Jordan Sukkot 2007

Sukkot (Tabernacles) is one of the Jewish holidays that is spread over a whole week so Irit has holiday from school and we can go somewhere on vacation during that week. The same thought occurs to several hundred thousand other Israelis whough which is why most flights from Israel and hotels and B&Bs in Israel are packed during that week.

Since I’m not wild about crowds I thought we might go to Jordan for a few days, not a popular holiday destination amongst Jewish Israelis (see previous post). It’s close, only a car ride away, and I’ve been thinking about Jordan for years. I had bought some guidebooks, I did some homework on the Internet and made some hotel reservations by phone. In retrospect most of these were unnecessary because most hotels in Jordan are rather empty during the month of Ramadan.

Anyway we set off from Haifa on Saturday morning with the car and within an hour we were at the Jordan River crossing point near Bet She’an in northeastern Israel. The crossing point was not very busy and the crossing took about 75 minutes including buying insurance for the car in Jordan and changing Israeli number plates to Jordanian one. We’ve been through this crossing point twice before (albeit not with a car) so most of the procedure was familiar. The officials on the Israeli side were indifferent and the Jordanian ones were welcoming if a little slow.

We drove down the main road that runs along the Jordanian side of the Jordan valley which runs through a series of poor towns and villages. This is definitely 3^rd world compared to Israel. Every 20 kilometres or so there is a checkpoint manned by the army. Occasionally they ask to see our passports (we show them our European ones), more usually when they see we are tourists, they wave us on. Towards the Allenby Bridge a new road leads off to the right which is blocked by heavily armed soldiers in grey uniforms, we continue on the old road. Soon we come to the start of the Dead Sea Highway and the turn off for the so-called Baptism site where Jesus was baptized by John. We leave our car in the parking lot and join a tour that goes by shuttle bus down to the edge of the Jordan River. At one point we see a “competitive” baptismal site on the Israeli side of the river, complete with the obligatory Israeli flag. Our Jordanian guide tells us that, not only is the Jordanian side the true baptismal site, but also that it is much cheaper to visit (8 Jordanian dinars = $11 compared to $100 which he claims it costs to visit the Israeli side (I very much doubt it). The other visitors with us on the shuttle bus include an attractive Lebanese lady banker who’s taking some time off after visiting the Amman branch of the bank she works for.

From the Baptismal site we drive a few kilometers down the Dead Sea Highway to the area of the plush Dead Sea hotels. We check out the Movenpick but find it uninterestingly luxurious and move on the Dead Sea Panorama above the Dead Sea. We have something to drink – the only other guests are an Indian family that lives and works in Amman. We then went to check out the Janna Spa , a beautiful Spa hotel with hot springs tucked away in the desert mountains. There too we find the hotel virtually empty. From the empty roads to the empty restaurants and hotels we are beginning to understand that, at least now, it is a very quiet period for tourism in Jordan.

Travelling to Jordan

We live in Israel, a country in the Middle East. Our closest neighbour is Jordan with whom we have the longest border. From the founding of the State of Israel in 1948 we were (formally) at war with Jordan until 1994 when a peace treaty was signed between King Hussein and Prime Minister Itzhak Rabin. At that time there were high hopes of a Middle East peace that everybody could profit from. Busloads of Israeli tourists “invaded” Jordan and Jordanian tourist operators built new hotels especially around Petra to accommodate the sudden new influx of tourists. But Jordan is the kind of place where Israelis would come once only and by 2000 the peace atmosphere had soured and all the new tourism dried up.

I went to Jordan the first time for a short day trip from Eilat to Aqaba in 1994. I took my daughters who were then 10 and 14 and didn’t feel comfortable in the Arab atmosphere. I felt fine but immediately saw that Jordan is no big deal. What I mean by that is that for the many years that Jordan was Israel’s enemy, it was pictured in Israeli conciousness as a big country with a powerful and competent army. Once again, the picture of the enemy over there was very different for the reality we encountered with our own eyes once we could visit freely for ourselves. We suddenly saw Jordan for what it is, a relatively poor, Middle Eastern country, underdeveloped by European standards, a far cry from the modern and highly Westernized Israel and therefore not really a potent enemy (in military terms) compared to Israel’s might.

I didn’t go again to Jordan until 2 years ago on my trip to India. At the time I was unable to get flight tickets from Israel to India at the time we wanted to travel, and a creative travel agent suggested we travel overland to Amman (it’s only a few hours) and take a flight from there to Delhi. It was an excellent idea – Amman Airport is pleasant and provincial and the Jordanian Airlines flight to Delhi was short and comfortable. More importantly it showed us that (contrary to popular perception amongst Israeli Jews) there’s nothing particularly frightening about traveling to Jordan. Israeli newspapers occasionally rate various countries for how anti-Semitic they are and Jordan regularly appears at the top of the list. Since over 50% of the population are Palestinian (i.e. refugees or descendants of refugees) that’s maybe not that surprising. On a personal level there was nothing in our short experience in Jordan which justified feeling uncomfortable.

Back to reality

In a few hours “our” cruise ship will dock at the port of Savona which we left 12 says ago. It seems like a year, so have we been transported into another world where we see the sea and the sun all day, visit different countries without having to pack our bags, we have time to read, sunbathe and blog, our room is tidied twice a day and we can eat as much as we like. I shall miss the Costa Romantica. It’s a long time since I’ve spent 12 days in such a special house with such intensive interaction with the crew. It’s not like that at a holiday hotel or resort.

It has been a very special and enjoyable vacation. Not one that I would have thought of before my Dad suggested it. But now I suspect that some of us are hooked. Most of us are talking about another cruise vacation some time. My Dad is talking of next year when he will be 96. Would we go on another Costa cruise? Well, we might…..the experience was very positive. The eternal question, when it arises, will be whether to try something new or to return to what we know and enjoyed. This cruise was a blind date for us but it worked out well.

While we were in Malaga, I picked up (at a bargain price) the 2005 edition of a Berlitz guidebook “Ocean Cruising” . Its review of Costa Cruises shows a known Anglo-Saxon cultural bias against things Continental or non-traditional cruising. I quote “ The [Costa] ships have a distinctive “European” feel to them, in their décor and manner of product delivery, which is very laid back. “. In fact the only harsh word I heard from any passenger to any member of staff was an American complaining that the English-speaking host was 3 minutes late for an appointment. If this is what American cruisers are like, then I’m proud to be considered laid back. The Berlitz guide continues “ The lifestyle on board is perceived to be Italian – lively, noisy with lots of love for life and a love of the casual to the nth degree”. “Although the “spit and polish” of fine service is missing, the staff are friendly and lively” .

The author is presumably a very proper English gentleman but our family is Middle Eastern and the lively family atmosphere suits us just fine. The Berlitz guide gives the highest rating for a cruise ship to the German Hapag-Lloyd’s “Europa” which is supposed to be very distinguished and refined. It would be interesting to try it out to taste the difference. See you there.

Hungarian professor from Verona

On one of the first days of the cruise I saw one of the ship’s officers in the buffet dining room at lunchtime. When I looked at his badge, it said “Ship’s surgeon – Professor such-and-such” . Strange, I thought. Not the surgeon bit. This is just a hangover from 18^th century naval terminology. In those days the only ships’ doctors were surgeons, that is to say, if there was anything wrong with any particular part of your body, they would cut it out or cut it off. Fortunately medicine, including ships’ medicine has progressed a bit since them. But seafarers are conservative types so they still call them surgeons.

No, the strange thing was the professor bit and his name. “Professor?….” I asked him quizzically. “Yes,” he replied, “I am the head of the Emergency Department at the University Hospital of Verona. Every year (during my vacation) I come to work for a month as a doctor on a ship.”

“But you are not Italian…” I continued to probe. “I am from Hungary. I came to Italy during the Hungarian Revolution in 1956”.

We shouldn’t need it but with 2 members of our group who are not exactly youngsters (88 and 95) we should be prepared for any problems. It’s comforting to know we have a Hungarian professor of Emergency Medicine on board.

Shore excursions

All the cruise companies organise shore excursions at the ports of call. In the case of Costa Cruises, since they passengers come from many countries, they have an additional challenge of organising excursions in the various languages.

There is information on the website on the excursions available for each port of call and they encourage passengers to pre-book excursions via the Internet. I did this but, in retrospect, it’s not a great idea. Pre-booked excursions cannot be changed after the first evening of the cruise and there’s no problem booking the excursions on board, best the day before. That way you can decide whether you really want to take an organised excursion, go off on your own or even(in the case of the elders) have a rest day and stay on the ship.

I haven’t taken organised tours anywhere for years preferring to tour independently but that, of course, requires more work and time to plan. I happen to enjoy that (and be quite good at it) but it doesn’t suit every one.

I went on a tour in Casablanca and Lanzarote and although each had their good points (in Casblanca the guide and the Hassan II mosque and in Lanzarote the camel ride and the volcanic park) that was enough for me. In Funchal (Madeira) Costa made the decision easier for us by cancelling the tour in English because too few people had signed up for it. They offered us some other tours, none of which seemed attractive so I suggested that we hire a car for one day in Madeira and do our own tour. This however was not trivial compared to my usual planning.

So where does a man go when he knows virtually nothing about Madeira? To the library of course, except that the modest Costa Romantica library was already closed for the day. But my predicament was dire, the Costa staff was understanding and a librarian on emergency duty arrived and photocopied some pages from a guide on Madeira in German for me. But booking a car was going to be tougher. It was already Saturday evening and we needed the car for this morning. Fortunately the ship has a satellite connection and I succeeded in theory in booking a car but I was rather doubtful that it would work.

I downloaded and printed a list of phone numbers of car rental agencies at started calling them early in the morning. I was the first off the ship at 08:00 and walked in the direction of the centre of town. The staff at the first car rental agency I found explained nicely that to have a car I should have booked 2 months before. I kept looking and finally got a cabriolet at an exorbitant price and headed back to ship to collect my group and we had a fun 6-hour self tour (including an excellent fish lunch) for less than the tours would have cost us.

On future cruises I’d probably make the effort in most places to bone up ahead of time, order a rental car and do our own excursion.

Two kinds of diet

I have learnt a lot about two kinds of diet on this cruise – one that I’m on and one that I’m not. The diet I’m on is an Internet diet. At home (where like most middle-class folks in the developed world) I have an ADSL (broadband) connection which provides me with all the Internet I can eat for a very reasonable monthly fee. While on ship I have several (all not ideal )alternatives:

- the Costa Internet terminals – cost $5 for 10 minutes for speeds reminding one of 33600 bps modems (if anyone can remember that far back) and neutered access that doesn’t enable copy/paste or multiple windows

- access from my laptop with a Thuraya satellite phone I have – cost $5 for each megabyte (I discovered that just loading a few Gmail pages already ate my first megabyte….) . Also the connection is very spotty to say the least, and I have to be up on deck in the wind for it to work at all

- access via GPRS from my mobile phone PDA (only in port or close to land) . Through my Israeli cellular provider, Orange, this would cost almost $10 /megabyte – with a Spanish SIM I got, it’s cheaper. But the screen is small and text entry and access are slow.

So I have to ration myself and suddenly I realize that I am on mailing lists I never read but never bothered to cancel. One becomes more selective and conscious of priorities. This can not be said for the diet that I’m not on on the cruise, namely food. You may have heard that on cruises they provide you with more food than even the greatest gluttons could eat and at this at almost every waking hour. I calculated that between 07:00 and 01:00 there are only 3 hours when you do not have free access to all the food you can stuff. This is a tragedy. Although some us can no longer eat the quantities we once could and most of us are aware (at least theoretically) of the health implications of unhealthy eating, we all (and I speak for all 1300 passengers on board) overeat.

Any economist will tell you that any resource which is not differentially priced (i.e. is “ free” or all included) will not be consumed optimally. So here we are all consuming suboptimally and then wondering about our waistlines when we get home. It is a long tradition that cruises provide all-you-can-eat as-many meals-as-you-can-manage included in the cruise price, but I, for one, would be happy if they changed that. I’m not necessarily suggesting that we should have to pay (money) for every meal but they should think up a way of making us aware of the ‘price’ of what we eat, even if it’s only the ‘price’ in calories.

Now if they would reverse priorities – providing unlimited high-speed Internet and priced food, that would be a thing. Costa, take note.

Overall impressions

We only have 3 days more of our cruise to go before we disembark at our originating port of Savona, so it’s time for some overall impressions of our cruise.

 

1)       It’s an incredible experience – not only to be travelling all kinds of places with my 95-year old father and an intimate family group but also for a beautiful ship to become our home for 12 days and to participate in an amazing operation like this.

2)       11 days is too long (for us) – at least in relation to the amount of visual stimulation we’ve had on this cruise – in retrospect I’d have preferred a cruise with more interesting ports of call and more scenery en route. I found what we saw of Morocco disappointing and I wasn’t bowled over by the Canary Islands either….but then we are spoilt. I’m no great fan of organised shore excursions (see separate item) but they are fairly classic touristic fare.  There are passengers of many nationalities (the somewhat noisy Italians are the biggest group) and there are 5 official languages on board. English speakers are definitely the minority.

3)       The service is excellent – efficient, pleasant and courteous. Most of the client service personnel (waiters, chambermaids…) are from South and South East Asia and all speak English well.

4)       The food is good – not gourmet but good with a lot of variety and unlimited quantities. This includes pizza and pasta as you’d expect on an Italian line.

5)       The cabins are above average in size, very roomy and well appointed.  Décor and furnishing throughout are modern European and pleasing.

6)       Costa is a family cruise line – there are lots of activities for children of all ages and prices for children are very attractive so accordingly many European families (especially Italians) came with children. We liked the atmosphere but it might not suit an older, more couple-oriented cruising clientele.

7)       The entertainment and activities for adults are adequate – probably deficient by the standards of American cruisers.

 

Overall, I’d give it 4/5 which is more than the Fodor’s cruise guide gave the Costa line. We’ll have to try one of the good American cruise lines to compare.

 

Suggestions to Costa for improvement:

• The library (although or maybe because it has books in 5 languages) is rather poor.  The cost of getting a wider selection of books would be peanuts
• Internet on board should be cheaper, faster and more accessible (e.g. Wifi or LAN cable access for laptop users – I was not the only one….)
• Films!  I was surprised that there were no movies shown on board.  There is an almost unused conference room that would serve well. Alternatively install DVD players in the cabins and set up a DVD library.

Communications on board

I am a communications freak so for other communications freaks here’s a rundown of my experiences aboard the cruise ship Costa Romantica:

Phone calls

Cellular coverage: In principle only on or near land but Costa has an arrangement with TIM, Italy’s largest mobile operator, where they have TIM cellphone coverage on board at a cost of 2 Euro /min for incoming and outgoing calls. In addition Costa satellite phone service from one’s cabin at the bargain price of $5/minute. I don’t pay prices like that….

I had bought a small Thuraya phone in Dubai last December and thought that this cruise would be the perfect opportunity to test it out. Call costs are reasonable by satellite standards ($1.50 /minute – comparable to the roaming costs of the Israeli mobile operators) but coverage turned out to be spotty at best.

Internet

As reported in a separate item, Internet access on the ship was very basic so I got used to doing the minimum necessary on board and waiting for port stops for the heavier stuff (uploading photos, uploading and downloading email). On ship I checked out the places in the next port where I could get free WiFi (wireless internet) access and, once in port, I would go hunting for my fix.

Once or twice I managed while at sea to connect my laptop to the Internet through the Thuraya GmPRS satellite service but the connection was not very reliable and very slow.

GPS

It’s not really communications but I want to brag a bit….Ever since almost getting lost after dark in the Negev (desert in Israel) a few years ago I promised myself to have GPS (Global Positioning System) device whenever I don’t know exactly where I am. But coordinates without maps aren’t very helpful so I turned to my mate Admiral (retired) Shabtai who supplied me with some marine navigation software with maps. In the beginning it was quite fun tracking where we were but since I came to the conclusion that the ship’s captain knew where to go, I gradually desisted and went over to other games. Oh well…

Schwer zu seien a Yid (oder Israeli)

There’s a well known Yiddish saying “It’s hard to be a Jew”.  These days it’s maybe not great being Israeli either, what with academic boycotts and the like in the air. Here’s our story:

 

We are Israelis, living in Israel. Six of our group of seven on this cruise have double nationality (German or British). Lilly does too but she neglected to renew her European passport in time for the cruise. Our cruise includes two stops in Morocco which gives free entry to Europeans but requires visas for Israelis. Since there is no Moroccan embassy in Israel the procedure is that a visa waits at the (air)port of entry. It is unusual for Israelis to come by ship so this procedure is not known to the cruise lines (at least not to Costa). They have a simple rule that Israelis are not allowed to leave the ship while in Morocco.

 

When we registered for the cruise we put down our Israeli home addresses and this resulted in us being told by the Costa immigration officer on board that none of us (including the European passport holders) would be allowed to disembark in Morocco. It required considerable explanation to sort this out and we were left with the case of Lilly for whom a visa was supposed to be waiting in Casablanca port. Unfortunately the visa logistics didn’t work and Lilly had to stay on board ship while the rest of us went on excursions.

 

It felt very uncomfortable to be considered like lepers. We don’t think that being Israeli is a crime.

An incredible operation

If one thinks about it, running a cruise ship like the one we’re on right now is a pretty incredible operation. 1400 passengers who have be fed, watered and entertained 18 hours a day while keeping this 20,000 ton floating hotel afloat and sailing in the right direction, 600 crew to do all that and they have to be maintained too. The crew that serves the passengers has at least 4 types of uniform and they are all impeccably clean, groomed and attired. Just think of the laundry they must have somewhere inside the ship, not to say carpenters, plumbers, computer engineers and more. How many kilos of white shoe polish do they consume every year? And we are on one of Costa’s smaller ships – the bigger ones take up to 2800 passengers!

 

The ship is kept spotlessly clean – I see the cleaning crews at night – to the extent of hosing and scrubbing down the decks and outside of the cabins every day. All food is freshly prepared – there are over 100 cooks and Costa claims to have been awarded the RINA “Green Star” award for environmental correctness in disposing of the ships’ waste.

 

There's no place like (Costa) home

We’ve now been on the Costa Romantica for four whole days and it’s become like home. It’s amazing how adaptable we humans are, and how much we need a “home” as a safe place, a frame of reference. We have stopped so far at 3 ports and there’s always a sense of relief when we see the ship again as we approach the port from an excursion. It’s like home, it will be tough getting used to real home again , including not having one’s room tidied twice a day.

An American diplomat who was posted to the Philippines explained to his family when they arrived in Manila that they would have servants , something unknown in America. He said “It takes only minutes to get used to the good life. It may take half a lifetime to get used to afterwards to normal life at home”.

Functional Albert

This morning we arrived in Santa Cruz de Tenerife in the Canary Islands, and Irit and Einat went of on a tour “In search of whales and dolphins”. Albert, Lilly, my girls and I met for breakfast on deck 10 with a view of the town. Since Lilly and Albert were on a tour yesterday in Lanzarote, we had decided that they would have an easy day today without any excursions.

Nevertheless I suggested that we go to town for lunch in some nice restaurant and then back to the ship. My Dad, quite typically, asked “What’s the purpose? We can have lunch on the ship.” Which certainly we can. There is enough food on board to feed the whole of Biafra every mealtime. It’s not that he’s looking to save (nobody who wants to save would invite 7 people for a cruse like this…..). It’s just he couldn’t see what is the functional purpose of going to town for lunch. Fortunately for the rest of us hedonists, no purpose is required. Enjoyment is quite enough………

I asked my Dad whether he would like to join us on a tour of the cruise ship's kitchens. "What for?", he asked,"the food is perfectly good....."

Would I cruise again?

Irit and my girls asked me today whether I would want to go on another cruise after this experience. We’re still learning of course but here are my reflections at this juncture (4 days into our first – 11 day cruise).

 

Once the excitement of being in a huge floating hotel/holiday camp has worn off, the bits I enjoy most are the views from the ship of the shoreline and the ports we enter and leave, and the family experience. So for a next cruise I’d choose a cruise which sails close to an impressive shoreline.  I imagine that Alaska or northern Scandinavia might fight that bill. There’s also the aspect of tasting places that one might not otherwise visit. It’s fun to go to sleep in one country and wake up in another – like on overnight international trains.

 

We are here in an intergenerational second-family constellation and the nice thing about a cruise is that it offers many opportunities to be together while leaving enough possibilities for people to do their own thing. In that sense it’s a bit like Club Med. I haven’t been to one of those for almost 20 years but I imagine that the basic formula hasn’t changed. It might be fun doing a cruise once in a large family group although the only way I can imagine that being possible financially is by finding a last-minute deal with enough space for the whole group.  I’d definitely like to cruise once in a suite and I believe I would enjoy a cruise where one could meet interesting people. That cruise would be one where just Irit and I go and such a cruise would have to be chosen very carefully. It would probably be on a smaller ship more couple than family oriented.  And yes, I would be happy for better Internet connectivity on a future cruise although I and my daughters are not doing so badly, also in this regard.

Nightlife in the Atlantic

It’s 3 a.m. and out of almost 1400 passengers with us here on the Costa Romantica ship, I seem to be the only one awake. At least the only one in any of the public areas. I don’t know how it is on other cruise ships but nightlife here is very quiet. I woke up shortly after 1 a.m, left our cabin around 2.a.m. and was sure I would catch some of the ship’s nightlife – the disco, the bars – but all is quiet. The only person I can find to talk to is an Indian security guard from Bombay. He’s been with Costa since 2001, before that he worked for 11 years in the hotel industry in Dubai.  He likes the Northern European cruises best.   He confirms for me that the increased ship’s motion is due to us having passed through the Straits of Gibraltar into the Atlantic (we are now steaming down the Moroccan coast towards Casablanca).

 

The ship’s rolling motion was definitely one of the reasons I woke up, last night’s Gala dinner may be another.  Just as I thought things were calming down, we have a new challenge – the sea. I always thought I have good sea legs – I have vague memories of traveling with my parents when I was about 10 years old to Israel (Haifa) from Genoa on a Zim passenger ship (Zim sold those at least 20 years ago….) and my Dad and I were the only passengers to turn up for a meal – everyone else felt unwell.

 

Meanwhile it is me who is feeling it here, we’ll see how the others take it. I suspect Irit will be sensitive – she already mentioned the ship’s motion yesterday when I didn’t feel it at all.  My security guard friend tells me that the ‘worst’ is on the leg from Tenerife to Funchal (Madeira) when we cross the Gulf of Lions. I’ll have to check it out. Lilly and Albert probably won’t feel a thing. They don’t make them like that anymore.

 

Sleeping again

There’s so much to tell but not time to write….. so some of the reports may be delayed. We have been on board ship for all of 2 days but it feels like a year already.  We have been through several phases – first there was amazement at the size of it all and then confusion and frustration – learning where is what and how it all works. There were various crises – one related to Lilly’s visa for Morocco (more of that in a separate item) and one related to the shore excursions.  But things are fine now – one of the crew members told me that the first days are often a bit chaotic.

 

Albert and Lilly sailed fine through all this – they are made of tougher material than us younger folks. My way of coping is to learn and I was up early in the morning learning the ship and figuring things out for myself. I have no complaints against the cruise company – in fact I think , in general, they are well organized but for someone who’s never been on a cruise before (that’s all of us) it’s rather confusing at first.

 

In a separate item, I’ll try and review the cruise as clearly and objectively as possible, and I welcome your comments and questions.  

 

There was a lot for me to learn and sort out in the first day and a half and the responsibility of our group’s happiness weighed heavy on my shoulders. I would wake very early in the morning after very few hours of sleep, and I was running around the whole day.  But today things are much calmer and I can recover a bit – I was already sleeping very badly before we left Israel worrying that everything with Albert, Lilly and the girls would work out alright.

 

1st leg - from Alitalia to Barcelona

As our Alitalia plane approached Milan, we saw quite heavy clouds ahead and the plane banked to the right. My Dad, who was a pilot for the British air force in World War 2 said that the pilot was taking action to avoid the cloud. Personally I believe that our approach was determined by a computerized instrument landing approach, rather than a fly-by-wire approach but I let it be. The more amazing thing is how much my 95 year-old-Dad is in complete control and feeling as if he was 30 years old again.

From Milan’s Malpensa airport we were soon in a rented car on our way to the hotel I had booked in Varese, some 25km from the airport. I had learnt the route (of course) and generally have a very good sense of direction. This didn’t stop my Dad, still “in control” at the end of a long day of asking me “Do you think you know where you’re going? “ . Well, it turned that I did and we spent an excellent night at a beautiful old-fashioned hotel. Irit and I still went for a walk in the town which was full of young well-dressed (and some very handsome) Italians enjoying their holiday and the weekend. I slept badly at night - I too, it seems, have to be in control (like father, like son) and monitored the girls’ departure from Israel (I was worried that their flight would be delayed and that they might miss the boat – literally. ) Their plane took off at 08:00, I was reassured and we had an uneventful drive to our port of embarkation at Savona, near Genoa.

We drove into the port to the huge Costa Cruises terminal, the girls caught up with us fast and by 14:00 we were boarding. There was quite a bit of walking and climbing stairs but neither Lilly or Albert wanted any help. We found our cabins, ate in a crowded buffet restaurant and went to rest. The ship departed more or less on time and at 19:15 we all met in the main restaurant for dinner at a table for our group of 7. We all went to sleep early.

Dawn the next morning was beautiful, and we all met for breakfast at 9:30. Lunch today was early because the ship was approaching Barcelona with the tours scheduled to depart at 13:00. The tour and disembarkation procedure seemed chaotic but actually wasn’t and Irit, Lilly and Einat went off for their tours. I went into Barcelona independently and at 18:00 we sailed of for our next destination. End of first day and first port of call.

Arrival in Barcelona

Several years have passed since my last report on flight to Italy and right now I have an opportunity to send this report (from Barcelona) but no time to write it. So just the briefest of status reports:

 

We all arrived safely on the ship and are now in Barcelona.  Albert and Lilly are doing fine. Irit, Daphnie, Tami and Einat seem are basically fine but a bit overwhelmed on uneasy with the organisation/disorganisation of things aboard ship and the shore excursions. I’m very well and very busy as tour leader and general explainer and calming down guy.

 

Tomorrow we have the whole day at sea and I hope to send reports from Casablanca. Meanwhile take a look at my photos from the cruise at http://www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157600921154352/detail  

 

Asta lavista!

Lift Off

I write these lines in the plane to Milano and by the time they’re on the blog us four seniors will be in our hotel in a small town called Varese north west of Milan.  Our journey started at 11:30 in Ramat Golda with a send-off from Yoav, a growing Shiri and Nika. First stop was Elisha Towers to pick up Albert and then Lilly from Maon Re’ut.  Lilly forgot her spectacles in the room but realised it when the taxi had driven off so by  the time we had resolved that we were running 8 minutes behind schedule and Albert was shaking his head. Another small delay on the Haifa-Tel Aviv highway when another driver hailed us down and told us that he had seen a blue plastic bag fly out one of the suitcases on the car’s roof.  Irit started speed-walking back along the highway while the taxi driver drove at least 1 km in reverse! But we could find nothing and moved on.  Our taxi-driver Hanan, an Arab (actually a Bedouin) from the village of Ibtin near Haifa was pleased to hear our stories from Dubai and Oman and my stories from Cairo.  Being an Arab (that’s the way racial profiling goes in Israel) he was pulled over by the security people at the entrance to Ben Gurion airport but the check was soon over. Since we Jews are never pulled over (and Arabs almost always are) Irit and I felt more disturbed by this than Hanan, who is obviously used to it.

 

In spite of all these little delays we arrived at the still new and shiny Terminal 3 building of Ben Gurion airport exactly at the time I had fixed with Daphnie to meet us. In spite of my otherwise precise preparations, I had forgotten to print out our electronic tickets. It turns out, however, in this electronic age, the paper copy is just for the psychological comfort of the passenger – the airline doesn’t need it one bit.  We had 7 suitcases weighing a total of 120 kilos – we had decided to take the girls’ suitcases with us so to save them time in their potentially tight transfer tomorrow. Alitalia wanted to charge us 20 kilos overweight (instead of 40) but the diplomat Irit charmed them into letting us off with a caution.  By now we were aware that our flight would be almost 2 hours delayed and that we wouldn’t get anything to eat on the plane till dinnertime. So, with time to kill and stomachs to fill, we waddled along through passport control and the duty free fountain to the less than glorious food court. Since Israel is a very religious country and the food suppliers want to be able to supply their Orthodox Jewish customers, many of the food stalls were closed and the only one open – Macdonald’s did burgers but no fries and various other concessions to Orthodox Judaism.  But some of our group – Savta (grandma) Lilly - have survived the Holocaust and others have the Holocaust in their bones so finding food on a Shabbat in Terminal 3 was not ultimately an insurmountable task.  After the obligatory window shopping in the so-called duty free shops we waddled along to the departure gate and were seated in the plane by 17:30. We were mentally prepared for take off when the captain shared his woes with us about air traffic congestion over Europe and told us we would have another hour to wait. In practice it was less and we’re due to land at Milano’s Malpensa airport at 20:45 local time. I’ve booked a car from Hertz and we’ll be staying the night in the nicest hotel (with atmosphere) that I could find in a 25 km radius from the airport, in a small town called Varese.

Comments and questions here הערות ושאלות כאן

For many of you this may be the first time you've used a blog, so here are a few hints. At the bottom of each item (also called a 'post' in computerese) you see a line like this:

Posted by David Lisbona at 10:19 0 comments Links to this post

If you click on the word "comments", a window will open enabling you to write us a comment or a question. This can be in any language. We look forward to hearing from you.

אם זו הפעם הראשונה שאתם משתמשים ב"בלוג", אז תדעו שזה מדיום לא רק לסיפורים ותמונות שלנו אלא גם לתגובות שלכם. בתחתית כל סיפור תראו שורה כזאת

Posted by David Lisbona at 10:19 0 comments Links to this post

לחיצה על המילה comments תאפשר לכם לשלוח לנו הערה או שאלה – אפשר בעברית כמובן. נשמח לשמור איתכם על קשר.

Pictures and maps

To see where we are anytime click here and scroll down to the bottom of the page. The map on the right shows the position of the ship on Friday (still in Greece) making its way towards Savona, our port of embarkation (see green circle at top left) on Sunday afternoon.........


As soon as we get going, and if we have Internet connections, you can see photos from the trip at www.flickr.com/photos/dlisbona/sets/72157600921154352 .

Land ahead

From the Costa Romantica's webcam (web camera) , you can just see land ahead.

Costa Romantica

The romantic name of our cruise ship is Costa Romantica.

Technical Chart

Built in	1993
Refurbished in	2003
Passenger Capacity	1,344 (Double Occupancy)
Number of Crew	596
Total Cabins	678 (6 for Handicapped Guests)
Tonnage	53,000 t
Length	722 feet
Beam	102 feet
Decks	13 (11 for Guests Use)
Cruising Speed	18.5 Knots

From the Fodor's website:

Fast Facts

10 passenger decks

Dining room, buffet, pizzeria

In-cabin safes, in-cabin refrigerators

2 pools

Fitness classes, gym, hair salon, 4 hot tubs, sauna, spa

7 bars, casino, 2 dance clubs, library, showroom, video game room

Children's programs (ages 3-17)

Dry cleaning, laundry service

Computer room

Overview

Public areas clustered on four upper decks are filled with marble and furnished with sleek, contemporary furnishings and modern Italian artworks. The effect is vibrant, chic, and surprisingly restful.

Lounges and bars are sweeping and grand - the Lido areas for sunning and swimming are expansive.

Restaurants

The single formal restaurant serves open-seating breakfast and lunch and has two assigned seatings for dinner. Breakfast and lunch are also available at the Lido buffet, with seating either indoors or outdoors, where a grill is set up at lunch for hot dogs and hamburgers. Dinner buffets are scheduled for certain nights during the cruise, as are traditional midnight buffets. Both a pizzeria and a patisserie serve snacks throughout the day, and 24-hour room service is available, although there is a charge for certain items.

To see where we are and the look ahead (webcam) , go here

Cruise itinerary

By popular demand, here's the itinerary of our cruise..

Stops in Barcelona, Casablanca (Morocco), Agadir (Morocco) , Lanzarote (Canary Islands), Tenerife (Canary Islands), Madeira and Malaga before returning to Savona in northern Italy.

You can track our progress on http://www.costacruise.com/B2C/USA/Shopping/Ships/RO/default.htm - see the map at the bottom of the page.

I had a dream

I'm not sure my father knows that Martin Luther King had a dream on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial in August 1963 and, to be fair to Reverend King, I'm not sure my Dad's dream is quite that important.

But he's my Dad and he's usually no dreamer. So when he got into my car one day a few months ago at the ripe age of 95 and said "I had a dream last night" we sat up. His dream was that he would invite us for a cruise in the Mediterranean. Some dream for a 95-year old and what's more, he specified that he wanted a cruise with at least 2 ports of call on the North African coast. There aren't many like that nowadays, especially in the summer but after hours on the Internet I found a cruise run by Costa Cruises, an Italian line, the biggest in Europe and owned by Carnival lines. A few more hours on the Net and I found that the best price I could get for this cruise was through a specialised American agency CruiseValue. The booking was made, the money paid and all we had to do was to wait a couple of months and cross our fingers that everybody (we also have an 88year old participant) would make it. We had a fright when Lilly fell out of bed 2 weeks ago (it's not so funny when you're 88 years old) but she's recovered and so we're scheduled for lift-off on Saturday. Keep your fingers crossed for us! I'll keep you posted....