All good things must come to an end. But our memories will never end. Nor will our appreciation for this opportunity. We have fulfilled so many dreams. Dreams that started when we saw faraway places in school books. Dreams reinforced by a life time of new events recorded in newspapers magazines and TV. And, dreams enhanced by so many movies. We have been there and we thank you for making it possible.
One last cathedral. It is build in the style of the English and French cathedrals we have seem. There are beautiful massive structures for choirs right in the middle of the cathedral. So that most of the people cannot see the main alter. I think most of the services are small enough so that the people sit between the choir stalls and the main alter, but I’ll bet that Easter finds some people without a view of the proceedings. The cathedral is beautiful. It takes some concentration to not think “another church”. They each deserve praise.
To get to the cathedral, we wind our way through narrow mid evil streets. There is always something special about walking through these streets where so many have walked before us. Plus, you don’t need to worry about cars.
I kept trying to get a picture of the yellow and white bicycles. Apparently, you can lease a bike for 30 Euros a month. This entitles you to ride a bike for two hours a day. The intent is to give you a way to commute to work and avoid the traffic. A bike is easier to move through traffic than a car or scooter. I don’t think you get the same bike each day. I think you go outside and take the first bike you see and then leave it wherever you finish your day. The tour guide asks if we know what they call these bike commuters: Organ Donors. Apparently, they have no helmet laws and the bikers weave their way through the heavy traffic. Anyway, I never go the picture, but I somehow managed to remember the story.
I did get a picture of a mail slot. Not just any mail slot, but one with a message. Like our hare and tortoise story, this mail slot tells a bird and tortoise story. Steady gets the best results. No offense to airmail, this slot was built well before the advent of airmail.
Then we see the Blessed Family Church designed by Gaudi. It is only about one third completed. This is breath taking. They are building like mad because the Pope is coming to consecrate the church this summer. I don’t think that they hope to complete it, just complete more of it. The tour guide offers that due to Latin heritage, they never finish anything on time.
And, then the guide points out this house designed by Gaudi – emphasis on the “di”. Wow, she got our attention. As usual, pictures from a bus window do not do the building justice, but trust me, it was memorable.
They pretty much kick you off the ship around 8:30 in the morning. Our flight doesn’t leave until 4:00 in the afternoon. The challenge is to get us and our luggage to the airport at the same time. And, we do not want to sit at the airport for 8 hours. The easiest way to do this is to book a tour of Barcelona.
The tour guide does her best to point out interesting landmarks and buildings. She is very knowledgeable and tells us all the dates and people involved. Soon I understand that in Barcelona, the architects are the “thing”. We are not told which bishop or king built something, we are told who designed the building.
We see lots of Olympics sites. And again, we are told who designed them.
See the Christopher Columbus Statue and old building pictures.
With all due respect, this poor guide is competing with the Rome and Egypt for limited space in our brains.
We arrived in Malta around 11:00 in the morning. Normally, we arrive while it is still dark or at least barely light. It is nice to be able to stand on our balcony and see the fortress.
Malta is the busiest port we have seen. There are all kinds of ships small and large. There are many fancy yachts. During the day, we saw more yacht harbors.
St. Paul was ship wrecked on Malta. Did you know that Malta is a Christian country? Well, it is. The church’s are beautiful. And, there are 367 churches on the islands (Malta is 5 islands).
We take a bus to Mdina. Yes, I spelled it correctly. One of the first things we notice is the horses. During the day, we see horses trotting around the city. Mostly, they are taking tourists that are not on a bus tour. Did I say trotting. They move out. And if you are in the way, you better move. The cars are only slightly more considerate. There are only a couple hundred people that live in Mdina. It is a walled fortress city. I think the residents would be just as happy if there weren’t any tourists. They shouldn’t live in such a quaint place. We can’t be expected to control ourselves.
There is a grand entrance to Mdena. The city was destroyed in an earthquake in the very early 1700’s. In fact, most of the construction on the island was destroyed. The Knights of St. John are often called the Knights of Malta. They defended Malta against the invading Ottomans and were victorious. Their victory turned the war. They decided to stay in Malta. Napoleon drove them out. The Knights of St. John still exist. They are a charitable organization.
The Knights lived by the port – not in Mdena. The Mdena folks did not like the Knights. After the earthquake, the Knights rebuilt Mdena at the Knight’s expense. Then the Mdena citizens liked them.
This entrance is relatively new. There was an old wooden drawbridge about 20 feet to the left of the pretty bridge.
One of these pictures is of the floor. As you can see by the condition of the pictures, they are marble mosaics. Some mark a buried person. Others simple honor a person buried elsewhere. Nobody can be buried in the churches any more.
A second picture shows the alter. Linda and I agreed that these churches are much better designed than the old churches of England and France where the people sit so far away from the alter, they can’t see what is going on.
This picture shows a Temporary wooded façade that is built for lent. It looks like marble. The guys were working on it while we were there.
I have attached a sign showing the entrance to the catacombs. I could not get the camera to work inside the catacombs. The catacombs were used by the Romans. The put dead people down there. They also had big death parties down there to celebrate the transition of the dead to a better place. Humm, sounds familiar. Apparently the smell was pretty awful.
Can you see the small bird cage on the side of the building. Apparently, they put finches in the cages. The guide told us that they would be put there while the owner cleaned the cage. A couple of minutes later, we saw a man eating lunch at an outdoor café. He was holding one of the small cages with a bird in it.
I think the name of this church was the Assumption of Mary Church. It has a huge dome. And, it was built without scaffolding. In fact, so the parishioners could continue to go to church, it was built over the top of an existing church. People just kept going to the small church while the new one was constructed above them.
During WWII, the Nazis bombed Malta. Three bombs fell near the church while there were three hundred people in the building. Two hit just outside the church and failed to explode. The third bomb pierced the dome and also failed to detonate. Hard to argue that this is not a miracle.
Here are a couple more pictures of the Church. I don’t know if all the churches in Malta are this beautiful, but the two we saw and some pictures I saw of a third Church suggest they are.
Last night, we were fed a 10 meal of the day. The entire buffet area contained chocolate deserts. Anything you can imagine was chocolatized. Most of it was edible. There were several Chocolate sculptures. I think they could be eaten, but I was afraid to ask. As you can see, photograph’s were allowed, no encouraged.
Tomorrow they will drag us kicking and screaming off the ship. As I understand it, we will not be fed every couple of hours any more. What will we do? Well, they have a tour for that. We will be driven around on a bus with our luggage. Then a couple of hours before our flight, we will be deposited at the airport with our luggage. Then it is off to London where we will spend a night before catching the transatlantic flight to San Francisco. Stay tuned for 4 hours in Barcelona.
We wanted to let you know that there is good weather today. We have had several nice days. We only mentioned the horrible weather in Rome. Can you see Linda on our balcony? She is a “dot” in the second picture. The idea was to give you some perspective. We are living on the highest part of the ship.
If the Pyramids were not enough, they took us to the sphinx. Wow, it was about the size of a football field. Of course, the Sphinx was buried in sand for thousands of years. One day a king fell asleep. He had a dream that there was something under where he was sleeping. In the dream, the Sphinx asked him to uncover him. When he awoke, he ordered one of his soldiers to start digging and there it was.
After the Pyramids and Sphinx, we went to a very special lunch. It was at a new hotel that had been a palace. It was very nice and our tour guide was very proud of it.
The hotel had a band playing as we walked up the stairs. We were moving and in a crowd, but you can see the lady in the Egyptian clothes at the top of the stairs.
After lunch, we drove back to Alexandria. We did not know it, but we had an extra person on our bus. He was a policeman. With him on board, we were exempt from the speed limits. There were four or five buses going back to the NCL ship. There was a spare bus in case one of the buses had a problem. All of this was to make certain that we got back to the ship by 5:30 for a 6:00 pm departure. Our driver honked his horn a lot at cars and trucks not going fast enough. They reluctantly pulled to the right so we could go by. This guy brought new meaning to tailgating. Anyway, mid way through our journey, another policeman was standing in the road in front of us. He forced the bus to stop and was telling him that they had exceeded the speed limit. Our policeman explained that he was on the bus so that they could exceed the speed limit. The other policeman argued. Our policeman told him to shut up and drove right by him. Of course all this was in Arabic, but the tour guide told us what had happened after we were on our way again. I guess they will sort it out later.
While on the bus, the first day, the tour guide took orders for silver and gold cartouche jewelry. A cartouche contains a person’s name. That’s right, your name in hieroglyphics. By that evening the all the special cartouches had been made. We could pick them up and pay for them.
The next day, the same process was repeated for custom cartouche shirts. You order the shirts and they embroider them on your choice of shirt color and style with your name. This was unbelievable.
I was so tired last night, I don’t think I included very much information with the pictures. Allow me to elaborate. Egypt has a lot of poverty. Many of the buildings are modern day ruins. You can see new construction right next to a collapsed building. It makes you wonder if the new building will soon join the neglected and deserted building next to it. Egyptians do not borrow money to buy a home. They save their money until they can afford a basic house structure. The structure will have corner posts and floors and ceilings. It may be three stories high, but only have walls and windows on the bottom story. They will then save enough money to put walls on the second story. Then at some later day put walls and windows on the third story. Many of the corner posts have rebar sticking out of the top. It looks like they are allowing for an additional story. The truth is that they are manipulating the tax system. Unfinished buildings were not taxed. So, all buildings were incomplete. The government recently changed this and all buildings are taxed whether finished or not.
You see lots of laundry drying out the windows. Even in upper and middle class homes, you see the laundry. In some of the poorest houses, you might see beautiful tapestry rugs drying. That is just how you do the laundry. And it suggests to me that they may have nice things in houses that look very bad from the outside. Along these same lines, notice all the satellite dishes. They have lots of televisions. So, maybe they are not destitute, but making choices.
The day we arrived in Cairo, it looked like it was foggy. It was a dust storm. The dust storm deposits silt everywhere. Nearly all the houses look dirty. The dust storms make it very difficult to keep you house clean. According to our guide, this is also true for the inside of houses. The dust comes through the windows and settles on the furniture. I wondered how clean all that laundry was going to be by the time it was dry. They cannot escape the dirt.
Let’s talk about garbage. It is common to see the banks of the canals and rivers strewn with garbage. They obviously do not have a recycling program. We saw thousands of plastic and aluminum containers on the tops of houses, in the streets and along the canals. We were told that in one section of Cairo, the government made it against the law to put garbage in this one irrigation canal. The people insisted, so the government is replacing the canal with a large pipe and covering it with grass and plants. All this because the people living there refused to stop throwing their garbage in the canal. Even at the pyramids, you had to walk carefully through the plast bottles, aluminum cans, chicken bones, etc.
Let’s talk about Egyptian salesmen. The moment you get off the bus, they approach you with trinkets for sale. They might have a book of postcards or a guide book. They might have cast pyramids, stuffed animals, bowls, goblets, etc. There are also rows of guys with a tarp with more treasures. Prices are very negotiable. One item Linda wanted started at $25. Just as we were walking away, he accepted by offer of $10. If you encourage them at all, they will follow you. At the Valley of the Kings, you ride a Disney like tram to the top of the hill. They were actually hanging onto the outside of the tram trying to sell you stuff. There are people in uniform who look like they are there to control things. Actually, they are just selling their services – take your picture or advise you on how to take the best picture. We had one man with a camera who indicated he was from NCL. He took our picture on a camel. By the time we finished lunch, he had the developed picture in a nice folder and was waiting outside the hotel. It was priced $10. He accepted $5.
Let’s talk camels. We had been cautioned on the ship. A camel guy will offer a camel ride for $10. Then tell you it costs $50 to get down. Our guide yelled at the head camel guy for a while and negotiated a standard fee for all that were interested on the bus. The price was $10 per person. That included up, down and a 50 yard ride. Our guy insisted on using my camera to take our picture and then insisted this was extra. It cost me $5 each for the photo session.
There are beggars - children. There are those who just look sad. Others offer a paper that contains the hieroglyphic alphabet. You can get up to 10 for a dollar. In Mexico it is chiclets. In Egypt it is alphabet papers. It is very difficult to say no, but we were warned that if we encouraged them it would get worse.
One person told us that we did not need to worry about thieves. Stealing is not a part of their culture. However, we were also encouraged to have a second wallet. Keep small money in the second wallet and only open that wallet when making purchases. Recently an NCL passenger had opened his full wallet and it was quickly stolen. So much for the culture.
I had two odd circumstances. At the Valley of the Kings, there was a guy in a uniform offering to allow me to go into an roped off area to take a picture. He was actually somewhat insistent that I go there and take the picture. I didn’t do it. He just seemed too insistent. He may have wanted to charge me for this service. I was concerned that once I got there, he was going to tell me I shouldn’t be there. It is difficult when you don’t speak the language. The second situation occurred at night in the Luxor Temple. A guy was sitting in one of a few chairs spread around the Temple. Usually, the chairs were occupied by someone who had an official reason: No pictures or no touching. This guy suggested I take a picture of a carving in a rock. Our guide had pointed out this particular carving, so I took the picture. Then the guy motioned me down a passage between a wall and a row of columns. It was very dark and I didn’t think it was a good place for picture taking. When I turned around another guy was sitting in the chair.
The Egyptian people were friendly. School children waived and enjoyed speaking an English greeting. Even the “salesmen” were friendly when they realized we weren’t going to buy from them. At the Pyramids, one salesman said “no way Jose”. Women on the street would smile and waive.
I have attached a picture of a military tower. They are everywhere. They are on little roads with nothing worth taking of defending. The soldier moves around in the box, but leaves his weapon pointed at the road.
At the Cairo museum, there were soldiers with sitting behind metal shields with a gun slot. These shields were on wheels so they could be rolled around. There were also soldiers in the museum. I think a private gets no gold on his uniform. A corporal is allocated a few ounces of gold. A sergeant gets more gold than salary. Very impressive uniforms.
At the Valley of the Kings, we were told that everybody had a tomb. The east side of the Nile was for the living. The west side was for the afterlife. The Kings had long hallways leading to their final resting place. These hallways might be ¼ mile long and decorated with carvings and paintings the whole length. Huge blocks of rock were placed of the mummy and coffin to protect the treasures. It didn’t work. Most of the tombs have been robbed. That is what makes King Tut’s tomb so special – it was intact. We visited the tombs of Ramseys III and VI. We did not do Tut’s because we were told it was very small and unimpressive. All the good stuff is now in the Cairo museum.
On the attached picture, you can see the tombs of nobels. We did not see the tombs of the workers, but we were assured they had them.
