Day 99 - Thursday April 6

Port Suez photos
position at 7:00am: N29 15.28 latitude E32 43.29 longitude
temperature: 60F, 75% humidity, clear
distance since FLL: 32,051 miles
It was brisk on deck this morning as Clay walked. There were 60-80 km/h headwinds and only one other person made it on deck this morning for any length of time. Debbie slept in this morning and we had a late breakfast in Compass Rose. There were no raspberries left on the ship. This will be a long dry spell to Rome. Debbie had the double order of Swedish Pancakes. Clay was craving McDonald's Egg McMuffin, so he ordered 1 medium scrambled egg and 2 sausages and 2 pieces of white toast. He told Debbie about the craving after his weird order had been placed. She pointed out that all he needed to order was Eggs Benedict without hollandaise sauce and he could make a perfect substitute. Maybe next time.
The Captain in his 9am Vords of Visdom said that he had just heard that we would be picking up the pilot at 11am instead of the expected 10am. He said he hoped that turned out to be true since that time would still let us make our scheduled appointment to make the canal transit. He hoped there would be no more inshallahs because that would be more delays. (He actually used the word inshallah!) He said that if we had the pilot by noon, we would be OK for docking. He hoped for no further inshallahs after we left the dock as well. He said that if anyone had sailed the Suez Canal before they would know that you just show up and hope for the best and deal with whatever happens on its own schedule. Anyway, we seemed to have avoided any problems so far and appear to be on schedule for our Suez Canal transit early tomorrow.
When Debbie returned to the cabin, while Clay went to Roger's port talk on Kusadasi, Mishiel met her to tell her that the ship's supply of Caffeine-Free Diet Coke was gone. She had substituted plain Diet Coke and hoped it will be OK. Debbie told her OK. If Mishiel meant it the way she said it, Clay will have a long spell without his habit. Long enough to reacquire a caffeine addiction that it took him years to shake. Oh, well, such are the sacrifices of life onboard a ship.
The morning was at sea on the way to Port Suez where we docked around 12:15pm. This stop was primarily to allow peole to go overland to visit Cairo for the evening, catching back up with the ship in Port Said tomorrow. We opted to skip this trip, and instead to remain onboard so we could transit the Suez Canal, for symmetry with our earlier Panama Canal transit.
There was grilled ham & cheese in Compass Rose, so that is where we went for lunch. We skipped dessert and got cookies from the Coffee Corner and got ready to go ashore.
In an unexpected surprise for us, the ship offered a complimentary shuttle to the center of the town of Port Suez, but everyone was warned there was not much here. It turns out that it is a city of about 300,000. The shuttle dropped us off at a particular street, and the guide on the bus recommended very strongly that we not leave this street for our own safety. This particular street was very well patrolled by armed local police (both uniformed and non-uniformed) while we were there. There were almost as many police as passengers there. Our shuttle bus also had a police escort, and the later shuttles had armed guards. There was an armed perimeter around the dock with a couple of canine units as well. It is clear that the Egyptian government does not want any more mishaps with tourists. The country in general had lots of security check points and armed guards were everywhere.
We spent about 1 hour on the safe shopping street. We bought some Egyptian candy for $4USD. It was a real deal. We also bought 2 ice cream (sort of) cones for $1USD. The ice cream was sort of an icy fruit sorbet, but was good. We had strawberry and mango.
We got back about 4pm and walked through a little shopping strip that had been set up on the pier while we were downtown, but did not buy anything.
We left the dock around 5pm to take our place in anchorage so we can be in place for the canal transit tomorrow morning. We ate a quick meal in Compass Rose this evening so Debbie could do laundry afterwards. About 9:30pm, a very large fuel boat docked to us on our port side. They were really noisy during the docking. Today we got the news that we may actually be allowed ashore at Port Said tomorrow evening for our 2 hour stop there. We hope for another chance to go ashore at all even if it is only on a dock.
There is a lot of excitement onboard about the visit to Kusadasi, Turkey the day after tomorrow. We have booked a long tour that was not, of course, previously offered because we were originally scheduled to go to Libya. We will post a description of the tour later. We have been to Ephesus before, so we have chosen a different tour. We will keep our fingers crossed for a happy day. The tour is 6.5 hours and we will be docked here for 10 hours, so we should have time to revisit the port town itself also.
Port Suez photos