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.