The Suez Canal

There is a difference of opinion between the travel guide on the bus and the one on the boat.  The Egyptian on the bus said that his company is the one with whom Celebrity deals when booking the passage through the Suez and that today’s package for the ship to move through the canal is one million dollars.  I believe him. 

The cruise travel director says that the cost of today’s trip is $300,000.  I believe him, too.  Travelling for so long, I have learned to believe everyone.  Either way, for who knows where the truth lays, Greg, Dave and I were not going to miss the Suez Canal journey of 100 kilometers yesterday.  When the convoy of our ship and 17 other ships following it began to move through the canal, we went to the fourteenth floor of the ship, forward and looked out. 

The night was warm and dark.  The moon was high.  I could make out Orion in the sky.  The air was humid.  The whirring sounds of the birds flying beside us was forefront.  Two spot light were pointed forward, one west at about 1 o’clock and one pointing east at about 11 o’clock.  Those two lights were at the front of the shi, by the obelisk on the helicopter pad.  The birds that had been flying alongside the boat (the ones that Wyona had been trying to feed) now came forward and were trapped in the cones of light.

Greg, David and I went to the top of the ship a little after midnight and stood there quietly, watching the ship move by the buoys that had red lights shining from them.  I don’t know exactly what I expected, but it was more than the narrow channel of water through which we were moving – so narrow that two boats can’t pass by each other, so half way through the trip, we stopped in Bitter Lake, to let the ships that are coming from the south to the north, through the canal, and let them pass us, before we travel along the route they have just come from.  I stood there for three hours in the dark night, trying to let my senses have their fill:  the warmth, the humidity, the sounds, the smells, the sight of the water, light and dark, cool and hot.  At 3 a.m. I told Dave and Greg I had to get at least a few hours sleep before watching more of the journey.  Together we walked back to an elevator.  Along the way a man who had just got up to jog on deck said good morning. 

Four hours is enough sleep for me. I was on Moiya and David’s balcony at 7 am.  I hang over the railing of course.  I am not going to miss one moment of this journey.  We are watching the Asia side of the canal.  My binoculars are trained on the military who are in small houses – not big enough to lay down in, and the windows are open.  The truth is, there are no windows.  There is also the space where a door could be, but isn’t.  Sometimes the military wave their rifles at us in a big hello.  Others have their binoculars trained on us as we have ours trained on them, and they give a wave when they know we can see them.  There are many shrill whistles sounded.  Finally I figure out that this is the way people in the desert talk to each other.

Wyona and I study the sand dunes in between watching the men on guard duty by the canal.  At one place there are two buildings, a mosque and a truck.   The men have their washing hanging out behind the military vehicle.  We notice that they deposit their garbage in a gully a small ways away from the two houses, the windows of which are shuttered and closed.  No one else is around on the banks.  “A waste of a perfectly good beach,” I say to Wyona.  It is hot.  All we have ever imagined from movies about the desert is in front of us.   I think about Laurence of Arabia and Nasser (1956), both of which I have seen again, recently. We try to get our perspective right for we are at least eight floors up.  At first it looks like there are a few feet of pebbles that separate the canal water from the desert.  By the time we have studied the small size of some of the guards, we have figured out those are big boulders lining the side of the canal.  Wyona is better at figuring out how the miracle of this trip could have happened to us, for she is the one who did the planning to make it occur.  I just sit and watch, amazed.  The boat is going 10 knots per hour through the canal.  The temperature is about 85 farenheight. Wyona keeps telling me to get into a pair of shorts.  I stay in the shade.  Moiya is in the sun, small beads of perspiration running down her temples. 

By this time we are on Wyona’s said of the ship. When we run over to Dave and Moiya’s side of the ship a few hours later we see gardens, palm trees, roads, houses, a bustling city.  Still just sand dunes and military installations on our side.  “That is because this side of the canal is irrigated by the water from the Nile,” is what Moiya says, for she has been up on the top of the ship, listening to the ship’s travel lecturer.  She wishes that his lecture had been piped into all of the guests’ room, via the T.V.   I wish that as well.  But Wyona and I choose a road less travelled – the one of watching the desert. I did learn how to watch in detail for the more we sat there, talking to each other about what we were seeing, the more we saw.

The adage that I read down at the cruise services desk is “It is not what you see, but how you see it.”  That adage came to mind today.

Arta

Food à la Celebrity Cruise Ship

Do not read if you are hungry.

I listened to our collective conversation at dinner last night.  We talk to each other about what we have ordered that night.  Does my maple braised salmon taste better or worse than Moiya’s chicken kiev or Dave’s pepper steak.  Wyona and Greg were sharing a Slow Cooked Braised Beef Lasagne and a taste of that went around the table to all.  Then we begin about how tonight’s meal compares to what we had the night before.  We can remember what everyone was eating 3 days ago, and how that compares to today. 

Since we had eaten lunch together as well, we talked about the relative merits of the noontime cherry cloufoise as opposed to the dessert in the evening called ‘Paris Meets New York’.  I wish I could say that is all, but our comparisons have to go through all four courses – the appetizers, the soups and salads, the entrees and then the desserts.

Wyona studied the menu, then ordered her meal one day, only to find she had been handed the menu from another day.  Only a few days later another of our party got the wrong menu, so it was slipped to Wyona so that she could repeat the experience.  “I don’t know how that keeps happening,” said the young Phillipiino waiter, grabbing it from her and rushing to correct his mistake.

Last night none of us knew about one  menu item.   Wyona turned to our waiter.  “Baby Mizuna.  That is my choice.  What is it?”, Wyona asked, after he had carefully described everything else on the menu.

“I am sorry to have to tell you we have had to remove it from the menu.  Mizuna is Japanese spinach, and we have to replace it with regular spinach.” 

“Oh no, I would never have a Baby Mizuna salad replaced with regular spinach, I will have to choose something else,” she said to him.  She is so crazy.

After every meal, he asks how the service was.  All of us say perfect.  Wyona always says bad to him.  This is what perfect looks like:  9 utensils to start every meal – 3 at each side of the plate and 3 above.  More utensils are then brought, depending on what one’s order is.  On this point, Wyona came back to me after trying to book a tour on another cruise ship, which the cruise agent on the boat told her, is a cut above this boat, and that she will never be happy travelling any other way again if she travels this other line.  One crew member to every two guests.  I told Wyona that the shock of that would be too great.  Going from being the life-time crew member who serves 8 others, to the other end of the spectrum where someone serves you and your husband?  That shock would give a person a heart attack.  Better to cruise on the cheaper lines and find eternal happiness on the ocean.

A few days previously we had lunch with an Australian couple who had visited fellow cruisers in Portland  -- their first time to America.  Among their top five events there was a trip to Costco. 

“Yes, you can buy a hot dog and unlimited pop”, for $1.50.  And did they have poutine there?” Wyona asked, continuing, “Why did I ask?  They probably only have poutine at Costco in Canada.  Do try that when you come to visit us, but don’t be disappointed in the size of our sundaes compared to theirs and then with her hands they demonstrated the magnificent height of that American delight.” 

Yes, food – elegant on the Celebrity Soltice, memorable at Costco.

As Moiya, Wyona and I were looking at a Special Jewellery Event -- beads and a charm bracelet.  We continued our chat about Costco, about how when one of us goes there, we can be sure the two others have been there the day before and bought exactly the same item.  At the same time Wyona and I were ragging on Moiya.  Margaret is the one who pointed out first that we do this to each other, often.  Margaret thought it was a little mean.  The 3 of us collectively thought about why it is seen by the 3 of us as an act of love about which we take no umbrance and which the one being poked at takes the defense of being aloof to what the other two are saying.  Unless of course we burst out laughing.  Wyona and I didn’t even know we were poking at Moiya, but since we were alone in the shop with only the clerk we mocked for a long time and chattered until the clerk finally said to Moiya, “You are taking the brunt of the conversation today.”

Wyona turned to the clerk.  “Where are you from?”

 “Canada,” she said.  “I know you are from Canada too, for I heard the three of you talk about Costco.  It was making me lonely for one of their large muffins.” 

Hard to believe that someone on a cruise ship with food always within an arms reach, could be lonely for a Costco Muffin.

It is morning now. “Going around the corner of Yeman at 21 knots per hour”, says David, as he is waiting for Moiya to go to breakfast with him and watching channel 5 that shows the front of the ship and then a map of where we are.

“Go to the Sky View Lounge and check out the Captain’s Club Lounge,” I said to her. “We have been on the ship for so many days.  There is an exclusive breakfast event there every morning and I can’t work going there into my busy schedule.  You are on your way there.  Check it out and tell me later what you think.”

“You can’t trick me,” said Moiya. “ That is so far out of my way. Two floors up and then I have to walk across the whole ship since we are in the back and that venue is in the front?  And then I could never report back to you the lounge as you would have seen. Nope. You check it out yourself.”

Guess I might miss ever seeing the Exclusive Breakfast. I wish I could care about it, but I can’t.  I would rather blog.   

Arta