Author Archives: Gary

It has been very busy the last 15 days. We’ve been in a new port almost every day and today is the first sea day we’ve had in 2 weeks. Unfortunately, I’m just south of Iceland in route to Reykjavik and we’re far enough north, the internet is not working very well. I wasn’t sureContinue reading “Placeholder for more updates”

For the next week or two, I’m going to be grouping some of my stops. Things are getting a little hectic with a new port every day. I’m starting to miss the lazy sea days where we had fewer things to do and now it’s up earlier than normal to catch a bus for aContinue reading “Spain and Gibraltar”

Yesterday we stopped in Siracusa where I took a tour that stopped in an old village and then up Mt Etna followed by lunch at a winery. The village turned out to be a high point of this excursion. It was a very classic European city center with a large plaza surrounded by a churchContinue reading “Siracusa, Sicily”

We visited Athens, or Piraeus as it’s called locally, for 1 1/2 days. On day one, which was an afternoon, I went on a bicycle tour of Athens. Because I was on a bike, I didn’t take a lot of pictures as I was planning to do that on day 2 when I was scheduledContinue reading “Athens Greece”

This was a major event exclusive to the people doing the full world cruise. We docked in Kusadasi just a short sail from Rhodes. We boarded buses to the airport where Silversea had chartered 2 airplanes to take us to Cappadocia. The area here was a major site for civilization 3,000 years ago where HittiteContinue reading “Cappadocia Turkey”

Next stop was Rhodes for a short day exploring. It’s a walled city on an island that is a major European resort city. The tourist season had not started yet, so the town was very quiet. Not really a lot here but for a beach vacation, it would be a lot of fun with narrowContinue reading “Rhodes Greece”

We docked in the port of Haifa in the north of Israel and were there for 2 days. The first day I went on a panoramic tour of the Sea of Galilee, Nazareth and the Golan Heights. On the second day, it was a tour with private guide through the old city of Jerusalem. WhatContinue reading “Israel”

The Suez Canal is one of those things it’s nice to be able to say you did it, however it’s not that picturesque. Where the Panama Canal is a series of lakes and locks to raise and lower ships, the Suez Canal is about 100 miles of narrow river like transit. They started a newContinue reading “Suez Canal”

Today I’m sitting on my veranda while we’re transiting the Suez Canal and taking this time to watch the scenery and do my updates. We’re the first in a convoy of 45 ships coming through today. An interesting point is we are actually traveling the border between Africa and Asia. That said, we just spentContinue reading “Aqaba”

After 6 sea days then the longest 3 days ever in Saudi Arabia, I’m finally getting some updates done. Saudi Arabia was not on our original itinerary and was only added after Egypt changed there rules on Covid to if there was even 1 case of Covid on a ship, they could not get offContinue reading “Saudi Arabia”