kind of adventure I was anticipating on the BT, but stuff happens and travel goes on.

We were taken directly from the airport to our hotel in Cairo, and I took this photo of the Nile River and the city from our hotel room.  I couldn’t believe it!  I was in the exotic country of Egypt right across the street from the iconic Nile River—the longest river in the world. 

The furniture in the hotel room clearly said “Egypt.”  Notice that there’s a handy ashtray on the table.  I don’t think any of the 32 countries Ted and I have visited has smoking laws as strict as those in the U.S.  It’s so odd to be in public rooms with smokers and to have ashtrays wherever someone might wish to sit down to smoke.

Note:  The hotel staff was so attentive that, when I sneezed at dinner, a server brought a box of tissues to me in less time than it took me to get one out of my purse!  When we asked staff members for directions to particular places (rest room, dining room, elevator), they not only gave us directions, but also escorted us so they could open the door and/or press the elevator button for us.

After a good night’s sleep and some breakfast, we headed for our tour meeting place and were introduced to our Egyptian guide, Hanan.  Hanan is a dual citizen of Egypt and the U.S.  Her archeology degrees specialize in Egyptology, and she has participated in a variety of archeological excavations in Egypt, including some that we will visit.  Her passion for archeology and the depth of her knowledge of Egypt are astounding.

While our group was getting acquainted with Hanan, the other 66 travelers in our enlarged group were divided into two groups and were being introduced to their guides.  Thereafter, we became groups A (us), B, and C for the remainder of our time in Egypt.  It was nice because the groups were small enough to make good friends during the time we spent together in Egypt, plus the additional four days in Israel for group A.  Then we were introduced to our bus driver, whose name was Muhammed Ali, and to our security guard, also named Muhammed–the most common name in Egypt.  I wonder what the odds are that you can walk up to an Egyptian man, say, “Hi there, Muhammed,” and be right.  Again, as in Israel, we were told not to drink the water or to use it to brush our teeth.  Egyptians can drink it because they do so from birth and their bodies have adjusted to it. 

After the group assignments and the introductions, we started our sightseeing in Cairo at the Museum of Egyptian Antiquities (aka the Egyptian Museum).  The photo below shows a replica of the Rosetta Stone.  Like many archeological artifacts from Egypt, the original Rosetta Stone is owned by another country.  In this case (and many others), it is in the British Museum.  The Rosetta Stone was the key to understanding Egyptian hieroglyphics.

Below, you can see the sarcophagus of Akhenaten, an ancient pharaoh of Egypt who reigned in the mid-1300s BCE.  He was the husband of Nefertiti and the father of King Tut.

The statues of Rahotep and Nofret (below) are idealized to represent them as eternally youthful.  This is typical of most Egyptian sculptures.  Rahotep was a high official in the government in the mid-2500s BCE and Nofret is described as “known to the king.”  They had six children, so I’m guessing she was probably well-known to the king.

The statue shown below is King Khafre.  He is thought to have commissioned the Great Pyramids of Giza, one of the Seven Wonders of the Ancient World.

The interesting part of this statue is that, when you look at it from behind, you discover that what looks like his headpiece is actually the falcon god Horus, protecting the back of the king’s head.  Horus cannot be seen from the front, indicating that Khafre is not only protected by the gods, but is a god himself.  Talk about having an ego!

The little chair in the glass case in the photo below is King Tutankhamen’s chair.  He became king when he was only 9 years old, and he died at the age of 19.  The most memorable action of his reign was to reverse all the religious changes made by his predecessor and father, Akhenaten (the sarcophagus above).  He is usually referred to as King Tut, and his fame is largely due to the fact that his is the only royal tomb found intact in modern times.  An entire room in this museum is dedicated to artifacts of King Tut (mostly done in gold), but guests are not allowed to take photos in that room.

The Citadel of Salah el Din was built in 1176 A.D. and is still used by the Egyptian military today.  It was the seat of government and the residence of Egypt’s rulers for 700 years.  It dominates the Cairo skyline, and includes the Mosque of Muhammad Ali, known for its gleaming alabaster interiors.

Here’s a picture of the central courtyard of the mosque. 

In the main worship space of the mosque, there are 365 single-globe lights arranged in rings—one for each day of the year.

Because the Citadel is set at the highest point of the city, its upper wall provides a broad view of Cairo.

Don’t you get tired of airport security?  Tired of metal detectors in public buildings?  Tired of sending your personal items through a scanner before entering a venue?  Ted’s and my 2023 BT showed us real security! 

We flew from St. Louis to Newark, then to Tel Aviv.  The serious (more than normal USA) security began at the Newark airport.  We had already gone through security at STL and had not left the EWR airport concourse, but that wasn’t good enough to go to Israel.  Gate areas usually have chairs and windows, and you sit there to wait for your flight to board.  You can get up and leave to walk around, use the restroom, buy a snack, or whatever.  That’s not so easy if you’re flying to Israel, and it was our first taste of the security we’d be facing in Israel, Palestine, and Egypt on our 2023 BT.

The Tel Aviv gate area was enclosed by movable room partitions.  You could look at the tarmac from the concourse windows, but not at the concourse itself.  There were two narrow openings in the partitions.  We had to enter at the one marked “Entrance” (duh!), show our passports and boarding passes, and go through a detailed screening.  We were only carrying backpacks that had been screened by TSA, but they were x-rayed again, wanded, and swabbed for explosives.  Then we had to walk through a metal detector and have a wand scan as well.  Our flight to Tel Aviv was delayed for about 30 minutes because it needed more cleaning than usual.  (A messy crowd before us?)  Before boarding, Ted and I wanted to use the restrooms, which required leaving the partitioned area through the second opening.  At the exit, a very serious-faced security guard verified that we had our passports and our boarding passes on our persons before allowing us leave the area.  When we returned, we had to show our passports and boarding passes again to be re-admitted, and we also had to have another metal detector and wand scan.

A Viking representative met us at the airport in Tel Aviv, walked us through the entry process, and then took us to the bus to go to our hotel in Jerusalem.  I’m not sure what the entry process was about because no one seemed to care about the little blue card we had to purchase and were told to carry at all times in the country.  Personally, I think it was a way to make money from each visitor—something a lot of popular destinations are doing now.

The next morning, we went on our first excursion in Jerusalem.  We were immediately told that none of us should ever sit in the two front seats of the bus.  The seat on the right was for a guide and the seat behind the driver was for the armed security guard.  This was the pattern for every excursion we took in Israel, Palestine, and Egypt.  At every checkpoint (they were everywhere), the security guard got off the bus, talked to the security guards who carried automatic rifles, and waited while the guards used dogs and mirrors to verify that the bus was not carrying explosives. Here’s a picture of one of our bus security guards.  You’re required to remove your shoes when you enter a mosque.  Frankly, I was surprised the guard removed his shoes.  (They’re behind the box-like thing on the left.)  What if he had to chase someone or rush to our defense?

The city of Jerusalem is divided into four Quarters:  Jewish, Christian, Armenian, and Muslim.  No one except Muslims is allowed to enter the Muslim Quarter, and that’s enforced by these guards.  Check out the guns. 

Even with their automatic rifles, the Egyptian security guards looked a little less frightening because they wore white uniforms due to the heat.  They looked more like U.S. Navy officers or medics than security guards–except for their rifles.  Still, there were so many checkpoints and so many big guns and so many times we had to show our passports that it was kind of scary. Ted and I literally wore out our RFID passport holders and had to tape them to keep our passports from falling out.  Were we really safe traveling in those places?  Is this how visitors to the U.S. feel about the gun violence in our country?

At the Luxor, Egypt airport, one guy’s suitcase didn’t make it through the rolling scanner.  The guards (with rifles, but thankfully not pointed at him) made him remove every single item from his suitcase right there on the rollers, not on the nearby table.  Then he had to re-pack it, picking his things up off the floor while the long line of people behind him (including us) waited for the scanner to re-start to move their luggage.  Nothing dangerous was found in the man’s suitcase.  Ted was held back for a deep look at his backpack (also in Luxor) and we were both a little nervous, wondering what problem might be found.  Nothing, thank goodness. 

At the Tel Aviv, Cairo, and Luxor airports, security personnel spoke very little English and English signage was nonexistent or limited, so we always had an English-speaking guide to escort us through the security check.  I was thankful for our guide at the Cairo airport as we were leaving for Istanbul.  My right knee is bone-on-bone, so if I’m going to be on my feet for a long time (e.g., airports), I wear an elastic knee sleeve to stabilize my knee joint.  The security woman (separate lines for men and women in those cultures) did not speak English, so our guide explained to me that the woman wanted me to remove my knee sleeve so that she could examine it.  Fortunately, my long pants leg was loose enough to pull it above my knee, allowing me to remove the sleeve without taking off my pants.  Without the guide/translator, I’m not sure how long it would have taken me to know what I was supposed to do because the security woman was very adamant and becoming quite loud when I didn’t understand what she was asking.  Thoughts of detention were running through my head.  Seriously. Sending my purse through a scanner in the U.S. doesn’t seem so bad any more.

Our visit to Israel included an excursion to Bethlehem, which is in Palestine.  Israeli passports are not accepted in Palestine and vice versa so Amir, who is Israeli, had to leave us on the Israeli side of the border.  Then our van drove forward a few blocks and picked up our Palestinian guide on that side of the border.  Amir told us that he has friends who live in Palestine, and they visit each other, even though it’s technically illegal.  He added that there is no way he can do that with a group of tourists because he would be risking, not only his own safety, but ours as well.

The highlight of our time in Bethlehem was seeing the location of what is believed to have been the birthplace of Jesus Christ.  The marker of the location is housed in the Church of the Nativity.  Below is a photo of the sanctuary of that church.  We were standing in line looking at this view.  The church is not air-conditioned; the outdoor temperature was in the upper 90s; the building was crowded; and there was little air circulation.  Lots of drinking water was required while we constantly wiped sweat off our faces.  We were in line for over two hours and were told how lucky we were to be there in August.  During the Christmas and Easter seasons, the line is 6-8 hours long.  Well, it would probably be a little cooler then, but imagine standing in line for six or more hours!

Israel and much of the Mediterranean world have been conquered by a variety of dynasties.  Over time, conquerors plundered the 24-carat gold in the church’s murals and painted the walls black.  Restoration has been in progress for 20 years, and it’s a slow process.  The photo below shows one of the murals that is being restored.

After an hour, we made it from the main sanctuary to a smaller room that was even hotter and even more crowded.  It took another hour to inch our way through that room and to finally see the area that led to the site of Jesus’ birth.  The icon shown below hung outside the door to the birthplace room (for lack of a better term).  It is the only icon in which Mary is shown smiling.  I think she deserves to smile; after all, she’s a new mother holding her baby!

The entrance to the birthplace room is very low, requiring visitors to bend over in humility to enter the sacred place.

During the two hours it took us to get this far, we were told more than once that we would only be allowed time to kneel and to touch the star marking the place where Jesus is believed to have been born.  That was not an exaggeration.  Each visitor had roughly five seconds in front of the 14-point star before being asked to move on.  Hours of waiting for a five-second peek!  This photo shows the setting of the birthplace marker with our friend Pom kneeling for his allotted five seconds.  The bearded man was our Palestinian guide. Part of his job was to keep the line moving. 

This is what Pom (and the rest of us) looked at.  The 14-point Star of Bethlehem represents the 14 generations between Adam and Abraham, 14 more from Abraham to David, and 14 more from David to Jesus.  It also represents the 14 Stations of the Cross.

The next day, we toured with Amir in Jerusalem again and transitioned from Jesus’ birth to his crucifixion.  Walking the Via Dolorosa (Sorrowful Way) is an important part of visiting Jerusalem.  We walked the entire length of the 14 Stations of the Cross.  It’s only about 2,000 feet, but it’s all uphill, and progress was very slow because of the crowds and the 14 stops.  Do I need to mention that it was hot?–around 100 degrees again.

Station I is the point at which it is believed Jesus was sentenced to death; Station XIV is the point thought to be where Jesus was crucified and placed in the sepulcher. (Note: The difference between a tomb and a sepulcher is that a tomb is usually underground or in the basement of a building, while a sepulcher is a cave or is carved out of rock.)

The picture below shows Station III, marking where Jesus fell for the first time (see the stone carving above the doorway).  Each station was marked in a similar manner.

This is the Ecce Homo arch where, for centuries, scholars believed Jesus was whipped, crowned with thorns, and covered with a purple robe, then mocked by Pilate with the words, “Hail, the King of the Jews.”  Archeologists, however, have found evidence that this arch did not exist until a century after Jesus’ trial and crucifixion; however, there is some evidence that a large plaza formerly existed beneath this area.

Station XIV, the last of the Stations of the Cross, is at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre and is named “Jesus is laid in the tomb.”  The church is beautiful.

There is also a large mural in the church, showing (right to left) Jesus being taken down from the cross, being anointed, and being placed in the tomb.  Note:  the arrow indicates Amir, our Israeli guide.

In addition to the time we spent visiting a variety of historical places in Jerusalem, we also had a lot of fun.  Because our group of 22 people spent 8-10 hours together every day doing the same things, we got to know each other very well.  Viking sponsored a group dinner at the hotel that was fun, and another evening, we went to a very nice restaurant with two other couples.  There was also time to walk around the area near the hotel and to sit outside and visit with group members and other people.  The Israel-Hamas war began seven days after Ted and I returned from our BT.  We and other members of our group with whom we are keeping in touch are concerned about Amir and others that we met in Israel, and we hope they are all safe.

Tomorrow, we’ll fly from Tel Aviv to Cairo.  I’m looking forward to cruising on the Nile River and to seeing the Great Pyramids and the Great Sphinx.  We’ll be in Egypt for 12 days, so there will be many new things to see and to experience.

Note:  As Ted and I walked around Jerusalem on our day-long tours, we noticed a lot of litter and no trash cans.  That makes two things in which the U.S. excels:  (1) we have very little litter in public areas; and (2) smoking has greatly decreased in the U.S., although it is still widespread in much of Europe.  Cheers for us on these two counts.

Five days in Israel were included in the BT as a pre-cruise excursion.  Two of those days included arrival and departure; each of the other three featured an eight-hour tour and some group activities, as well as time on our own.  Twenty people in addition to Ted and me signed up for this excursion, and the 22 of us had fun together during those five days. 

During our time in Jerusalem, our group of 22 all had the same tour at the same time with the same guide, Amir.  The first thing Amir told us was that it is unsafe for us to drink or to brush our teeth with the water in Israel.  We were instructed to consume bottled water only. 

Most of our touring time was spent outdoors, and Amir always stopped in places where we could stand or sit in the shade while he talked.  Can you say “hot”?  We can verify that there is a significant temperature difference between full sun and even partial shade, although both were uncomfortably hot in the mid- to upper 90-degree temperatures we experienced.  By mid-afternoon, it felt like everywhere we went was uphill and included long flights of stairs to climb.

In Israel, tour guides are required to have a master’s degree that includes studying the country’s culture, history, people, religions, societal norms, etc.  An additional certification is also required. Our guide’s name was Amir, and he was with us every day.  He was very personable, very knowledgeable, and an excellent storyteller—important skills for good tour guides.  I love history and learning, and I found his stories to be fascinating.  I knew at the time that I’d never be able to remember all the interesting things he told us, and I was right, but I’ll do my best to describe our time in these historic places.

Jerusalem is also known as the City of David.  All Western religions can be found in Jerusalem, and the city is important to each of them in some holy way.  For Jews, Christians, and Muslims, it is the place where God dwells, and all three sects have a major temple in Jerusalem.  The city is divided into four quarters:  Jewish, Christian, Muslim, and Armenian.  During our time in Jerusalem, we walked in all four quarters–in the heat, of course.  Amir shared the fact that Muslims have 5 commandments, Christians have 10, and Jews have 613 in the Torah.

Our first stop today was Mt. Scopus, which provided a panoramic view of the Ancient City of Jerusalem. The gold dome in the center of the picture is the Dome of the Rock.  It is set on the sacred Foundation Stone, upon which Jews believe the world was created.  The rock is not visible until visitors are close to it.  A cylindrical shaft of light beams on it through an opening in the upper roof.  Look to the left of the gold dome and slightly upward to see two gray domes beside each other.  (Zooming in on the photo helps.)  That is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, believed to be the place where Jesus Christ was crucified and buried.  It is the ending point of the Via Dolorosa (Sorrowful Way or Way of Suffering), the path of the 14 Stations of the Cross.

You can see that Jerusalem looks uniformly light in color.  That’s because the law requires all buildings in the city to be constructed of Jerusalem stone.  Fortunately, there’s a lot of that stone available.  The hot, dry climate (average annual rainfall of 20 inches) and the rocky land in this area are not conducive to agriculture as we know it.

In front of the Dome of the Rock, there is a row of trees.  Below that, you can see the wall that encloses the Ancient City of Jerusalem.  There are three “cities” of Jerusalem:  (1) the Ancient City enclosed by the wall in my photo; (2) the Old City, which begins on the foreground side of the wall in my photo; and (3) the New (modern) City, which lies beyond the Old City wall.  There are a number of archeological guesses regarding the age of the city of Jerusalem, but the truth is that no one really knows how old it is.  Archeological excavations have revealed that Jerusalem has been destroyed and rebuilt at least 17 times.

Keep moving your eyes downward from the Ancient Wall in the photo above to the black line crossing most of the photo from the right.  That’s a road.  All the light stone in the photo below that road is a cemetery that extends for a great distance.  According to our guide and to the best of my memory, there is a belief that, at the end of days, the savior will come first to Jerusalem (where God dwells), and that the first to be resurrected will be those buried closest to the heart of Jerusalem and above the ground.  That’s why so many tombs are above ground.  It is also important to be buried with your family so that you will be resurrected as a group and will be with your loved ones in the afterlife.  The photo below is a close-up of part of that cemetery.

Our second stop of the day was a visit to an ancient excavated reservoir.  Winter is the rainy season in Jerusalem and water needs to be collected for year-round use.  Water sources include underground springs, some lakes and rivers, and desalinated water from the Mediterranean and Red Seas.  I think this reservoir collected water from an underground spring. Can you imagine carefully excavating this a bit at a time to avoid damaging anything that might be in the ground?  I definitely don’t have the patience to play in the dirt as an archeologist!

The Church of St. Anne is near (nearly beside) the reservoir.  It doesn’t look like much from the outside.

The doors of the church are always open and Amir told us the acoustics are so amazing that people often go inside to sing just because they want to enjoy the acoustics.

One of our tour stops was the Western Wall on the border of the Jewish and Muslim quarters of the city.  It is the last remaining outer wall of the ancient temple, thought to have been started by King Herod the Great, and it is believed to be built on the Holy of Holies, the most sacred site of the Jewish faith.  It is also the site at which Muhammed is believed to have tied his winged steed on his Night Journey to Jerusalem before ascending to Paradise. 

Most of the Wall is reserved for men to pray; a small section is for the women.

A visit to the Shrine of the Book, the part of the Israel Museum that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls, was another tour stop.  The photo below shows the outside of the Shrine. Fountains cool the roof of the underground building to help preserve the documents inside. 

The pieces of the Dead Sea Scrolls that have been found are mounted on the white (lighted) part of the symbolic scroll sculpture in the center of the room.  The room is designed so that the Dead Sea Scrolls are elevated (see the stairs).  Walking around that center portion of the room, visitors can see many other historic documents.  Photos are prohibited inside the room, so I had to take this one from the doorway

A hospital seems like an odd place to take tourists, but the Ein Kerem Hadassah Hospital deserves a visit.  It is a university hospital and the sixth-largest hospital in Israel.  The Abell Synagogue on the hospital grounds is unique because it has twelve 11×8-foot windows designed by Marc Chagall.  Each window represents one of the twelve tribes of Israel, based on the 49^th Chapter of Genesis and the 33^rd chapter of Deuteronomy.  The brilliant colors in the windows are beautiful.

We had lunch at a city restaurant.  Here’s a picture of the neighborhood outside the restaurant.  It’s representative of much of the Ancient City.

The Old City of Jerusalem had seven gates in its wall, each named for the destination city outside the gate.  There are still seven main gates, along with two minor gates that have been opened by archeologists. We visited the Citadel at the Jaffa Gate, pictured below.  Leaving the Old City of Jerusalem on the road through this gate took travelers to the city of Jaffa.

The citadel is the highest point in the city, so it was a logical place to build a fort for protection. The walls of the fort have javelin slots, like the one in the picture below, to defend the city.  Amir told us that, during the 1967 Six-Day War, these slots were used again to direct rifle fire at the city.  Amir lived in Jerusalem during that time and described hearing gunfire from both directions.

Archeologists are excavating inside the fort walls.  The photo below shows some of the excavation, which is still ongoing.  The tall tower in the center is the Tower of David.

The Jerusalem Museum is within the fort.  I have pictures from inside the museum, but many of the displays were digital slide shows and videos that do not lend themselves to meaningful photographs.  The displays were awesome! This is one of the exhibits in the museum.  It’s called the cloverleaf map of the world and shows Jerusalem as the center circle on the map.  The three “leaves” indicate Europe, Asia, and Africa.  In ancient times, they were thought to be the only continents in the world.  The man in the photo is our guide, Amir, and he is confidently standing on plexiglass above a 30-foot-deep void.

The photo below shows a screenshot of the slide show depicting the centuries of Jerusalem’s growth.  The pictures changed every few seconds for about 10-15 minutes per cycle, and showed the city’s entire history of battles, buildings, growth, destruction, invasions, etc., in a unique and fascinating way.

This photo shows a similar display of the development of the calendar.  I’m sure it’s obvious that still photos of these light displays do not do them justice, but in person, they were excellent—clear, comprehensive, and concise.  One of the posted signs included with the calendar display described a calendar as “a system that illustrates the abstract concept of time.”  Wow!  A calendar seems concrete, so I’ve never thought of it being based on an abstraction.

No city tour would be complete without an opportunity to buy local items and/or souvenirs.  Frankly, I could live without the free time for shopping, but it’s amazing how many people look forward to that part most of all.  Two ladies in our group bought several things every day.  Ted and I are sure that, after 18 days of traveling, they needed at least one extra suitcase for each of them to bring all their purchased items home. 

For me, the markets were an experience more than a retail thrill, and the experience was mostly related to aggressive marketing.  As you approach a venue, the vendors on foot are ready for you, holding items in their hands, walking right up to you, raising their items almost to your face, and shouting “Ten dollah, ten dollah!”  We were told to simply say “no thank you” and to keep walking forward.  On the way out of the venue, we’d pass the vendors again and the price would have changed to “Five dollah, five dollah!”  With a little bargaining, the vendors often settled for one or two dollars. 

Other markets were more—shall I say “formal”?—with actual booths and tables.  I liked them better.  The vendors were less aggressive unless you showed interest in one of their items.  In that case, it was difficult to politely excuse yourself.  Amir gave us a code to help us decide how much to pay for items.  He gives tours every day, and he sees these vendors every day, so he doesn’t want to offend them. According to the code, if we questioned a price and Amir replied, “It’s very good,” that meant it was much too high.  If he replied, “That’s an excellent price,” it meant the price was fair.  One thing all the markets had in common was bright colors.

After an interesting but hot eight hours outdoors, we were all ready to get back to our air-conditioned hotel, get off our feet for a while, and start thinking about dinner.  Today was a good start to Ted’s and my BT.

Ted and I named our August-September 2023 overseas trip the “Big Trip” because it was seven weeks long.  During that time, we visited eleven countries on three continents. Wow! Several years ago, we set a goal to reduce our travel luggage to a backpack and a 35-lb. suitcase (the carry-on weight limit).  Unbelievably, we reached that goal for our longest trip ever.  When we finished packing, we each had a 13-lb. backpack and a 33-lb. carry-on suitcase.  The photo below shows the total luggage we traveled with for seven weeks.

For some reason unknown to me, every time Ted and I fly overseas, our flight leaves in the very early morning to arrive before noon the next day, local time; then we can’t get into our hotel room until after 3:00 p.m.  I wish we could just leave a little later (say, after sunrise) and check into the hotel when we get there so that we could take a much-needed nap.

As usual on the day of departure, our alarm clock went off at 4:00 a.m. for our flight to Newark.  We had a four-hour layover in Newark before leaving for Tel Aviv, where we were scheduled to arrive at 9:55 a.m. local time (yes, before noon) the next day.  Because we were traveling in business class, we had access to the airline lounge—a much nicer place than the concourse to spend four hours.  There are comfortable chairs and couches, a restaurant, a buffet, an open bar, sleeping suites, quiet suites, bathrooms with showers, etc.  Everything in the lounge is free (covered by the ticket price, of course), the seating is comfortable, the room is attractive, and it’s peaceful.  

Security for our flight from Newark to Tel Aviv was very tight.  Thanks to the meticulous security precautions, our flight was uneventful.  Our Viking cruise ambassador met us at the Tel Aviv airport and escorted us to a bus with other Viking guests.  It was an hour-long drive to Jerusalem, where we all checked into the King David Hotel, then took a walk to stretch our legs while we (as usual) waited for our rooms to be ready.  

We were 6,500 miles from home and ready for new adventures.

This morning, we transferred from the cruise ship to our hotel. We checked in and checked our luggage because it would be five hours before we’d have access to our room. During those five hours, we walked eight miles carrying our twelve-pound backpacks in the heat (80+ degrees).

After a quick pass through Times Square for lunch (about two blocks from our hotel), we headed in the opposite direction to Central Park, where we spent most of the afternoon. We entered the park at Columbus Circle and walked past a playground on our way to the carousel. I thought I took a picture of the carousel, which is just to the left of this picture, but I guess I didn’t. The park has nice, wide walkways and also bike paths if you want to ride your bike instead of walking it like the couple in the center of the photo. I’m not sure we’d have found our way out of the park without our park map.

This is the Central Park Sheep Meadow where, yes, sheep used to graze. See those rocks sticking up out of the grass? Ted watches a lot of nature shows and told me that NYC used to be part of Pangea, with a mountain range as high as the Alps. Today, 450 million years later, the continents have shifted and the mountain range has been eroded by glaciers, etc. The mountain range now forms the bedrock on which Manhattan is built, and these rocks are the former mountain tops.

We also walked to the strawberry fields (forever), and the volleyball courts. I think we covered at least two-thirds of the park. Walking all those miles with our backpacks was making us hot and tired. so we walked back to the hotel where our room was finally available and we took a nap before going out to dinner: New York-style pizza and New York-style cheesecake.

Times Square was packed with people. It was pretty much “go with the flow or get out of the way.” Look at the photo to see how many people were waiting for a “walk” light at one of the four corners of this intersection.

The next morning, we had breakfast at the top of the hotel with a great view of the city. A 1916 NYC zoning law demanded that architects create setbacks on tall buildings so that skyscrapers could still be tall, but would appear to be less bulky. The Chrysler Building (center, in the photo below) is an example of this. It rises more than 1,000 feet, but thanks to its slender tower (which gets progressively more narrow as it rises), it doesn’t feel overwhelming. Also, a more narrow top contributed to a more stable building. New zoning laws allow for more modern architectural styles, but if you look closely at the buildings in the two photos below and in the city, you’ll see that many of them have setbacks.

After breakfast, we walked around our hotel area. The hotel is within two blocks of Times Square and the theater district and just a little bit farther from the Empire State Building. We bought some deli food at Whole Foods and ate lunch in Bryant Park with a great view of the Empire State Building.

When we finished lunch, it started to rain, so we went back to the hotel and waited out the brief shower. Then it was back to walking around outside. We only walked five miles today instead of eight and we didn’t need to carry our backpacks, which made it more enjoyable. We started in the theater district. This street is a pedestrian street and has food courts. Times Square and the theater district really give your eyes a workout.

We found a little sidewalk park with a Shake Shack and had dinner there–after we dried the rain-wet table and chairs with napkins.

As we headed back to our hotel, we saw the Empire State Building lighted in the night sky. That’s Bryant Park again in the foreground.

We walked through Times Square to get back to the hotel. Talk about light pollution! Not only are there countless lights, but they’re very bright and most of them include motion and constantly changing colors.

Here’s the icon of Times Square. At the top of the tower in the center, you can see “2022.” Above the numbers is a red ball. That’s the ball that drops on New Year’s Eve. The lights on the ball change color every few seconds, and so do all the pictures and colors on the tower.

There is definitely a unique energy in New York City and it’s an exciting place to be. Like the first time Ted and I were here (October 1971), we decided that, for us, New York City is the premier example of “It’s a great place to visit, but I wouldn’t want to live there.” It was fun, but we’re looking forward to going home tomorrow.

Author’s note: Our cruise ship is scheduled to leave New York City tomorrow for its return trip to Montreal. This will put it in Halifax, Gaspé, and Saguenay at the same time that Hurricane Fiona is expected to arrive in those cities. We assume the cruise will be cancelled and passengers will receive refunds. We were fortunate to have beautiful weather for our cruise.

It’s always a thrill for me to come back from an international trip and to hear the U.S. customs agent say, “Welcome home.” I hoped that, sometime, I could sail home through New York Harbor and pass the Statue of Liberty as a “welcome home” sign. Today, it happened. Bucket list check-off. It’s only mid-morning, but there’s already a long line of people visiting this New York City highlight.

Sailing through the harbor is a pretty approach to New York City. There are interesting buildings, . . .

. . . a variety of watercraft sailing everywhere in the harbor . . .

. . . and of course, the New York City skyline, featuring the Empire State Building and the Chrysler Building.

The cruise-included free tour of the city was a four-hour bus tour called “Manhattan Highlights.” The man who sat across from us on the bus had an interesting shirt, so I asked him if I could take a picture of it. He said “yes” and confessed that he doesn’t read music, so he doesn’t really get it. I do read music, and the shirt is right: those are difficult times.

The tour covered a lot of ground in Manhattan, including Greenwich Village, Wall Street, and Tribeca, as well as stops at Battery Park and the World Trade Center Memorial. Our tour guide was a native New York City resident and told us he has never driven a car. Why should he, he asked us, if he could take the subway anywhere he wants to go? Not to mention (although he mentioned it) that there are only 38 gas stations in all of Manhattan. Public transportation is obviously a hit. Our guide also clued us in to some city abbreviations: Tribeca is the tri-angle be-neath Ca-nal Street. Houston Street (pronounced HOW-ston) is a major east-west thoroughfare that separates NoHo (north of Houston) from SoHo (south of Houston). Broadway is the only straight north-south street that extends the entire 13-mile length of Manhattan Island. As we passed near the High Line Park, our guide mentioned that the High Line and the Staten Island Ferry are both still free.

As the bus drove through the city, I was amazed to see the number of bike lanes and the number of bikers using them. It was also surprising to me to see so many little parks between buildings. I always pictured Manhattan as closely-packed skyscrapers surrounding Central Park. Travel broadens the mind, right?

Like Boston, outdoor dining has continued in New York City since the COVID pandemic, and we saw a lot of little cafes like this one.

At one corner, we saw a pedicab. Our guide gave us a “tourist beware” warning that pedicab operators charge by the minute and that, since they do the pedaling, they control the number of minutes the ride will take.

We went past the original Macy’s store, which is 12 stories high with a footprint that covers an entire city block. We also passed the Woolworth Building (below), which has beautiful architectural decorations. The old joke is that the structure was built with nickels and dimes. Ha ha ha!

I love libraries and bookstores, and I wanted to applaud when I saw this sign on The New York City Public Library. A great way to make people want to read a book is to ban it. I would have loved to spend some time inside.

We saw an unusual space-saving parking lot. Our guide said this kind of lot actually gets the cars in and out very quickly.

Of course, the biggest Manhattan Highlight on this tour was the 9/11 Memorial at Ground Zero and we had a very long stop there so that we could take time to absorb everything. The new World Trade Center Building is 1776 feet tall (104 stories) to signify American independence. It’s a beautiful building.

Ladder and Engine Companies #10–the first company to respond to the attacks on the Twin Towers–are located kitty-corner from the 9/11 Memorial.

343 firemen died attempting to rescue people from the World Trade Center, so there are 343 trees in the memorial park. Each tree has a tag with the name of a fireman on it.

Only one tree survived the attack. It was moved and nurtured until the park was built, then replanted. It’s called the Survivor Tree. It is the first tree in the park to leaf out in the spring and the last tree in the park to lose its leaves in the fall.

One of the highlights of the park is the waterfall. The water flows into the center void as a metaphor of absence made visible. The void–like the absence–is never filled.

The names of the 9/11 casualties are engraved around the waterfall. Many names have flags, photos, flowers, and messages of love and remembrance.

The parkland around the memorial is beautiful and peaceful, making it conducive to reflection.

St. Paul’s Chapel is located directly across the street from the memorial. It is the only building in the devastated area that survived the blast with no damage.

At dinner tonight, we sat at a table with a man who worked six blocks away from the World Trade Center on 9/11. He said he didn’t realize the impact of the attack until he got home from work and saw the television footage.

Today’s bus tour was very interesting and the 9/11 Memorial is a very moving must-see. Tonight we’ll be packing our things to leave the ship and transfer to our Manhattan hotel in the morning.

It’s easy to walk Boston’s Freedom Trail: just follow the red brick line.

I walked the Freedom Trail with three friends when I was in college, but it was better walking with a guide who had stories to tell about everything along the way–for example, the Boston Massacre. The words “Boston Massacre” bring to mind a picture of British soldiers mercilessly slaughtering at least dozens of innocent American revolutionaries for no particular reason. Here’s the marker that indicates where the massacre took place.

Unlike my college friends and me, our guide had a copy of the leaflet printed after the massacre. The guide also knew the truth about the massacre, which my college friends and I did not. Basically, it was a beer brawl between some (mostly drunken) freedom fighters and some (also mostly drunken) British soldiers. Somebody pushed or shoved or said the wrong thing and guns went off. Five freedom fighters died. Tragic, but hardly a massacre.

Samuel Adams liked to incite political action, thrived on pandemonium and controversy, and didn’t mind making up an alternate truth for a more colorful effect. In addition, he especially liked to cast himself in the starring role of that action to advocate for his own political purposes and benefit. It was Samuel Adams who “suggested” that a leaflet about the “massacre” be printed, and he also “suggested” the text to be written on it. According to our guide, good old Sam maneuvered many other political actions in a similar way for his own benefit. Here’s a copy of the leaflet. No wonder people think it was an act of merciless aggression.

Our four-hour walk took us to many of the well-known historic sights in Boston. Here’s Paul Revere’s house; . . .

. . . this is the Old North Church; . . .

. . . and here’s Faneuil Hall. We walked through a cemetery near Faneuil Hall where lots of the famous Revolutionary era Americans are buried. (Check out the guy in the bright blue jacket. ♥)

This is the state capitol building. The dome was originally built of wood. Paul Revere plated it with copper, and later, it was covered in 24-karat gold. Boston has many buildings with gold domes and trim.

It was interesting to see so many Early American-style buildings in Boston and I enjoyed looking at the architecture along the Freedom Trail.

Just for fun, along the Freedom Trail, our guide pointed out two taverns with unique names. The first was called The 21st Amendment (repealed prohibition); the second was named Carrie Nation (a temperance advocate). When the guide asked the significance of the taverns’ names, everyone knew The 21st Amendment, but I was the only one who knew Carrie Nation. It wasn’t like Jeopardy!–there was no cash award–so on with the walk.

It was interesting to note how many Dunkin’ Donuts and Starbucks shops are in downtown Boston. They seemed to be on every corner and always near each other. On one street, we saw two Starbucks stores within 100 feet of each other! Is there a competition to see who can have the most restaurants?

Speaking of restaurants, like many cities, Boston offered outdoor dining during the COVID pandemic. It was so popular, that many of the restaurants have continued to offer it. Outdoor dining is one of my favorite things about Europe and I’m happy to see more of it at home. Note the Freedom Trail in the left photo below.

We left Boston in the late afternoon and cruised through the Cape Cod Canal. It’s a shortcut from Boston to New York City across the neck of Cape Cod. The homes and greenery were beautiful and there was a walking/biking trail along the shoreline, complete with walkers and bikers. Sometimes, people on the shore would call out a “hello” to us (everyone on the ship standing at their veranda railings) and we’d return their greetings. Maybe our passage through the canal seemed so idyllic because the air was quiet and still and the water was calm as the sun was setting.

In this photo, you can see the walking/biking trail.

We sailed under a railroad draw bridge. I made up that name–it doesn’t really draw apart; it rises. The tracks across the canal are raised for ships to pass and then lowered to the level of the railroad track that crosses the canal.

The houses and their settings are beautiful. The parking lot is at the end of the walking/biking trail.

This was my favorite house. I love all those windows. (If I could afford the house, I could afford to have someone else wash all the windows.)

The canal was a lovely end to a wonderful day. Tomorrow: a bucket list check-off.

Before leaving Halifax, customs agents came on board to verify all of our passports so that we could enter the U.S. again in Boston, our next port stop. On our way to Boston, I saw this pretty lighthouse on an island. I’m not sure where we are, but it’s safe to say it’s the Atlantic coast.

With the Viking cruise line, a city tour at each port of call is included with the cruise fare, so Ted and I usually take the tour. Today, it was an afternoon bus tour called “Panoramic Boston.” The weather was beautiful again, but my pictures are limited because we didn’t get off the bus very often. It’s hard to take pictures out of the bus windows or of things on the other side of the bus, but here goes.

Downtown Boston has a lovely street park called the Rose Kennedy Greenway Conservancy. Rose Kennedy is a big name in Boston. The Greenway is 1.5 miles long and runs down the center of the street. It is reminiscent of the Avenue des Champs d’Elysée in Paris. Within the Greenway, there are fountains, playgrounds, flower gardens, and a carousel. One of the flower gardens in the Greenway is a rose garden with 104 rose bushes–one for every year of Rose Kennedy’s life. I wish I could have taken more photos of the Greenway, but the only thing I captured was this piece of street art.

As we were riding through the city, I saw this restaurant and took a picture while the bus was stopped at a red light. Read the sign at the top, then check out the sign at street level. You have arrived at your destination. Cute, huh?

Trinity Episcopal Church, a National Historic Landmark, is the only church included on the American Institute of Architects list of the Ten Most Significant Buildings in the United States.* Like Montreal and Québec City, a significant percentage of Boston is built on land that was originally water. In addition, Boston is built on a swamp. To keep buildings from sinking, pilings are driven 30 feet into the ground below the water level where they stay wet and where bugs and air cannot rot them. Trinity Church is built on 4,500 such pilings. (Query: If cities keep taking dirt from the continents and putting it into the rivers and oceans, will the continents become low enough for the rivers and oceans to relocate inland, thus creating new, smaller continents?)

The church is built on a street corner. The Hancock Building, the tallest building in Boston, is across the street on the right side of the above picture. It reflects Trinity Church to create a metaphor of the old and the new in Boston. (You can see our tour bus in the lower left of the photo.)

Along our bus route, we had a quick stop at the start/finish line of the Boston Marathon where there are bronze sculptures of a hare and a tortoise to honor those who run in the marathon. The pillars, wall, and water feature behind the hare and the tortoise are a memorial to the casualties of the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing.

Today, we had an easy bus tour; tomorrow, we’re going to walk the Freedom Trail for four hours.

*The Ten Most Significant Buildings in the United States are: (1) Falling Waters (Allegheny Mtns., Frank Lloyd Wright); (2) the White House; (3) the Lincoln Memorial; (4) the U.S. Capitol; (5) the Guggenheim Museum (NYC, also Frank Lloyd Wright); (6) the Glass House (CT–also called the Johnson House by Philip Johnson); (7) Trinity Episcopal Church (Boston); (8) the Pentagon; (9) the Milwaukee Art Museum; and (10) the Smithsonian.

Yesterday, we had another sea day, cruising from Gaspé to Halifax. There was an unexpected five-hour delay in reaching Halifax because a passenger onboard had a medical emergency and needed to be taken to the nearest hospital along the way.

Today’s seven-hour shore excursion was a trip to Peggy’s Cove. I was unable to go, so Ted took pictures and told me the story. The tour bus passed a colorful Canadian village on the way to the cove.

Peggy’s Cove has the oldest lighthouse in North America. It is set on a scenic, but very rocky, shoreline.

Those rocks are dangerous, and this sign duly warns visitors of that fact. The message is pretty clear when it plainly states that “rescue here is unlikely” and encourages you to “leave here alive.” It reminded me of a danger sign we saw in Iceland.

While walking around on the rocks, Ted took a pretty picture of some Adirondack chairs and he saw a man playing a very low-toned horn of some kind.

Halifax was the nearest port to take the casualties of the 1912 Titanic disaster. The bodies of 250 Titanic passengers are buried here.

The Citadel is the highest point in Halifax, and is the site of Halifax Fort. The city of Halifax literally owes its existence to the Citadel, a large hill overlooking the easily defended harbor. Halifax Fort has defended the city since 1749, and continued to do so through World War I and World War II.

The tour bus continued to the Halifax Botanical Gardens. Sadly, the park was damaged in Spring 2022. Vandals climbed over the six-foot high fence surrounding the park and girdled 29 trees, which are now in danger of dying. Park workers have treated the trees, hoping to help them withstand the coming winter and to perhaps survive. Note that, in my absence on this tour, Ted took a picture of the statue of Diana. I can’t help loving that guy!

Today, we’re docked in the port of Gaspé (GAS-pay), Québec and we were up early for an all-day shore excursion to Bonaventure-et-du-Rocher-Percé (PER-see) National Park. (FYI, if your high school French is rusty, rocher-percé means “pierced rock.”)

There are four major cities along the St. Lawrence River: Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, and Québec City. Our cruise began in Montreal, downstream from Toronto and Ottawa, so after seeing Montreal and Québec City, our remaining ports are small towns. Each small-town port has a claim to fame. Saguenay has a fjord; Gaspé has a rock. Small towns do not, however, have large tour buses, so today’s sightseeing began on a school bus. Our group of retirees joked about singing “The Wheels on the Bus” and other high school memories we had of riding school buses, but we all agreed that, at our age, a school bus is a hard, cramped, and uncomfortable ride for 90 minutes each way. We were good sports, though, and we had a very nice boat tour of the national park. (The boat was more comfortable than the school bus.)

On our way to the National Park (it’s actually a provincial park), we passed tiny, rural Canadian villages like this one. It looks scenic and peaceful, , doesn’t it?

As we were driving to the national park, our tour guide pointed out this rock formation. I had trouble identifying the facial profile of the First Nation chief until I zoomed in on it.

Percé Rock is at the tip of the Gaspé peninsula. Here’s a picture of the Gaspé harbor where we boarded our tour boat to see the national park, which consists of Bonaventure Island and Percé Rock. Percé Rock is 1,400 feet long, 300 feet wide, and 390 feet high. It weighs 5 million tons and is one of the world’s largest natural arches located in water. It loses about 300 tons of rock annually, due to wind and water erosion, and will disappear in approximately 16,000 years, so hurry if you want to see it. The two rock formations on the right are what’s left of Percé Rock.

Only one of Percé Rock’s arches remains. There were at least two arches, and some historical accounts mention three. The second arch collapsed “boisterously” in 1845. At low tide, it’s possible to access Percé Rock on foot for about four hours each day. Caution is advised because the rock has a tendency to collapse, dropping large segments into the water. At high tide, it’s possible for a small boat (e.g., canoe, kayak) to pass through the arch.

As we circled Bonaventure Island, we saw seals at play.

The park is a migratory bird sanctuary, and there are approximately 250,000 wild birds in the park. We saw thousands of these white birds and one bald eagle on Bonaventure Island.

There are about fifty houses on Bonaventure Island within the park, but only ten are inhabited.

Returning to the harbor provided a pretty view of the village. I wonder what it’s like to drive up and down that road (center of photo) from the lower houses to the upper ones during the Canadian winter.

Before leaving Gaspé, we had lunch at a local restaurant. Ted had salmon and I had fettucini. The portions were huge, including the piece of chocolate cake we had for dessert. Then, just because we were here, we did the same thing as everyone else and had our picture taken with Percé Rock in the background.

We’ve had beautiful weather so far on this cruise–sunny with temperatures in the 70s every day. Today was described as a “scenic sailing” day to view the beautiful fall colors along the St. Lawrence River. When we woke up and looked out of our window, this is what we saw. Since the trees aren’t showing much fall color yet, at least we didn’t miss that highlight of the cruise.

There’s no shoreline in sight, . . .

. . . we can barely see the water beneath us, . . .

. . . and it’s chilly outside.

The heavy fog continued all day and into the evening, and the outdoor temperature remained cool. It was a good day to relax onboard with coffee (Ted) and hot chocolate (me). While we were reading in the “living room” of the ship, servers brought champagne for everyone. It’s the first time I’ve enjoyed a glass of champagne while I read a book. Ted went to a lecture titled “Canada: The 51st State.” We tend to think that Canada and the U.S. are very similar to each other, but the speaker talked about the ways in which the two countries are different. Ted said the lecture was interesting and funny. After all the work we’ve been doing at home, it was great to have a day without planned activities, and we topped it off with chateaubriand and cherry strudel for dinner. Mmm, mmm good!

fjord [fee’ ôrd] noun

A long (65 miles), narrow (1.2-2.5 miles), deep (690 feet) inlet of the sea (St. Lawrence River) between high cliffs (490-1,150 feet), typically formed by submergence of a glaciated valley.

That describes the Saguenay (SAG-en-ay) Fjord in Québec, Canada, one of the most southerly fjords in North America. Ted and I had so much fun on the jet boat tour of the Waimakariri Gorge in the Southern Alps of New Zealand, that we signed up for the three-hour jet boat tour of the Saguenay Fjord without giving it a second thought. The Canadian fjord boat was jet-propelled, but far less exciting than the New Zealand ride. I think that might have been in deference to the marine life in the Saguenay Fjord. Instead of 50 mph, the fjord boat went about 10-20 mph and the pilot didn’t do a single 360-degree spin. Still, it was a very pretty ride.

At the beginning of our fjord tour, we sailed around a high bluff, on which the pilot pointed out a rock climber. This is a popular place for rock climbers, and the pilot told us it usually takes about three days to make the climb. The arrow in the photo below indicates the climber, about halfway up. I guess he has another day-and-a-half to climb before he reaches the top. I took the first picture on the way into the fjord and the second on the way back to the dock. The climber made some progress (check his position relative to the notch in the rock) while we spent our time in the fjord.

Part of the boat tour took us through a relatively open area. The pilot explained that, in this area of Canada, gravity moved the ancient glaciers from west to east toward the Atlantic Ocean. The direction of the glacier’s movement determined the positions of the high and the low bluffs along the fjord, so the east side of the fjord is sloped and the west side is steep. It’s interesting that, although the Saguenay fjord flows into the St. Lawrence River, salt water from the St. Lawrence River flows beneath the fresh water of the fjord. Ninety-three percent of the water volume inside the fjord is salt water.

The pilot took us right up to the face of this bluff. The arrow points to a cave at the water line.

It was a pretty boat ride, weaving our way around the bluffs and, eventually, back to the dock at the end of the tour. The fjord is a sanctuary for perigrine falcons. Now we’ve toured a Canadian fjord and a Norwegian fjord. They are equally scenic, but Canada was warmer than Norway.

Author’s note: Saguenay has a population of about 150,000. Ninety-five percent of the population speaks only French.

Québec City is one of only two walled cities in North America; the other is Campeche, Mexico. Although Québec City used to be known for its large number of banks and insurance companies, today there are no banks at all within the walled city–only ATMs. Neither are there any grocery stores within the old city walls–only convenience stores. Québec is the only Canadian province that uses French as its official language. More English is spoken in Montreal than anywhere else in the province, but there are laws in place to protect the French language within the province. Fluency in French is a requirement for getting a job in Québec. Under Bill 96, which became effective September 1, 2022, government agencies will have to use French exclusively in their written and oral communications, with few exceptions, and businesses will have to ensure the “net predominance” of French on signs that include more than one language. Ted and I took a four-hour walking tour of the old walled city–Vieux-Québec–and, thankfully, our guide spoke English.

Québec City is very steep. Stairs are everywhere to take pedestrians from one street up–or down–to the next. The shortest stairway in the city is 7 steps; the longest is 368 steps. The funicular provides an alternative to climbing those 368 steps. We started our walking tour by taking the funicular to the top of the bluff. From there, our tour went downhill–literally, not figuratively.

The funicular stops at the boardwalk, near the top of the bluff. Festivals and other events are held on the boardwalk. You can see a Canadian flag over the gazebo in the center of the photo and another higher flag to the right of that one.

From the boardwalk, we went up several short stairways to reach the Château Frontenac, one of Canada’s grand railway hotels built by the Canadian Pacific Railway. As we were climbing the stairs, we noticed that the flag was at half-staff. Queen Elizabeth II had just died. I was very young when she became Queen, but I remember watching her coronation on television. My family didn’t have a TV yet, but one of my mom’s friends did. That friend also had a daughter my age, and she and I were friends, just like our mothers. We had a ladies’ day, watching the pomp of the coronation. Like so many people today, Queen Elizabeth II was the only British monarch I remembered, and it was sad to see the flag at half-staff in memory of her.

The Château Frontenac at the top of the bluff is massive. The first photo shows the side of the Château that faces the “new” city; the second photo is a side view of the Château. In the second photo, you can see that the ground slopes upward at least four stories from one end of the Château to the other. Ted and I thought Montreal was hilly, but we hadn’t seen real city hills until we got to Québec! The third photo shows the floral butterflies in front of the Château.

We walked from the Château Frontenac past the Ursuline convent. Actually, we had to take our guide’s word for that. The Ursulines value their privacy and the convent is well-hidden behind other buildings, trees, etc. so we didn’t actually see it. The Ursulines were the first nuns to come to Canada and founded their convent in 1639. The sisters studied the native languages and then taught native children reading and writing as well as needlework, embroidery, drawing, and domestic arts. The Ursuline convent in Québec City is the oldest educational institution for women in North America.

We walked across the top of the bluff to the Citadel fort and arrived at a stone wall that was about three feet high. It didn’t look like much of a defense against enemies unless you looked over the edge. Here’s a photo of an apartment building at the base of the bluff below that low wall. The entrance on the right is at the level of the street on that side of the building; the entrance on the left is at the eighth floor of the building and has a short stairway up to the next street. Access to the inside elevator is for residents only; everyone else has to climb the stairs. The top of the bluff is higher than this building, so the three-foot-high wall at the top was probably sufficient for defense.

Much like our walking tour of Montreal, our Québec tour guide made comparisons between Montreal and Québec, but this time, Québec was always a little bit better than Montreal. I definitely sense some city rivalry going on.

We worked our way down the slope of the bluff and past some shops where I noticed railings along the sidewalk. Our guide told us that in spring and fall (wet, freezing), the sidewalks can be dangerously slippery for walking uphill and downhill, so the railings help prevent falls.

A little farther down this hill, our guide told us about tomorrow’s Grand Prix Cycliste de Québec–a bicycle race. The race is not point-to-point, but instead, requires 16 laps of 12.6 km (7.8 mi.) each for a total of 201.6 km (124.8 mi.). There are 4 climbs in rapid succession on each lap: the first climb is a distance of 375 m at a 10% average grade; the second is 420 m at a 9% average grade; the third is 190 m at a 7% average grade; and the last is 1,000 m at a 4% average grade. Repeat these 4 climbs 16 times. The finish is uphill. Here’s a view from the corner of one climb. It continues downhill to the right of the photo at an even steeper grade. Approximately 400 (crazy) racers are expected to participate tomorrow.

On our walking tour, we saw some pretty streets and plazas. And lots of stairways.

In the early days of British settlement in Canada, timber was a major export to Europe. It was difficult to sail an empty ship across the Atlantic to Canada, so the Scottish ships used yellow bricks for ballast, dumped them at the port when they arrived, and replaced them with timber for the return voyage. The Canadian settlers called the discarded ballast “Scottish yellow brick” and used it for buildings that still exist today, like the one in the center of the photo below.

When buildings are built of stone rubble, rounded corners add strength to the structure.

For centuries, Québec City residents filled in the St. Lawrence River to make more land. The wavy lines in this plaza and elsewhere in the city indicate areas that used to be river water.

The painting below looks very realistic in person; it has less depth in a photograph. When we saw it across the plaza, it was difficult to believe that the scene was flat. I took a picture of it from the side to prove it. You can tell by the second photo that the sidewalk I stood on to take the second picture was at the third floor of the building where the two men are standing on the balcony in the picture. Yes, steep hills and stairs.

At the end of our tour, there was a group stop at a pub for a much-needed snack. The snack included a glass of wine, sausage, shallots, and mustard caviar on some cracker-like bread. It was all good.

At sunset, our ship left port, heading toward our next stop: Saguenay. The Château Frontenac dominates the Québec City skyline.

Yesterday, we checked out of the hotel and moved into our stateroom on the cruise ship. The hotel lobby was a madhouse and the lines were long, but lunch was ready when we boarded the ship. The best thing about cruising: we unpacked our suitcases, put everything into drawers and on hangers, and won’t have to re-pack until we leave the ship 12 days from now.

We met three other couples at dinner and had a good time. The hostess who seated us asked me, “How are you?” “I’m fine,” I replied. “You look tired,” she said. “I am,” I responded. She smiled at me and said, “Check with me at the end of the cruise.” Her comment might not have been tactful, but it was true. Ted and I have been working 10-12 hours every day for the past three weeks to get ready for the interior house contractors, the exterior door contractor, the landscape designer, and the cruise! Yes, we’re exhausted, and we’re ready to get away and relax. “Respect,” the biopic movie about Aretha Franklin, was playing in the onboard theater after dinner, so we watched that and enjoyed the free popcorn before going to bed.

We slept in this morning and then took a three-hour walking tour of Old Montreal after lunch. The tour guide mentioned a number of things that are similar about Montreal and Quebec City. Not surprisingly, Montreal’s claim to fame was always a little bit better than Quebec City’s. For example, although Quebec’s total provincial population is about 8 million, the city of Montreal within the province has 4 million of those people, compared to Quebec City’s population of just over a half million people. City pride and friendly (I hope) rivalry was hard at work throughout the tour.

Montreal is on an island and, with those millions of people, there’s a scarcity of parking places. To make up for that shortage, the city has great public transportation and 700 km of bike trails. There are lots of underground walking tunnels as well, which I’m sure are a good thing in the winter. Our first stop was Notre Dame, a cathedral that is built entirely of wood (inside and out), but has been painted to look like the stone European cathedrals. It has a pipe organ with 7,000 pipes and 4 keyboards; seating for 3,000 worshippers; and a ceiling painted Virgin Mary Blue with 24k gold stars.

We took an elevator to the observation deck at the top of the Museum of Archeology and History and had a nice overview of the city and of the Crooked Bridge. The bridge’s real name is the Champlain Bridge, but it has three curves, so everyone calls it the Crooked Bridge. Within the museum, I saw an interesting early pencil sharpener. (The overhead light reflections were unavoidable.)

In the summer, pianos are placed in many places around the city. We saw at least a half dozen and there was someone playing every one of them. (The man in the left picture had just finished playing.)

We visited a huge business complex that is built underground and has two levels of multi-story stores and offices as well as three levels of subway tracks. Here’s a reflecting pool and a sculpture within the complex (upper photo, below). The lower photo faces the open (downhill) end of the building. There are subway tracks on each end of the complex and the guide told us the tracks on the other end (uphill) were underground but above this level of the building.

A lot of dirt had to be moved to build this structure and the excess dirt was used to fill the river and create an artificial island. The 1967 Montreal Expo/World’s Fair was built on that island. Most of the buildings were built as temporary structures for use only during the Expo, but the French and U.S. pavilions are still in use. The U.S. pavilion for space exploration now houses agencies focused on green energy and includes a biosphere. On another artificial island (also built with fill dirt), there is a Formula 1 racetrack. When there are no races, the track is used for skating, running, biking, track events, and even cars.

After our walking tour, Ted and I had some time on our own. It was hot, so we grabbed some more Cherry Garcia ice cream at another Ben & Jerry’s shop before re-boarding the ship to leave Montreal. On our way downriver, we saw Habitat 67, or what is called the “Cubes.” They were designed by a young architect in a competition to promote a “new” Montreal. His first model of the structure was built with Lego bricks. In 2012, Habitat 67 won the design competition to be Lego’s architectural set of the year. In general, four cubes make up a living unit. They are luxuriously furnished and can be rented for about $2,900 CD per month or purchased for roughly $1 million CD for a 1,000-1,200 square foot section. I found the first photo on the internet. The second photo is mine, taken as we left Montreal and headed for Quebec City, tomorrow’s destination.

Refreshed from a long night’s sleep, Ted and I explored Montreal today. We spent most of the afternoon walking around the Golden Square Mile–an area of older, elegant homes built at the foot and up the slope of Mount Royal. Today is the Labor Day holiday in Canada as well as in the U.S., so museums and other places were closed, but the weather was beautiful and so was our walk. We quickly discovered that Montreal is all about hills. We started at the foot of Mount Royal, where our hotel was located, looked at the mountain, and said we had no desire to climb to the top. The photo below is a view of Mount Royal from Old Montreal on the opposite side of the city from our hotel.

As we walked, we kept going up a block and over a block and eventually found ourselves at the foot of the final path that led to the park at the top of the mountain. We decided not to go for the summit, because we’d already been walking for about two hours and still had to walk all that way back to the hotel. The hills in Montreal are so steep that the foundation of one house was often higher than the rooftop of the house behind it.

Here are some of the beautiful houses we saw and one of the less steep streets we climbed.

The Montreal Museum of Fine Arts promotes street art in the city and we saw lots of it.

The colorful three-dimensional construction wall in the background of the left photo above is lighted at night (right photo below).

The artificial trees on the street and the artwork on the building in the photo on the right are tributes to curing breast cancer.

This lady looks like she wants to be an integral part of street art. (Or maybe she’s their mom, waiting to take them home.)

We saw these in an art gallery window. They’re two-dimensional paintings, not three-dimensional bookshelves.

All of our walking (another 5.5 miles) made us hungry, so when we saw a Ben & Jerry’s (it’s not far from Vermont to Montreal), we stopped for some Cherry Garcia ice cream–my favorite flavor. I don’t know if all the Ben & Jerry’s restaurants offer this, but the menu included a “Vermonster”: 4 scoops each of 5 flavors of ice cream with hot fudge, whipped cream, and cherries for $69.95 CD. It serves 4 or more people. With 20 scoops of ice cream, I would guess that more than 4 people usually share this treat. Ted and I each had less ice cream than the Vermonter offered.

We enjoyed spending the afternoon within the Golden Square Mile of “old” Montreal. Tomorrow, we’ll check out of the hotel and into our stateroom on the ship. The day after that, we’re going to take an organized walking tour of “new” Montreal.

The electrical work for our interior house update is finished. There are several large holes in the ceilings and walls for the drywall repair guy to fix, but the wiring is in and we have most of the new light fixtures. The others will arrive during the painting process and will be ready to install when the paint is dry. After the electrical team left the house, we had two full days (insert sarcasm here) to prepare for our 18-day cruise from Montreal Canada, down the St. Lawrence River, then down the eastern Canadian/U.S. coastline, and into New York City.

We had an early start for the cruise–we had to be at the airport by 5:00 a.m. for our flight to Charlotte, then to Montreal. That wasn’t the shortest route, but the airlines didn’t ask us for input when they planned their routes.

We were expecting something like the cartoon above, but our STL->CLT flight was called on time. We learned quickly that we shouldn’t be too confident. During the CLT->YUL boarding process, an oxygen mask dropped from its overhead storage for no apparent reason. A mechanic was called, but the mask wouldn’t retract and required a major repair. The plane was only half full, so the solution was to move the passenger from that seat to another seat with a properly working (and retracted) oxygen mask. That was a 30-minute delay and made our flight more typical of air travel these days. With the ArriveCAN app, passing through Canadian customs was a breeze. We collected our baggage and joined the Viking cruise folks, who took our group to our hotel. After checking in, Ted and I immediately took a three-hour nap, then hit the streets to explore Montreal and to look for some dinner.

We didn’t see a lot of restaurants in the immediate vicinity of the hotel, and we were only a few blocks from McGill University, so we asked some of the hundreds of always-hungry college students milling around where we could eat. A wonderful couple said they were just heading for the 3 Brasseurs, and invited us to go with them. What a place! In English, that’s the 3 Brewers and it was a brewpub. I think everything on the menu had beer in it somewhere: beer-battered fries, blueberry beer pie, beer buns (made with what’s left of the malt after brewing the beer), etc. We had such good burgers (“smothered in maple beer sauce”) and such a good dessert (caramel sauce-covered cinnamon rolls made with beer butter in the sauce), that we went back for a lunch pizza the next day. You might drool as you look at the photos of our caramel sauce cinnamon rolls and our pizza.

The Brasseurs also serve beer in a five-liter “Triton,” but only to groups of five or more people.

After dinner, we walked around for awhile (five miles clocked on my pedometer today) and then crashed in our room and slept for more than ten hours. We’ll be more alert tomorrow.

It was a clear and sunny day. Suddenly, a brain shock hit. I was cleaning up our vacation photos and transferring them from my laptop to my PC when I noticed a bunch of pictures I thought were cute / interesting and wanted to post on my blog. Here are the “lost” pictures I found.

Seen in Auckland. Perhaps owned by an immigrant from the Badger state?

In British-founded countries, they don’t have trash; they have rubbish. In any country Ted and I have visited overseas, we’ve found public trash / rubbish cans to be rare, and we usually have to hold on to our litter until we get back to our temporary home base–wherever that is.

Window sign on a coffee / hot chocolate house. Check out Ted and me in the reflection on the window.

Our hotel in Auckland not only had an unusual name–M Social–it also had an unusual decorating style. This wall almost made it feel like we were being watched while we relaxed.

It took me a moment (or two) to figure out how to do Roman numeral math, but it works out to the same answer. Try it.

I’ll bet you’ve never seen rest room signs like these.

And what is this thing with peek-through bathrooms? A sliding panel was available to provide some bathroom privacy. Our Bali hotel had the same thing, but there was a glass window with blinds, not an open wall. (Below)

This is a foreign country thing more than a hotel thing, but at breakfast, there was a choice of full or trim milk instead of whole or skim. Also, water is always offered as “still” or “sparkling.” Hint: sparkling water tastes awful!

Travel definitely broadens one’s experiences and viewpoints.

As Ted and I reflect on our trip to Indonesia, Australia, and New Zealand, highlights of the trip come to mind. We have many, but here are ten of them, in no particular order:

(1) Lazy morning coffee and hot chocolate in the Viking Winter Garden.

(2) Summer fruit and vegetables in December and January. (3) Komodo–our new standard for “how hot is it?” If it’s not as hot as Komodo, it’s not bad. (4) Ted’s birthday dinner.

(5) Talking with local residents. (6) Petting a koala.

(7) Seeing the Great Barrier Reef.

(8) The onboard Christmas Eve Service. It made us feel less lonely to be with nearly 1,000 other people who were also away from their families at this special time of year. (9) Sightseeing in a jet boat.

(10) Choco-fest times two. Two chances to enjoy the Viking chef’s creativity with chocolate.

Ted and I brought home three small souvenirs from our recent trip. The little basket is handmade and was sold at a local market in Mataram, Lombok (Indonesia).

We bought the orange dish in Melbourne, Victoria. It was authentically crafted in Australia by an Aborigine tribal member.

The kiwi bird–the national icon and unofficial national emblem of New Zealand–was purchased in Rotorua, NZ. It was mass-produced, but it comes with an interesting story. Here’s the short version of the Maori legend:

Tana-mahuta, the god of the forest, was worried about his children, the trees, because the bugs were eating them. He asked various birds to give up the gift of flight to live on the ground and eat the bugs to save the trees. One bird refused because he was afraid of the darkness in the forest; another didn’t like the dampness; and every other bird had an excuse. Only the kiwi bird said, “Great! I have a fear of heights and I hate to fly anyway, so I’ll be glad to live on the ground.” Because the kiwi sacrificed its beautiful wings and feathers to live on the forest floor, Tana-mahuta made it the most well-known and best-loved bird in all of New Zealand. New Zealanders have been called “kiwis” since Australian soldiers bestowed the name on them in World War I.

All automobiles are imported to Australia. There are no auto manufacturers or assemblers in the country.

New Zealand was the first country to introduce the forty-hour work week, but due to the high cost of living in New Zealand, many people need more than one job to meet their expenses, in spite of the fact that the minimum wage is considered to be sufficient to make tipping unnecessary.

We saw no huge McMansions in either Australia or New Zealand. Expensive homes have two stories instead of one and are more like a middle-size U.S. home with a very small lot.

Sign on a chocolate shop: You can’t buy happiness, but you can buy chocolate.

In Australia, snowbirds are called “gray nomads” and go north to Darwin for the winter.

Only fish and flightless birds are native to New Zealand. All other animals have been imported. As a result, there are no predators, and animal overpopulation of some imported species has caused problems.

I started with a checklist of six things I wanted to see and/or experience on our trip. Bonuses not included on that list were: ghost gums, wallabies, koalas, kangaroos, and hearing people say “No worries.”

On our way to Australia, Ted and I ordered a pizza for lunch at LAX. We were carded to get a beer with the pizza. When I asked the server “Really??!!” he said “Yes.” So we look like we might be under 21? Lucky us at our age!

Mark is beyond a doubt the best driver we’ve ever shared a car with. Maybe it’s because he is a retired policeman, but he handled a car more smoothly and safely than anyone in Ted’s and my experience.

Want to convert Celsius to Fahrenheit? Multiply by 2, then add 30. Fahrenheit to Celsius is the opposite: subtract 30, then divide by 2. The answer will be within 0-2 degrees.

Passengers were introduced to the Viking management staff at a short program in the ship’s theater. Each guest was given a glass of champagne, and each crew member also had a glass of champagne. When he introduced himself, the captain raised his glass, then set it aside with the comment, “Designated driver. Again.” The beverage manager closed by saying “Stay hydrated.” The chef claimed responsibility “for the one pound per day you will gain on this cruise,” and the doctor said, “I’d love to meet each of you socially.”

It’s been an amazing six weeks since we left home. I loved the summer weather and we’ve seen and learned so many beautiful and interesting things. Ted and I agree we’d like to re-visit this part of the world.

At the same time, we’ve been breathing smoky air from the bush fires in Australia since we got to Newcastle on December 26. The winds are blowing to the southeast, so smoke and particulates were in the air all the way around Australia from Newcastle to Sydney, Melbourne, and Tasmania, and also during our time in New Zealand. As a result, Ted and I are both coughing and want to get back to clean air. I’ll bet the doctors in this part of the world are doing a booming business from smoke-related illnesses. Like the Australians, we hope rain will come soon, and we wish the firefighters well as they continue to make progress in controlling the fires.

Tracey did an amazing job of selecting train times and getting all the information we needed to find our way to the airport. Mark and Tracey drove us to the train station to see us off. Tracey had already decided which would be the best car to sit in and where to sit in the car, so Mark helped with our luggage (he’s so nice) and got us into our seats. We got off at the right station in Sydney, found the connecting gate to the airport, and arrived at the airport with plenty of time to spare. Thank you, Tracey and Mark.

As we were walking around the airport (exercising before our 16-hour flight to Dallas), we saw these kids. I asked their parents if I could take a picture of them. They are so cute, and they reinforce my point that kids are the same all around the world.

Several years ago, Ted and I decided to fly business class on long flights, and it’s worth every penny. Today’s flight put us on an Airbus 380–the first time we’ve flown on the really big plane with two levels of seating. We’re happy campers (or fliers). The panel beside my shoulder can be raised to the seat top for privacy, if desired.

Naturally, we were among the first to board and we were directed to the upper level where there are only six (large) seats across; the main cabin has ten.

Ted had three windows to look outside (one more is beside him) instead of one-and-a-half like the main cabin.

There’s plenty of legroom.

While the main cabin was boarding, we made our menu selections for our upcoming meals and snacks, put the mattress pads on our seats (it makes them a little softer), put our footrests up, accepted a glass of wine and a bowl of nuts to snack on, and got comfortable. I picked out a movie and started watching it. Yes, that’s a nearly twin-size quilted blanket over my legs (white and charcoal to match the decor) to keep me warm on the chilly plane.

The business class food is delicious! This is the first course. I selected steak for the main course, and then dessert–all pre-ordered as the main cabin boarded, then served on china dishes, not in cardboard boxes. The tomato soup was amazing. I wish I knew which spices they added to it. We had choices for snacks–fruit, ice cream bars, cheese plates, chocolates, etc.–instead of the dry cookie or mini-pretzels served in the main cabin. In fact, we were invited to go to the galley and choose whatever we wanted, whenever we wanted something.

Business class also includes a pair of warm socks and pajamas for overnight flights. This was a Qantas flight, and they have the nicest pj’s we’ve seen–knit fabric with sweatpants-like bottoms and a pull-over top in S-M-L sizes instead of one gigantic size. I think everyone in our cabin put them on within the first 2-3 hours, and they were very comfortable. During most of the flight, when people moved around, it looked like we were all at a big pajama party in matching pj’s.

When we got home–35 hours after leaving Mark and Tracey’s house–it was only two hours later than when we left Sydney on the same day. There were 50 messages on the phone and a warning that the recording space was filled. One message was a reminder about an upcoming appointment; two were from the St. Charles School District (where Ted volunteers) announcing school closings for snow; and 47 were hang-ups. Who knows how many more robo calls we’d have had if there had been more recording space?!

In the kitchen, we found love gifts from Kari: a gallon of milk, a box of cereal, a loaf of bread, and fruit (apples, bananas, and blueberries). Best of all, thank-you notes from her family (we love reading those) and some Christmas candy she’d made because she knew I didn’t. We must have done a lot more right than wrong when we were raising our kids, because they are all adults we are proud of and thankful for in so many ways.

Thom’s family’s Christmas gifts were in the accumulated mail we picked up. The Lego exchange between Thom and me continues. I had to build this right away.

It was a great trip and we’d do it again, but we look forward to being with our family again next Christmas. Now, good-night. I think we’re going to sleep for a week.

Author’s note: We used seven airports for this trip, and DFW wins the prize hands down for grumpiest employees and most inefficient baggage retrieval. Either everyone at DFW was having a bad day or they all work for terrible bosses and hate their jobs. Ted and I always look forward to coming home from overseas and hearing “Welcome home” from the customs officer, but that didn’t happen this time. The DFW customs officer was barely civil to the people passing through. They need to attend a workshop in Australia or New Zealand to see what friendly looks like.