Jinx?

I'm starting to think that maybe my vacation choices are becoming a jinx:  Last year, I put down my deposit for the Egypt trip on 13 January, and 12 days later the revolution started in Cairo.  This year, I put down my cruise deposit on 10 January, and on the 13th we had the Costa Concordia incident.  Hmmmm....

The Next Trip

Well, my lament about having no idea when or where my next trip would be didn't last long! This morning I had a couple of free minutes at work, so I checked on upcoming holidays, only to see that the 4th of July is on Wednesday this year. Argh, it cannot get much worse than that, which meant that I almost certainly would take off the following Thursday. Once I did that, it only made sense to take off Friday and make it a five day weekend. Now, however, just take off two more days and have nine off.

So, in the blink of an eye, I convinced myself I would take off the entire week, but what would I do? It was too long to sit at home, but not long enough to hop on a plane and take a serious overseas trip. I decided to check on cruises out of Seattle, and there were several leaving for Alaska that week. I asked my normal vacation warehouse, Affordable Tours, for a quick quote, and it turns out a seven night cruise would cost me less than $1500 total for the room, single supplement, tax and port fees. Sure, there are other incidentals ($10/day for tips and a little extra for drinks or premium dining if I were to choose to do so), but the net of it is that seven nights, total cost, would be about what one night in the Savoy cost me!

As convoluted as the logic above may be, I put a deposit down on a seven night Alaska cruise on the Star Princess, a 2600 passenger ship which was renovated just three years ago. Granted, Alaska would not be my first choice of destinations, but the idea of an easy and affordable "real" cruise (versus a Nile River cruise) sounds very exciting. If I try it and it is not something that appeals to me, I will have lost only a relatively small amount of time and money, but if it is something I enjoy it opens a whole new avenue of choices for me. So, at present, it looks as if I will be cruising from 1 July to 8 July, with possible ideas below.

• Shore tours:

• Juneau walking tour

• Vancouver shuttle

• Dinners and Food:

• Steak House 1-2 nights, $25 to $34 (chop one night, lobster the other)

• Italian 1-2 nights, $20

• Chef's Table (very limited so book early)

• Portofino or Capri other nights

• Caviar in Promenade

• Wheelhouse Pub, which offers a complimentary British style lunch on sea days

• To do on ship:

• Yoga

• Jog

• Casino

• The Sanctuary

And it is over...

It's Tuesday 3 January 2012, and I am back in the office, weeding through literally over 1000 backlogged emails. As much as I dreaded the thought of a 36 hour trip home, it was done in a blink. On my arrival home, Melba met me at the airport, a fitting end to the holiday.

I am trying to live up to the notion of losing the weight I packed on these last few weeks, though every time I pass by one of the kitchens there is chocolate or cheesecake somebody has brought in from home...I am OK with temptation when I cannot see it, but put it in front of me and any semblance of willpower disappears.

For the first time in I cannot remember how long, I don't have a vacation on the books, so I have no idea when or where my next trip will be. I am even toying with the idea of spending next Christmas at home, with a Christmas tree, though I think that will surely not be the case. For now, I close out the London/Egypt trip, saying the memories for this one are especially strong and fond. Now, on with 2012!

Final Legs

The final legs of the journey home went well, scoring myself a MacRoyal in both Cairo and in Madrid (with the second being far better, but I'll never complain about a MacRoyal!). Just a tad better (and literally ten times as expensive) was some caviar at the Caviar House/Prunier in Heathrow.

Also, I was able to find a Harrods in Duty Free which carried chocolate truffles, so I did pick up an assortment for Melba, as we ran out of time to do so in London.

I'm in Heathrow Terminal 5, about an hour and a half from takeoff on the last leg home. Melba will be there to meet me.

Next Vacation

For the first time ever, I can honestly say I don't have a clue when my next vacation will be or where to. First of all, there are many odds and ends I need to figure out in "the real world" before I make any plans, and I want to sort that first so it is resolved before taking any more trips. Implicit in that is not knowing what time of year my next trip will be. So with that in mind, my rambling thoughts are something like this:

As I said before, I don't have any immediate desire to return to Egypt; I'm ecstatic I did this, it was essentially a perfect vacation and I may well return some years later (in particular heading for Mount Sinai), but for now I feel I have seen and experienced what I need to here. As mentioned before, though I felt safe the entire time, it is a third world country, so it is not the normal tourist destination. You do have to use common sense, such as not grabbing the bare electrical service lines feeding the building!



As for the rest of Africa, the only parts I would potentially be interested in seeing would be South Africa or the Serengeti, but they don't rise to the immediate "must do" level.

I would love to see Israel, Jerusalem in particular, though I think it would feel quite a bit like this trip, so I believe I will defer that one for a little while, until I feel more like taking on another rustic vacation.

Having been to South America I have no real desire to return, unless as a jump-off to Antarctica to complete my seventh and final continent, but when I do that one I want to have some extra time buffered in so that if the scheduled landing on the Antarctic shelf is missed, I might have an opportunity to try a second landing. I'd hate to travel that far, and spend that much money, only to be blocked from that final continent by a bad weather day!

I have a friend who has offered a week-long trip to Costa Rica, and as much as I would like it the timing is not going to work out in that I would need to go this March, way too soon from the work angle.

Russia is a country I should see, especially given my former Air Force/NSA life, though for some reason I am simply not champing at the bit to do it: I think the rudeness of the culture would be annoying to me.

I've also had many friends suggest either Thailand or Cambodia, but I just don't have the burning in the belly to go there.

I probably should try a real cruise ship some time to see how it compares to the Nile version; unless I do something really cheap such as Carnival, everything I have heard tells me the real ocean cruise will be much more elegant than the one I just completed. Bryan and Nancy suggested I might look into Cunard as they do a bit more of the formal type, and as long as I am going for the fantasy I might as well go all the way.

Montenegro is possible, though I need to decide if I truly am interested or if the "Casino Royale" Bond movie just hooked me on the idea.

Mexico, though close, is a place I visited many times in my childhood (growing up in Southern California), so it does not seem to hold a great deal of excitement for me.

At this rate, I may actually be considering a continental US trip for the first time in ages. Discounting very short weekend trips to Reno or Vegas, my last US vacation was Zion and Bryce back in the very early 90s. There are only a few US cities I would be interested in, with New Orleans and New York being the only two which come to mind at this moment.

Last Few Hours in Cairo

It's shortly after 10:00 AM on New Years Day. I am still in my room at the Marriott, and I will check out at noon, then kill time till 8:30 PM for my pickup ride to the airport. Fortunately I have the Kindle and laptop fully charged, plus two old-fashioned "real" books should batteries start dying on me.

It is a beautiful day today, with none of the haze which prevailed for the last two. It's a bit of a shame that I cannot get out and enjoy it, but I feel a bit foggy headed and also don't want to spread myself too much since I will not have a room in a bit.

As much as I enjoyed this trip, I am ready to leave Egypt. Twelve nights here was comfortable, but at this time I am OK heading back to the real world. Unfortunately, the afternoon seems to be dragging on, as I am now approaching 3:30 PM, which means I have spent four hours in the lobby, and still have five more to go before the lift to the airport. Then it's a four hour flight to Madrid, arriving about 3:00 AM, with a five hour layover there while waiting for my flight to Heathrow. A few more hours in LHR and a nine hour flight should get me home. I'm going to be wiped by the time I complete this one!

I did have the thrill, however, of handing my carry-on bag to a uniformed washroom attendant who dutifully held it while I did my business...the novelty of such a thing was worth a five Egyptian pound tip.

Also, in a surprise "victory" of sorts, I have been able to coax slight smiles out of two (yes, two) of the young women serving me Cokes in the lobby. I guess after seeing me for this long they have realized I am not a Western threat. As trivial as it sounds, just something as "normal" by western standards as this is a significant change after nearly two weeks. You can't really understand it till you live for for some time.

Cairo at Midnight

Cairo
1 January 2012

As it turns out, the casino was not the place to be for NYE…they had a number of the machines shutdown in preparation of an upgrade to come later. It seems odd they would start this on New Years Eve, so from that I gathered the tiny casino was not the place to be, and I decided to hang out around the hotel.

Tahrir Square was, of course, where most people were to be found, but I was not about to try to push my luck with that. When midnight did finally come about, there were barely any fireworks at all, and the sound was more of a dull roar than the sharp, noisy cacophony of sounds you normally associate with an NYE gala. The dull roar continued for about three hours, fading away shortly after 3:00 AM. So, as for great cities in which to welcome in the new year, Cairo is not one of them!