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

En Route To Safaga, Egypt Day 3

We awoke early this morning and had breakfast in the Lido Café. It was more crowded than usual. We suspect that since we turned back the clocks one more hour last evening that many passenger’s just woke up one hour earlier. Anne Marie is still not feeling well and has the same symptoms that Keith had last week. She just had a little portion of her breakfast and then Keith took her back to the room so she could try to get some extra rest. Keith then went to the Fitness Center to workout on the elliptical machine. After his workout, Keith met Anne Marie back in the room.

Later in the morning Keith went to the program titled Rap with the Rabbi. The focus of this morning’s session was a continuation of the discussion regarding Passover. It was a very interesting discussion. The Rabbi also confirmed the time for Passover Seder Dinner and said that it would be held on the Lido deck rather than in the Prego specialty restaurant. This is because Prego could only hold up to 100 people and at this point it looks like there will be more than 100 passengers in attendance.

Keith ran a few errands this morning. Afterwards we both went to Team Trivia. Our team finished in a tie for third place today. After Team Trivia we went to lunch in the Lido Café and each had a nice salad entrée for lunch.

This afternoon Keith ran a few more errands while Anne Marie rested in the room. Hopefully, Anne Marie will be back to normal in a few days.

This evening we went to dinner in the main dining room. We enjoyed a wonderful dinner with outstanding service.

After dinner, we went to a special presentation by a New York City theatre company called Symphony Space who presented selected short stories which were read by Mia Dillon and Isaiah Sheffer. This is the first time that this has been presented on either of the Crystal Ships. There will be another reading of short stories in a few days by other actors. This might be a program tat is expanded on future sailings depending on feedback received from the passenger’s through the results of the passenger surveys.

Tomorrow morning we will arrive in Safaga, Egypt.

Keith & Anne Marie

En Route To Safaga, Egypt Day 2

After we wrote and posted yesterdays Blog, we attended last nights evening entertainment program. The first act was a show featuring a variety of marionettes and was quite unique and entertaining. There were so many different marionettes that it was hard to believe that there were only two puppeteers involved with the show. The second act of the show featured Comedian Mike Goddard. He has performed for many years and he has toured with the Beatles and Rod Stewart and has appeared with other famous entertainers including Elton John, Johnnie Mathis, and Cliff Richard. His humor was wonderful and he had us along with the rest of the audience in tears with laughter. We look forward to his next performance.

This morning we awoke early and had a nice breakfast in the Lido Café. We spoke with a few of the regular passenger’s who we see in the café on most mornings. We also met a gentleman who posts regularly on the Cruise Critic Boards who had been looking for us since the start of this cruise segment. Coincidentally, he had asked another fellow passenger if he knew us, which he did, so he pointed him our way this morning. He wanted to meet us and to also thank Keith for having answered a number of questions that he has posted from time-to-time on the Cruise Critic Boards.

After breakfast we went to the Fitness Center for our regular workout. Anne Marie worked out on the treadmill and Keith worked out on the elliptical machine.

In the last 24 hours Anne Marie started to come down with very similar symptoms that Keith initially had gotten when he got sick. We decided that it would be a good idea for Anne Marie to go ahead and see the Doctor early on to try to avoid some of the symptoms that Keith eventually came down with. So, after our workout Keith went with Anne Marie to see the doctor and he prescribed the same medications that he had prescribed for Keith so hopefully that will help. Keith is now almost 100% back to normal.

Later in the morning, Keith attended a presentation given by lecturer Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI profiler while Anne Marie rested in the room. The title of his lecture was Psychological Profiling, Part II : Solving Famous Unsolved Cases”. Mr. Zandt discussed many famous cases both old and fairly new. His talk was interesting and one of the walk away items was how the various cable television shows have tried to sensationalize some of these cases. Keith realized that he has seen Mr. Zandt on television from time-to-time commenting on some of the mystery cases that he spoke about at this mornings lecture.

After the lecture we went to Team Trivia. Our team correctly answered eleven of fifteen questions and finished in a tie for third place. Hopefully, we’ll do better tomorrow. ☺

Following Team Trivia we went to lunch in the main dining room with another couple who is on the Full World Cruise with us who we sat with at dinner during two of the World Cruise Segments. It was wonderful to catch up with this couple. We enjoyed a wonderful lunch as we always along with a wonderful conversation.

Earlier in the evening we attended a Crystal Society Reception prior to dinner. This was the second of four formals for this segment of the cruise. We had a wonderful time talking with some of our fellow passengers and with some of the crewmembers. As we have mentioned before, as soon as a passenger completes their first Crystal Cruise they become a member of the Crystal Society. There are over 300,000 Crystal Society Members. During the reception, the Crystal Society Hostess recognized a few passengers’ by name who have reached some significant milestones relative to the number of cruises they have sailed on with Crystal and then they called up two passenger’s who had achieved an even higher milestone of completed cruises.

We had a very special dinner this evening as we dined with the Cruise Director, Gary Hunter, the World Cruise Hostess, Krista Pope, and the Crystal Society Hostess, Jamie Brown, in the Silk Road Japanese Specialty Restaurant. We thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful dinner along with an outstanding conversation and feel so very fortunate to have had the opportunity to dine with these very special people.

Tomorrow, we will have another day at sea before we reach our first port of call in Egypt.

Keith & Anne Marie

En Route To Safaga, Egypt Day 1

We woke fairly early this morning. Since we had set the clocks back one hour last night due to a time zone change we had the benefit of getting one extra hour of sleep. We had a nice breakfast in the Lido Café. After breakfast we did our daily workout in the Fitness Center with Anne Marie working out for an hour on the treadmill and Keith working out for an hour on the elliptical machine. Afterwards, we each lifted weights using the various weight lifting machines. Keith continues to feel better.

After our workout we went to a program called Rap with the Rabbi, which is held from time to time on sea days. It is hosted by the Rabbi who we will have for the Full World Cruise. Today’s topics(s) dealt with Passover and the topics were quite interesting and allowed for lots of discussion, which is the whole point of these sessions. We plan to go to the next one, which will be held on Tuesday. The other day, we also signed up the other day for the Seder Dinner, which will be held on the evening of April 2nd.

Later in the morning we attended a lecture given by Sportswriter and NPR Commentator Frank Deford. The topic of the presentation was “Sports: The Hype and the Hoopla.” Mr Deford is the Senior Writer at Sports Illustrated and he is a commentator on NPR’s Morning Edition and he is also a correspondent on HBO’s RealSports with Bryant Gumbel. We thoroughly enjoyed the lecture and many of the points that Mr Delford made to the audience and we look forward to his next lecture.

Since today is a sea day we also had Team Trivia. We finished in third place for the day, correctly answering eleven of fifteen questions. After Team Trivia we went to the Sunday Brunch which was set up outside the Crystal Dining Room.

In the afternoon, we played table tennis with another couple who we first met on Crystal while sailing from London to New York City in the Fall of 2004 and who we have cruised with two other times since then. They embarked the ship in Dubai and will be on the last three segments of the World Cruise.

We enjoyed a wonderful dinner in the Crystal Dining Room. Tonight we each had grouper as our main entrée along with a nice salad and fruit for our desert.

After dinner we went to an event that was held for those doing the Full World Cruise, which was called “Buccaneer’s Bash”. The party was held in the Officer’s Corridor. We had the opportunity to see the various officer cabins including the captains quarters. The officers and other Crystal staff were dress up in Pirate costumes. We've included a picture of Anne Marie with our Cruise Director.

Afterwards we plan to attend a variety show and we’ll tell you more about that on tomorrows blog.

Keith & Anne Marie

Salalah, Oman

We awoke early this morning and had breakfast in the Lido Café. The café was fairly crowed as some passenger’s were booked on shore excursions so they were up early in preparation for their excursions. After we had breakfast we went over to the Fitness Center for our morning workout. Anne Marie worked out on the treadmill and Keith worked out on the elliptical machine. Keith continues to feel better and is almost back to normal.

The ship docked in Salalah, Oman about 8:00 this morning. We did not book a shore excursion in this port of call. Unlike the other port that the ship visited in Oman before our stop in Dubai, this port of call did not look very interesting to us so we decided to pass on taking an excursion

We did walk off the ship for a few minutes but there was very little to see at the pier. Normally, Crystal will provide a complimentary shuttle to the closest town but due to local transportation regulations they were unable to do so. We suspect that this regulation is in place so that those who want to go into town will have to use the local taxis. Given that the local town is about fifteen miles from port and that we didn’t think there would be much to see, we decided not to go into the town. Instead, we decided to enjoy the ship during this port day recognizing that we have full day excursions coming up later in this segment of the World Cruise in places such as Jordan where we plan to see Petra and in Israel where we will be touring Jerusalem and we will have a partial day tour in one of the Egyptian ports that we will also be visiting. We believe the major reason why the ship stopped in this port is to break up the number of consecutive sea days since it took us two sea days to get here and after we leave this port of call we will be at sea three more days until we reach our first port of call in Egypt.

We took care of some other errands this morning before having lunch in the main dining room. For lunch we enjoyed a wonderfully prepared seafood salad entrée. After lunch we walked around the ship to talk with some fellow passenger’s and to take some pictures of the surrounding area.

This afternoon we saw a movie in the Hollywood Theatre titled Flags of our Fathers. The movie is based on the bestselling book by James Bradley and Ron Powers. This movie tells the stories of the six men who raised the American flag in the famous photo at Iwo Jima. The film deals with the mental and emotional struggle that affected the survivors of this battle, which was a turning point in World War 2. For us the movie contained a number of important lessons and themes and we are glad that we had the opportunity to see the movie.

This evening we dined at the Silk Road Japanese Specialty Restaurant. As has been the case each time we have dined at Silk Road, we enjoyed the outstanding food, service and ambience of this restaurant.

Tomorrow will be the first of three sea days as we sail to Safaga, Egypt.

Keith & Anne Marie

En Route To Salalah, Oman Day 2

Last night after we published our Blog we listened to the Press Conference with John and Elizabeth Edwards. We were so very sorry to learn of the reoccurrence of Elizabeth Edwards’ cancer and our hearts and prayers go out to both of them and to their family. We were impressed with the strength and courage that each of them exhibited in not only talking about this issue but in how they plan to deal with it.

We awoke earlier today as Keith continues to feel better each day. The medication he is taking is helping quite a bit along with the extra rest he’s been getting and he should be back to normal in another couple of days. We enjoyed another nice breakfast in the Lido Café. The Café was not as crowded as it has been since this cruise segment first began. We then worked out in the Fitness Center. The Fitness Center has been more crowded than the previous few segments. We attribute this to a somewhat different mix of passenger’s on this segment with an overall average age that seems to be younger than the other segments. Anne Marie worked out on the treadmill for an hour and Keith was able to do likewise on the elliptical machine. He just went at a slightly slower pace than his normal workout.

We attended a fascinating lecture this morning, which was given by book dramatist Barbara Rinella who presented Meet Delightful Dolley Madison. Rather than just giving a review of the book, Ms. Rinella portrayed Dolley Madison and provided a wealth of knowledge about her life from the time she was born until she died at the age of 85. For 26 years Ms. Rinella has been presenting one-woman shows dramatizing current literature. We look forward to her other book dramatizations that she plans to present during the course of this segment of the cruise. Overall, the amount of information that she was able to present about Dolley Madison in her dramatization was incredible. We would think that these types of dramatizations would be a great method to use in order to teach school age children about the history of the United States Presidency or other types of American or World History. As part of her dramatization she not only covered Dolley Madison but also James Madison along with other key figures of the day including Thomas Jefferson, John Adams and George Washington.


Since today was a sea day we had team trivia for the second time this segment. While we did not finish in first place as we had done yesterday, we did finish in a respectful tie for third place. After team trivia we had lunch in the main dining room with several members from our trivia team.

In the afternoon we went to a lecture given by Sleep Scholar Dr. Jim Maas whose topic was titled “Everything You Should Know About Sleep but Are Too Tired to Ask.” Dr Maas is a Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Professor and past Chairman of Psychology, and a member of the graduate fields of Education and Communication at Cornell University. He has taught a Cornell University for over forty years. He has appeared frequently on national television shows such as the Today Show, NBC Nightly News, CNN, Good Morning America, CBS This Morning, along with several other television shows including Oprah. Today’s lecture focused on the importance of sleep. According to Dr. Maas the ideal amount of sleep for adults is eight hours at night and that statistics show that 75% of people have sleep problems. Further, he presented statistics that show that sleep is key to determining longevity as when one sleeps the brain regulates the immune, hormonal and endocrine functions, which are essential for ones general health. Today’s lecture set the stage for his follow-up lectures which will include recommendations on how to get an optimal amount of sleep each evening. His lecture was very interesting and we look forward to his next lecture.

Before dinner, we enjoyed another play presented as part of Repertory Theatre at Sea. This evening’s play was Blind Date by Horton Foot. The play is about, Delores, the matriarch of the house. Dolores manages to juggle her husband, her children and her larger than life personality all while attempting to set up her teenage niece with a nice young man, Felix Robertson. Southern hospitality is pushed to the test in this heart-warming comedy. Once again, we thoroughly enjoyed this play performed by four wonderful actors from Repertory Theatre At Sea. We’ve included a picture that we had taken this evening with two of the four actors. When not performing on stage, these wonderful actors and actresses have participated in a variety of venues from the cruise games held a couple of segments ago to the renaissance fair to a countless number of other activities. They are wonderful on and off the stage and we are very fortunate to have them on the ship with us for the entire World Cruise.

After the play, it was time for dinner, which we ate, in the main dining room. We had a wonderful dinner as we do each evening. As they do from time to time, the nice quarter of musicians came around to each table in our section of the dining room to play requested songs. We always enjoy their music.

Keith & Anne Marie

En Route To Salalah, Oman Day 1

A word about our photo album. Last evening, we attempted to place pictures on the photo album site from Dubai but after trying several times and thinking that they had posted we could not view them. Earlier today, we removed some of the old photo albums (not all of them but about 20%) and this evening we successfully added the Dubai pictures to the site. The challenge in posting pictures from a cruise ship is that while we are using an Ethernet internet connection the speeds are only a little better than what might experience over a dialup connection.

After we posted last evening the ship set sail from Dubai to Salalah, Oman. We have a couple of days at sea before reaching Salalah.

Keith is feeling better than he did yesterday and hopes to be back to normal in a couple of days. The medicine from the doctor seems to be doing the trick. As we mentioned, we had been taking many pro-active steps to minimize the chance of getting sick from taking plenty of vitamins, to eating lots of fruits and vegetables, to continually washing our hands throughout the day, to not touching the handrails when we walk up and down the stepts, to using the hand wash provided by Crystal multiple times along with our own, to many other items. With that said, we knew the odds were there of getting sick, particularly this time of the year and being in closed confined areas.

We awoke a little later this morning (early for most but late for us) and had a nice breakfast in the Lido Café. The Café was fairly crowded which seems to be the pattern for this new segment of the cruise. Afterwards, we went to the Fitness Center. Anne Marie worked out on the treadmill for an hour and Keith skipped his usual one hour workout on the elliptical machine and instead went on the treadmill for thirty minutes. We also walked in the afternoon on the Promenade Deck. The outside temperature was very comfortable and the seas have been relatively calm.

Being a sea day there have been lots of lectures on the ship today. In the morning, Clint Van Zandt, a former FBI Profiler, Hostage Negotiator and Television News Analyst discussed Psychological Profiling.

In the afternoon, Rocket Scientist and Author Tom Logsdon discussed Dubai, Athens, Istanbul and other colorful ports shot from space.

We had team trivia at 12:00 Noon today and this was the start of trivia for this segment of the world cruise. The good news is that our team finished in first place for today by correctly answering thirteen of fifteen questions. We began today as we did the last few games of the last segment with a strong performance. Let’s hope this continues throughout the cruise.

After team trivia, we went to lunch with a very nice couple who has been on several World Cruises over the past years. They were on the team trivia team that finished in first place during the last segment of the cruise. We enjoyed an excellent lunch in the main dining room and thoroughly enjoyed a wonderful conversation with them.

There were many other activities on the ship today from social to duplicate bridge, to paddle tennis to table tennis. There were many fitness classes from stretching, to yoga to walking. There was registration for those who have just joined the cruise from classes on the computer, to language classes, to a memoir writing classe and so forth. Some of the folks that coordinate these activities are full time Crystal employees such as the sports director or the fitness director while others are on just for a few voyages each year or for the world cruise . Just about all of the folks who are not Crystal employees who coordinate these activities are on for the entire world cruise which is a wonderful opportunity for them. We have gotten to know many of them quite well along with those with spouses. This includes some from the clergy to some of the computer instructors, to some of the other instructors. They have all been so very nice to talk with and very friendly and outgoing.

This evening was the first of four formal nights on this segment of the World Cruise. We went to the Captain’s Welcome Reception before dinner and once again sat with a couple of couples including the couple that we were seated with at the World Cruise Gala who we sit with at most of these receptions. We enjoy each of these receptions as they provide a wonderful opportunity to talk with fellow passengers and crew and to hear from Captain Otto.

Afterwards, we enjoyed another wonderful dinner in the main dining room. We are very happy with our table and the wonderful service from our waiter, senior waiter and head waiter.

We look forward to another wonderful day at sea tomorrow.

Keith & Anne Marie