It Seemed Like a Good Idea At the Time…

You are probably asking yourself why we keep doing this torturous traveling, especially after last January’s “Worst Cruise Ever” (see previous blog).  Maybe it is that Scandinavian guilt thing.  Or it could be hopefulness that the next trip would be so wonderful it would make up for the past ones.  Whichever.

Finally relaxing in our room
overlooking Taksim square.

View of Bosporus from our window

From our room on board in port at Istanbul

But in January, the idea of going to the Middle East, to see the wonders of where civilization started, seemed like a great idea.  And the pictures of the places we’d see, well, you’d want to go there too.  And, to top it off, our good friends from Florida thought it was such a good idea, they signed on for the adventure.  Pretty simple.

Me with the trip guide

made for us by our travel companion

Elaine and "special agent".  

Our "special agent" Elaine

Until the “guns of August”, as they say.  
We started hearing about unrest in the Middle East at the end of the summer.  Well, when has the Middle East ever been quiet for long?!  

Where does this cruise go that makes it so tempting?  It leaves from Istanbul.  We’ve been to Istanbul before and have to say it is one of our favorite world cities, urbane – a Middle Eastern Paris, if you will.  We looked forward to reacquainting ourselves with this gem – until they started rioting in Istanbul.  And that was the beginning.  (In fact, our hotel last night was in Taksim Square, where the rioting started!)  So we started getting a bit ruffled.

Then we were supposed to go to Egypt, not the Cairo part, but the Red Sea resorts part.  Except there was a travel advisory not to go anywhere in Egypt.  No one can go there.  Made us more than a little nervous.  Strike two.

I thought we might get out of going, get our money back. We found how hard that is.  Once the cruise line has your money – and they had our money in full in June – they must spend it or something. Because the cruise line yawned and told us too bad, they would take us to a few Greek islands like Lesbos, Patmos, Rhodes.  And we had to admit we were more than a little curious to see Lesbos, where legend has it that the term Lesbians comes from.  And Rhodes, well Bos read all this stuff about the Crusaders and Rhodes is steeped in Crusader lore.  Maybe… 

Next up Cyprus – the Greek part. Our travel agent told us the next spot to be cancelled would probably be Cyprus because of all the refugees from the war in Syria. The island is divided between the Greeks and the Turks, who legendarily hate each other.  Check—we are going to Cyprus.

Then the tricky part.  It was in September that everything started exploding. The eastern Mediterranean started filling up with American destroyers and submarines, Russian subs and destroyer, and even American aircraft carriers.  So many war like boats of various types from the US and Russia filled to the brim with missiles and other deadly things.  All aimed exactly where we were supposed to be going.  I wondered if they were setting up stoplights and traffic cops to direct ships like us, through the maze!  We thought, there, for sure, they will cancel the cruise.  And I breathed a sigh of relief!  Remember how I said they must have spent our money?

We are here.  Sitting in the midst of the Marmara Sea, heading to the Aegean Sea. On the cruise.  Now the war ships are gone and we are on OUR ship, the Voyager, which is determined to take us on this cruise, missiles or no!

When you are here in this part of the world, you have to go to Israel and we are doing that for 3 days.  Everyone tells us it is safe there.  “You’ll never feel safer,” they say.  But why, then, have they urged all Israelis to buy gas masks??

 Next stop: Jordan, where there are 20,000 American troops protecting Jordan and the over 1 million refugees from Syria.  I guess, since we are going anyway, it might be interesting and appalling as well, to see what war can do to a part of this world for those of us so protected in the US.

After Israel and Jordan, you ask??  Danger isn’t gone. Did any of you sea “Captain Phillips”, the movie?  Because our next adventure will be sailing down the Red Sea past the pirates.  But the cruise line assured us that won’t be a problem because they hire Israeli sharp shooters to defend the ship….

The rest of the cruise is a piece of cake!  We just sail past Yemen with all its Al Qaeda operatives and, once past that, stop next door in Oman.  There we can spend a few days playing “Lawrence of Arabia” in the sand dunes and, with a large heave of relief, our final stop is another UAE country that includes Abu Dhabi and Dubai.  The only “pirates” we may find there are the kind that sell you luxury items for large amounts of your money.  Preferable, don’t you think??

In any case, we fly home from Dubai and, if we make it through this trip, we will be so grateful to see our home again – and all of you!  But stay tuned, because each day we intend to let you know our impressions – tomorrow Lesbos.