Malta

Our final port of call was Malta - a small island off the southern coast of Sicily. We docked in the city of Valletta and, after safely depositing Amy & Emily into the Kid's Club for the afternoon, boarded a coach for a brief tour of the highlights of this cute little country.

Malta is known historically as the place were St. Paul was once shipwrecked (consult your Bible for confirmation of this story). So our first stop took us to the famous underground catacombs of St. Paul in the city of Rabat - where Paul preached Christianity to the ancient Maltese. We were incredibly grateful we had decided to leave the kids on board the ship because it was downpouring rain all morning and we got awfully wet walking between the catacombs and the "silent city" of Mdina where we visited a very ornate cathedral.

We also toured a local arts centre where they hand-craft silver filligree jewelry such as the famous "Maltese cross" as well as a glass-blowing factory.

From there we stopped briefly at another cathedral which is famous for its "miracle of the bomb." Malta was part of the British empire until 1960-something and during WW2, a German plane dropped a bomb on this particular church. Miraculously, the bomb did not explode, but plunked right on through the dome of the church (FYI - 3rd largest in Europe behind St. Peter's in Rome and St. Paul's in London) They have since built a little memorial around the unexploded bomb (now a replica) to commemorate this "miracle." Above: the bomb

Below: the dome of the church

Perhaps if it hadn't been pouring rain all day we would have enjoyed our excursion more, but overall I would say there was nothing overwhelmingly exciting or impressive about Malta itself. However, it was nice to break up the long journey back to Barcelona by stopping in a little place with more of a European feel - especially after several days of being in the Middle East!

That evening we enjoyed the cruise-line tradition of "Chocolate Night" at the buffet. Here are a couple of our favourite creations:
Note: we opted out of trying the chocolate sushi - blegh!

Egypt: Alexandria & Cairo

Our first day in Egypt was a long one. From the port in Alexandria we journeyed - once again - by coach (3 hours) into western Cairo: the Giza Plateau. The drive didn't yield a lot of exciting scenery - mostly desert with the occasional oil refinery plant, pigeon farm, or mosque along the way.

But once we arrived at Giza, we saw the good stuff...

There was a helpful prep session on the cruise ship regarding the excursions into Egypt. We learned to be wary of the locals because they are clever at swindling people out of their money with tricks like offering a camel ride, getting you up on the camel and then requesting $40+ to let you down. Another trick was offering to take your picture, then requiring you to pay them a lot of money to get your camera back. There were even some that tried to get money from you for taking a picture of their camel! Thankfully, we came armed with knowledge and did not personally fall victim to any of these attempts, though we did witness a few others having trouble.

We had an Egyptian man offer us 2,000 chickens in exchange for one of our fair daughters. "Laha" means "no" but even after saying that, this guy did not leave us alone. He upped his offer to 3,000 chickens and tried to persuade us that we were being unreasonable - after all, he was only wanting one of our daughters, not both. Needless to say, we did not make any deals, but it was a persuasive tool in getting our girls to behave the rest of the day. ("If you don't behave, I'll sell you to that guy for 3,000 chickens!")

Another man posed to our little girls: "Would you like to buy a camel?" to which Amy looked at us with pleading eyes. "No, not today," I had to say: "It won't fit in our suitcase to go home."

The pyramids at Giza are so much larger in real life than they ever appear on TV programs or in books. Their enormosity and timeless presence was simply breathtaking. Our tour guide said that there were enough stones making up the pyramids to build a 6-ft. tall wall around the whole of France!

Inside one of the tombs we were able to actually touch the heiroglyphics carved into the stone and view the bright colours of the paints and dyes (we were not permitted to take pictures inside the tombs). Again, TV and books do not come close to doing these historical treasures justice.

The Sphinx, on the other hand, was a lot smaller in person than we expected. Still a marvel to behold, but a much smaller marvel than we anticipated. The story the Egyptians tell is that Napoleon shot the nose off the Sphinx with his gun to demonstrate to the locals that it was not a god but merely a stone edifice. Assuming this story is accurate, Mr. Napoleon certainly demonstrated his point, though his methodology was a bit crude.

From Giza, our coach delivered us to a country club in Saqqara where we experienced a jeep safari. It was a wild ride through the Sahara desert but the little girls giggled through the whole thing. The scenery was once again a lot of sand with the intermittent pyramid (and some other jeeps) in the distance.

At the end of the safari we joined our camel caravan for a ride back to the country club. These animals are so fascinating and very tall! And no, we didn't witness them doing any spitting (that question has come up frequently...)

Lunch was interesting. Emily scarfed down the barbecued pigeon chunks like there was soon to be a famine in the land. Amy played it safe and stuck to the spaghetti. We all liked the vegetables but aside from the carrots, we couldn't identify any of them by name (they were a pale green colour). Dessert was very sweet, like a fruit tart of some kind, but had a very fibrous topping like hair... but it wasn't hair... it was too crunchy to be hair.

After lunch we headed over to view the step pyramid of King Zosser - reportedly the oldest stone building in the world - then back to Cairo to the Papyrus Institute where we met Hasam who demonstrated the art of making papyrus.

Hasam liked to yell in a threatening tone when he spoke to us. It was reminiscent of those stock footage clips of terrorist camps they show on American TV news programs, only much more emotionally elicit in person. The fact that Hasam was wielding a knife and slicing through papyrus plants with such great vigor only added to the atmosphere of the experience. He certainly had everyone's undivided attention during his presentation..

From the papyrus institute we boarded the coach back to the port of Alexandria. On our way I managed to capture some of the scenes of Cairo in all their authenticity. Matt describes Egypt as a "4th world country" and these pictures come close to conveying that realistic label.

Donkeys: as common a transportation method in Egypt as cars are in the USA.

Piles of trash line the open sewers along the streets of Cairo.

Make-shift wooden crates full of poultry.

...a more complimentary view of Cairo's open sewer system.

One of many beautiful mosques that dot the countryside.

That's a pick-up truck full of goats... we also saw pick-ups full of cattle too.

We spent our second day in Egypt in the port city of Alexandria. We didn't venture too far from the ship but browsed some shops and the local scenery a bit right near the dockyard and managed to stock up on some fun souvenirs.

Overall, it's hard to say what our greatest moment in Egypt was; there were so many. It was incredibly exhilirating to have visited that part of the world. But perhaps our greatest victory was experiencing all those brilliant moments without contracting any kind of gastro-intestinal infections nor having any of us abducted or exchanged for chickens or camels. Now that is a successful excursion in Egypt!

*for a complete collection of our Egypt photos, visit Lana's Facebook page*

Izmir (Ephesus) Turkey

Turkey was a destination we were unsure about. We had been warned ahead of time by the cruise staff to be extra careful in both Turkey and Egypt to be wary of the food, sanitize our hands frequently and only drink bottled water because the last two eastern-Med cruises had experienced outbreaks of gastro-enteritis after visiting these locations. Armed with that knowledge and several bottles of hand sanitizer, anti-bacterial wipes and bottled water we set out for an adventurous day in Turkey.





From the port of Izmir (ancient Smyrna), we drove via coach through the Turkish countryside for about 1.5 hrs. The scenery was beautiful with rolling hills, mountains, orchards and fruit trees everywhere. We stopped for a toilet break along the way. The little girls were not impressed with the "toilets" in this country but it was a good opportunity to practice some camping skills.






























Our tour guide was amazing and combined with the cool/sunny weather and miraculous historical sites, we had an incredibly positive experience in in Turkey... (and no sickness either, yay!)

We spent the majority of our day at the ancient city of Ephesus - most famous for its account written by Paul in the Bible. It is impossible to articulate how magnificent these ruins were and still so much of it in tact! It's overwhelming to realize how magnificent some of the world's ancient civilizations were.

Before returning to our ship, we stopped at the site of the Temple of Artemis - one of the 7 wonders of the ancient world - then on to a Turkish carpet weaving centre where we saw demonstrations of silk weaving, carpet tying and were treated to some traditional Turkish snacks including "apple tea" (like American apple cider).

We had hoped to splurge and buy a hand-made silk carpet to bring home but when we discovered that the silk carpets the size of a placemat were selling for $900 and up, we settled for a cotton-silk blend carpet instead. Regardless, we think it's a fun souvenir to have our very own authentic Persian rug and even though it cost less than the pure silk, we still paid a hefty amount (perhaps it will fly???)

Overall, we were pleasantly surprised by our visit to Turkey and would definitely put it on our list of places to go back to... Istanbul, anyone?