Thankful Lady

There are so many things that I am thankful for and this blog won’t begin to cover it, but I am going to try.  It all starts with Cochin, India.  Unfortunately, we were not able to get off the ship in India because crew was not told that we needed a visa to get off the ship.  But I took some pictures from the ship and even saw a little ferry boat get pushed into a big air carrier by our bow thrusters.  You can see the picture below with the people grabbing for lifejackets.

View of Cochin from both sides of the ship

Ferry Boat Crash

In Malaysia we were able to get off the ship and were planning on going to a water park, but then things went wrong.  It is the first time that Celebrity ships are sailing down through this part of the world and Malaysia wasn’t prepared for all the guests and crew.  There were practically no taxi’s and the shuttle bus didn’t have room for crew with all the guests getting off the ship, so we were advised to just get back on the ship.  We had a great day on the ship relaxing on deck 6 and hanging out with each other. 

Excited for the Water Park!

Boo, Malaysia

On Thanksgiving Day we were in Malaysia and had a show that night so we Americans didn’t have a ton of time for a real Thanksgiving dinner, but we all decided that we would have a real dinner a couple days earlier on one of our nights off.  Twelve Americans from the cast and hot glass team went for Thanksgiving dinner in the Grand Epernay main dining room.  It was a lovely meal…no blue cheese brussle sprouts or stuffing, but we all shared what we are thankful for and ate until we were full to the brim!

My Thanksgiving Dinner

American’s at Dinner (Clockwise from Bottom Front: Kevin, Tom, Andrew, Jessica, Brad, Ricky, Natasha, Chris, Kenny, Catherine, Jenny, Isaiah)

Our overnight in Singapore is definitely the highlight of this blog!  Singapore is such a hopping city.  I spent the first day in Chinatown, eating, wandering around and buying seaweed by the sheet and wasabi peas.  After walking around a bit the sky started to cloud over and suddenly get really dark.  Minutes later the skies opened up and it poured for a good hour.  We made it back to the ship on the extremely clean public transportation system without getting too wet.  Littering, chewing gum and J-walking are illegal in Singapore and are cause for a huge fine and possible jail term! I think that is one reason that the train system is so immaculate and efficient. 

The Marina Bay Sands Hotel from the bus

Hong Kong Fried Noodles in Chinatown

Jessica and Emanuel running from the rain clouds

That night Maarten and I decided that we wanted to go up to the SkyPark at the top of the Marina Bay Sands Hotel.  It is an amazing structure that was the most expensive hotel to build.  We had a very expensive drink at the top, but the view was priceless.  From the top we saw all over Singapore, including a water/light show, a huge concert by SMTOWN and the Singapore Flyer.  After that we walked around the harbor to have some dinner and got poured on when we tried to hail a cab back to the ship after dinner.  It was an unforgettable day.

View from the top of the Marina Bay Sands

 

Singapore Skyline at night

Maarten and Jessica with the Marina Bay Sands Hotel laser light show

 

The second day in Singapore Maarten and I took public transportation to the Singapore Botanical Garden.  It was so green, humid and such a nice escape from ship life.  Part of the botanical garden is the National Orchid Garden.  It is the world’s largest orchid collection.  We were even able to get in for free because it was some special day and I had my student ID.  There were so many orchids, different colors, different shapes and different smells.  My dad would love it there.  It was a beautiful way to spend a day. 

Walking in the Singapore Botanical Garden

Orchid picture for Dad

Maarten and Jessica at the National Orchid Garden

And so begins my last cruise aboard the Celebrity Solstice.  I will sign off December 9^th and fly home.  I will have spent 274 days living on the ship, visited 40 ports in 20+ countries and took 4,300+ pictures.  A truly priceless experience that I am so thankful to have.  Happy Thanksgiving to all!!

Dubai and Oman

I know that every time I visit a new place I saw “wow!”, but really Dubai… WOW! It was unlike any place I have ever been.  The best I can describe it is a flawless, Disney universe.  Everything is clean.  Everything is new.  Everything is perfect.  Everything is larger than life, over the top.  There is so much money in this city and you can see it everywhere.  I think I had even more of an effect on me because of the places in Egypt that we had visited most recently. 

We were docked in Dubai overnight and got a new set of passengers.  Although about 1,000 of the guests that got on the ship October 26^th in Barcelona are staying with us all the way until December 9^th when we get to Sydney, Australia.  I spent the day in Dubai with Isaiah, Kevin (two of the male dancers) and Josh (the Sound tech AV).  We took a cab to the Dubai Mall which is one of the largest malls in the world.  One of the first signs we saw when we got inside was for an ice rink, then a sign for a waterfall and then for an aquarium!  I thought, these definitely can’t all be in the mall, but I was mistaken.  I guess I underestimated Dubai.  The mall turned out to be HUGE!  We spent a good part of the day there and still didn’t see even a third of it.  But we did find the waterfall, the ice rink, the aquarium/underwater zoo and even a store called “Andrew’s Ties”. 

Jessica outside the Dubai Mall

The 3+ story Waterfall in the Mall

Ice Rink in a mall?!

We made reservations to visit the top of the Burj Khalifa, which is also accessible from the Dubai Mall, so around 1pm we made our way over there.  We waited in a bit of a line to go through security and make our way to the elevator that takes you to the observation deck on the 124^th floor.  The Burj Khalifa is currently the tallest building in the world.  It can be seen from 95km away.  It has something like 200 floors and is 2716 feet tall. While taking the elevator up, my ears popped about 6 times to adjust to the rapidly changing elevation.  And boy, was it high up.  We could see the desert, the water and port, the perfect buildings, the Burj al Arab (the only seven star hotel in the world which is shaped like the sail of a boat), and the World Islands.  It was a bit hazy so we weren’t able to see the Palm Jumeirah, but we saw the direction it was in.  The view was pretty awesome, much different than the Empire State Building or the Top of the Rock in NYC, because of the complete desert surrounding the city. 

Elevator to the Top

View out over Dubai and the port

Josh, Isaiah, Kevin and Jessica At the Top!

Dubai and the fountains below

Burj Khalifa…tallest building, tallest girl!

Next we decided that we wanted to go to the Aquarium and Underwater Zoo in the mall.  It starts with you walking through a tunnel in this huge fish tank, which has the largest single sheet of glass/plastic in the world (according to the Guinness World Record).  There were sharks and fish swimming right over you! In the zoo, we saw more beautiful fish, huge crabs, penguins and even snakes.

The Underwater Tunnel

“Just keep swimming, just keep swimming”

Clockwise: Jessica, Josh, Isaiah, Kevin in the Zoo

Jessica with the “Finding Nemo” fish tank

For dinner we went to another area to meet one of Isaiah’s friends who now lives in Dubai.  It was this beautiful restaurant called The Meat Co. in what felt exactly like Disney.  There are man-made rivers with boats that bring you to your resort, lights on palm trees and the service was excellent.  The restaurant was also closer to the Burj al Arab, the sail hotel, so we got to see it a little closer up.  After dinner we had to rush back to the ship to do our Welcome Aboard Show, but then were able to come back out for extremely expensive drinks later that night.  It was an amazing, out-of-this-world day. 

Sunset over Dubai

The Burj al Arab and Isaiah, Jessica and Kevin after dinner

L – R: Kevin, Isaiah, Jessica, Isaiah, Maarten, Jessica, Andrii

Our next Port of Call was Muscat, Oman. I didn’t even know that there was a country called Oman!  Maarten and I spent the day together shopping in the Souk, climbing up to a fort and drinking really good fresh fruit juice.  I had a Lemon Mint juice and Maarten had a Mango Pineapple juice.  They were the highlight of the day!

Overwhelmed by the incense smell in the Souk

Beautiful stained glass at the entrance of the Souk with Jessica

Muscat Harbor from the Fort

Delicious fruit juice

I only have 7 more Ports of Call before my contract is finished and it is starting to hit me.  Yikes.  But I’m not going to think about that now!  I still have 7 places to explore!

Maarten and Me after my 2^nd to last “Ghostlight” night

“Open Sesame”

Well, we have worked our way out of the Middle East.  Our final stops this cruise were more Egypt and Jordan.  Being in Africa was an eye-opening experience for me.  There was extreme culture shock being in Egypt.  All the people think so differently than Europe or the US.  There is trash everywhere. There are practically no rules on the road; no lines, no lights, no speed limits, no seat belt laws.  I saw 2 men and 1 boy riding on top of a pile of wood in the back of a truck, as well as horse drawn buggies driving in the wrong lanes!  Maarten says just wait until Asia.  Yikes.  Another thing that was a complete shock for me was all the guns.  We had an armed military escort on our bus everywhere we went and there were young Egyptian men everywhere holding huge weapons.  It was a bit scary.  The lack of women was also a bit weird.  I saw a few here and there, but most of them must stay in their homes.  I felt a bit out of place, but all of the ancient ruins were definitely worth seeing.

Our second port was Safaga, Egypt.  From there I went to The Valley of the Kings in Luxor, Egypt.  It is a large burial ground that was used instead of pyramids to be a little more inconspicuous.  No one was allowed to bring cameras into the Valley, but I snuck a few pictures from my iPod of the main valley, just not in the tombs…so I have pictures from Google posted below of what I saw inside the tombs.  I was able to go inside four of the tombs, King Rameses IV, King Rameses III, King Rameses IX and King Tutankhamen!  I had to pay separately to go in King Tut’s tomb, but I’m only going to be there once, so I might as well see all I can!  All of the Rameses tombs were so ornate and beautifully painted inside.  Some of them just kept going on, room after room.  What surprised me was that the hieroglyphics weren’t just painted onto the walls, they were carved in before being painted.  King Tut’s tomb was the least ornate and the smallest that I went into.  It was tradition to start making your tomb the moment you become King and that you keep adding to it until you die.  King Tut became king when he was 11 and died when he was 18, so that only gave him 7 years to build his tomb.  His tomb was the only one found to be mostly intact.  It was a little disappointing compared to the other tombs, but definitely something to everyone should see. 

Paintings in the tombs

Inside King Tut’s tomb

The Valley of the Kings

Our next stop that day was Karnak Temple.  The highlight of the huge temple was the hypostyle hall, which has 134 columns covered in carvings and paintings, although almost all of the paint has faded.  It was an amazing thing to see!

Our second day in Safaga, Egypt, Maarten and I had a beach day in a small coastal town called Hurghada one hour North of Safaga.  We found a beach and spent the day snorkeling, sun bathing, snacking and even experienced an Egyptian sun shower!

Our third and final port on this 16 day cruise was Aqaba, Jordan.  I was able to go on a crew tour to Petra, the rose red city.  Our first stop was a photo stop with the desert mountain range behind you.  Pretty incredible.

Petra is an Arabian city established in the 3^rd century BC and is famous for its rock-cut architecture.  To get to the city you need to walk down a pathway between the rocks called the Siq.  The Siq is about 1.2 km and right before you reach the end of the path there is, what they call, the “Million Dollar View”.  I think that some Hollywood movie producer paid a bunch of money to shoot a movie in Petra or something like that.  The first structure you see is the Treasury, a huge building cut out of the rock.  Unfortunately you can’t go inside, but there are plenty more that you can.

(Entrance into the Siq and inside the path)

(Kitties in the Siq)

(Million Dollar View)

 

(In front of the Treasury)

 

(Now we all have to watch "Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade")

 

The rest of the city is down another path behind the Treasury.  There is a huge theater, tons of tombs, a temple, monastery and other buildings.  We were able to walk up to the Urn Tomb and see the most amazing view of the mountains and town beneath you. 

 (The Urn Tomb and me at the top)

 

 

Petra is quite a beautiful ancient town and I am so glad to have seen it.  It is on Smithsonian Magazine’s list of “28 Things to See Before you Die”, so I Googled that and found that I have seen 6 of them already!  I have seen Pompeii, Petra, the Pyramids of Giza, the Parthenon, Ephesus and Venice…only 22 to go! (Click here to see the list: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/specialsections/lifelists/lifelist.html)

It has been an amazing cruise.  Only two more until I fly home from Sydney.  Now on to Asia and Australia!