Grand Africa Cruise - Sea Day

Day 18 – At Sea

Thursday, October 27, 2022

“Nothing behind me, everything ahead of me as is ever so on the road.                          Jack Kerouac

It was nice to get an extra hour of sleep last night and we woke up feeling refreshed.  After breakfast in the Neptune Lounge we headed for the theater for the first lecture by a guest lecturer of the cruise.

We had to get there early as the seats fill up early and we did make it in time to get decent seats.  The lecturer is Kate Ross who will be doing a series of lectures on Africa over the next month or two.  The lecture this morning is called “Nile River Cruise of Ancient Egyptian Monuments” and is about the ancient pharaohs and the pyramids and monuments they built for themselves along the Nile River.  It was very interesting and we enjoyed it, she is a very entertaining lecturer.

We decided to stay on after the lecture for Jeremy’s port talk covering Aqaba (for Petra), Jordan and Safaga, (for Luxor), Egypt.  He usually does only one a day, but tomorrow we will be going through the Suez Canal and there will be no activities.  His talk was very good as usual.

It was noon when we finished and we headed back to the room. I hadn’t downloaded and backed up the pictures we took in Crete yesterday and wanted to do that before lunch in the Lido.  

I spent the rest of the afternoon writing the blog for Crete (which seemed to take forever for some reason) while Val read and did some Facebook posts.  After finally finishing the blog I had a little time to relax and then it was time for dinner.  My luck ran out in the casino tonight (as I knew it probably would) and I quickly spent my evening’s gambling allotment.

We will be cruising through the Suez Canal tomorrow, but we are already anchored near the entrance waiting for our turn to pass through.  When we went out on the balcony, we could see the lights of many ships around us, which is similar to the entrance to the Panama Canal.  We are looking forward to tomorrow as this will be our first time through the Suez Canal.

We were surrounded by ships waiting to enter the Suez Canal.  The lights in the background are from Port Said, the gateway city to the Suez Canal.