Safaga, Egypt

We arrived at the port of Safaga, Egypt this morning at approximately 8:00 AM. As Anne Marie was still sick we thought it best to stay on the ship for the day. Anne Marie is better than yesterday and hopefully she will be fully recovered in a few days.

The ship offered three excursions today but the main one involved Luxor. For those doing the one day tour through the ship buses transported the passengers on a three hour journey to the ancient city of Luxor. This city dates back to 3500 BC and was the former capital of Egypt and the richest city of the ancient world. Those on the tour visited various tombs, the Temple of Queen Hatshepsut, the Valley of the Kings, the Temple of Luxor along with a few other stops. I addition, some guests left the ship for a four night overland adventure which wil include visiting sites in a variety of locations within Egypt. They will joint the ship in Israel.

We still awoke fairly early this morning and had breakfast in the Lido Café which was fairly crowded since many passengers were on the full day excursion to Luxor. After breakfast, Keith did his morning workout in the Fitness Center, which was not very crowded. We figured this would be a good day to get laundry done so Anne Marie went right to the laundry room after breakfast. When she first began the laundry no one else was there so she was able to do several washes at once. About an hour later, other passengers who were staying on the ship today evidently had the same idea so in a blink of an eye there were quite a few people in the laundry room. The good news is that Anne Marie had easily gotten our items taken care of before it got busy in there and did quite a bit of ironing while others were waiting for machines for their use.

We ate lunch in the main dining room and enjoyed a wonderful salad entrée along with some fruit. The dining room was fairly quiet given that many passengers were off the ship

We walked for a little while on the Promenade Deck this afternoon until Anne Marie became tired and then we relaxed for the rest of the afternoon.

With passenger’s from the major tour not getting back until lateevening, the dining room had an open seating for this evening with revised hours. They opened the dining room for dinner from 6:30 to 10:00 PM and passengers could sit at whatever table was open when they arrived for dinner. In our case, we were able to sit at our regular table for dinner and we enjoyed a nice dinner with our regular senior waiter and waiter.

This evening the ship will sail for Aqaba, Jordan and we are scheduled to dock in this port of call by 8:00 AM. The last time that Crystal had a ship in this port of call was approximately eight years ago. The other day we changed our shore excursion from a group tour to a private tour of Petra. We thought that a private tour would be better so that we could see more of this area during the tour. It is still booked through Crystal’s Shore Excursion Department.

Keith and Anne Marie