Holy Lands Cruise - Naples and Pompeii

Today we stopped at Naples for a 1/2 day excursion to Pompeii.  Overall a very enjoyable day that left plenty of time for that most dreaded activity - packing. Here is the entrance to the city from the port, with an impressive castle in the background.

The ruins of Pompeii are quite detailed and in excellent shape. The city was covered by 21 feet of ash in 79 AD which did a remarkable job of preserving the buildings except for the roofs which caved in.  Check out this street on the right to see what good shape things are in.

The bottom left picture shows the oven from a bakery; it looks almost ready to be fired up and used... pizza, anyone?  One unusual feature is that while excavating, they found a few hollow spaces which they filled with plaster.  After the plaster solidified, they dug it out and discovered if had formed the outline of someone who was covered by the ash.  In this case, a mule driver who was trying to shield his mouth from the ash and gasses.
Overall we had a very good and interesting  excursion to Pompeii!

We had a nice surprise this morning when we saw the NCL Spirit was docked next to us. For the past two years we've been reading the travel blog of a person who is currently on that ship. It was neat to find we were that close.  Later we noticed that our favorite Princess ship, Pacific Princess, was also in Naples today.  It was great seeing her again.

Now time for dinner and final suitcase packing.  That 4:30 am alarm is going to go off rather early tomorrow!

Comparing Celebrity and Princess

Being our first cruise on Celebrity, Mary and I are frequently comparing the experience to what we expect on a Princess ship.  Overall it's been a pretty good experience, but some things are definitely different.  Admittedly some of these may be ship-specific observations and may not apply to other Celebrity ships.
Some Observations:

• Celebrity has a lot more art on board in public areas - this does give a bit of an upscale "feel" to the ship.
• Elevator service is pretty fast.  This could be due to having 2200 passengers instead of 3000 but it is appreciated.
• The Buffet - on this ship the buffet is spread out around the entire back half of the ship so if you want pancakes for breakfast you have to locate that station which is quite a ways from the main service lines.  Even the serving lines are in a big "U" which makes for lots of walking to figure out what is being served.  On Princess the serving lines are much more concentrated so it's easy to see what is available.
• No drink service is the buffet eating area!  Unless you are ordering from the bar you have to get your own beverages.  We increasingly appreciate this service in the Princess buffet. 
• The main dining room service is hard to compare since we do Anytime Dining on Princess and are "first seating" with our travel group on this ship. But the service does seem to be rather slow.  We are typically there for over 1 1/2 hours  (one time nearly 2 hours) while on Princess we typically finish in dinner in just over 1 hours.  Also we are a bit disappointed in the main courses.  One night we had to struggle a bit to find something we'd like.  While we feel Princess has backed off a bit on their Main Dining Room quality, it is still better than what we've experienced on this ship.  
• No self-service laundry.  As with NCL, Celebrity offers a "fill the bag" price about half way thru the cruise, but having self service laundry for a few $/load on Princess is much much less expensive.
• Lots of local music.  On Princess you often find musicians playing during the day in the main atrium, but here they are often in many of the public areas and sometimes during meal time.  A nice touch.
• The production shows are not what we've come to expect on Princess.  We were surprised that you could get into the early show juts a few minutes before the show started and the theater is not full.  Maybe its due to being a smaller ship, but on princess you need to be seated around 30 minutes before the early show to get a good seat and the theater is typically full by 15 minutes before the show. 

Overall Celebrity seems to be a pretty good line, but I doubt we'll be taking it unless we find an itinerary that we especially like and can't find on Princess.

Holy Lands Cruise - Last Sea Day

Well, the pill bottle is getting empty which is a sure sign that the vacation is coming to an end. We had a few activities today, with the most significant one being a worship service and Dr Maier's last lecture.
In Dr Maier's lecture he covered Paul's missionary journeys. In his intro he said how this is normally 3 or 4 lectures so he'd just do the highlights.  He did a good job of that.  Some of the info was a repeat of what he said in Corinth, but there were people attending today who were not there yesterday so that makes sense.  It was great to hear him shed additional insight on why Paul visited the places he did and in the order that followed.  I found his explanation of why Paul appealed to Caesar when arrested in Jerusalem very enlightening.

At the buffet today for lunch they had a dessert extravaganza! Many more desserts than usual, including the chocolate fountain in the photo on the left, and a lot fancier.  The picture on the left is just one small section of the desserts!  My plate with a small sample is on the right.  The coconut topped cake was especially delicious.

Dinner tonight was lobster!  On Celebrity you just get a lobster tail (Princess also has a prawn or other piece of lobster) It was good, but a rather meager portion.  The baked Alaska Dessert, however, was excellent. 
After dinner we went to the last production show titled Rock.  The premise was to emulate being at a rock concert.  It as better than the first show, but not up to our expectations. 
Tomorrow is an early day as we need to be ready to go by 7AM (again!) for our 1/2 day tour of Pompeii.  But that is not as bad as the next day when we disembark - that day we have to be ready to leave by 6:00 am.   These early mornings  (getting up before 5 am) are killers. 

Holy Lands Cruise - Athens and Corinth

We had a very early start today since our tour leader wanted us ready to go by 6:30am! It turned out that we could not get off the ship until 7:00 am so that very early alarm clock was for naught.   I did doze off a bit on the bus, and that helped.

Our bus ride took us first to the Corinth Canal for a short stop before proceeding on to the excavation at the old city of Corinth.  It was amazing to see  how deep they had to dig to build this canal between the Ionian and Adriatic seas. It took 12 years (1881 - 1893) using dynamite and steam power. Unfortunately it was an economic failure for a variety of reasons and never lived up to its potential.

This was our second visit to the the excavation at Corinth.  Our guide did a good job of explaining the secular history of the place, but the real treat was hearing Dr Maier, lower left photo, speak about the significance of events that happened here.  During Paul's ministry in this city, some prominent Jews hauled him before the Roman leader, Gallio, concerning Paul's teachings.   Gallio threw the case out of court as "not being a matter for Rome to decide".  This was the first time Christianity was put on trial and Dr. Maier asserted that if it had gone against Paul, the ability of the Christian Church to survive would have been in question.  Dr Maier went to elaborate on how this trial was noted in a letter to Gallio from a fellow Roman leader which allowed archeologists to date this event in the 51/52 AD timeframe.  Using this as a baseline permits all of Paul's Missionary journeys to be accurately dated. The place where this trial took place is pictured in the bottom right. 

After leaving Corinth, we headed to Athens to visit the Acropolis.  However, on the way there, thunderstorms and heavy rain came down forcing a change in plans.  We went to the Acropolis Museum instead.  While this was interesting and gave a good (if distant) view of the Parthenon, it was a bit too much Greek history for me.

Tomorrow we enjoy our last sea day before heading to Naples to visit Pompeii.

Holy Lands Cruise - Mykonos

Today we had a relaxing visit to Mykonos.  We took a water taxi from the dock into town, then wandered through the streets until we found the famous windmills.  Believe me - "wandered" is a good word for it, since none of the streets go straight for very long. But it's a very pretty village to roam, and we had a beautiful sunny (although very windy!) day for our visit.

After seeing the windmills, we found our way back to the main port area where we enjoyed the waterfront scenery while sipping a Greek beer.  Later we did some shopping, and then headed back to the ship.

We spent the afternoon following election results and watching a movie.  Tomorrow is a very long, busy day.  We are supposed to be off the ship 6:30AM to head to Corinth, then back to Athens and the Parthenon area in the afternoon. 

Holy Lands Cruise - A Quiet Sea Day

After three long days, we were able to NOT set the alarm clock this morning!  So glad. But that also means a bit less to write about today.

As you can see in these pictures we are experiencing VERY calm seas.  We had a quiet day, with only the two group lectures to attend. The morning one was a dramatic reading of Mark chapters 1-5 (Jesus' early ministry) while Dr Maier's afternoon talk was about the authenticity of what we had seen the past three days.  The most surprising part of that talk was his contention that the Via Dolorosa makes no sense. Needless to say we were all enthralled to hear his reasons.  He stated that no respectable Roman governor would have his wife staying in a military barracks (which is where the current Via Dolorosa starts), rather they would be in a wing of Herod's palace on the opposite side of the city.  He cited some writings from a historian in Alexandria that supports this assertion.  Later in his talk he validated the location of the crucifixion and tomb since at the time of Jesus, the city wall had a notch in it so that area was outside the wall.   He also said that on a prior visit to Jerusalem he walked the path of Jesus' trial and crucifixion, starting with a full moon at 10:00 pm on Thursday night when Jesus was arrested, and the events all were feasible per the Biblical account. Wouldn't it have been great to have taken that walk with him!

Besides attending the lectures we had a nice lunch on the pool deck and supper with our travel group in the main dining room.
On to Mykonos tomorrow with Athens and Corinth the following day.

Holy Lands Cruise, Jerusalem

We had a busy day today, being the first bus out from our port, and the last bus back.  Traffic was very heavy, so it took over 2 hours to get to our drop-off spot to walk into Jerusalem.

Our first stop was the church of St Anne where archeologists found the Pool of Bethesda underneath a Byzantine church. In this picture, looking down into the excavation, you can see parts of the church as well as the pool at the bottom.  We also went into the church, which has wonderful acoustics.  Our group sang the common doxology, pausing after every phrase to hear the echo.  It was marvelous!

Next we walked deeper into the city and started down the Via Dolorosa. Several times we had to clear the path for cars and other vehicles driving down it. It was a much better walk than the last time Mary and I were here, since we had time to look at the shops and observe things. 

The Via Dolorosa led us to the.Church of the Holy Sepulcher, which is the reported site of Jesus' crucifixion and burial.  The picture on the right is the entrance to what is said to have been the tomb of Jesus. We spent some time visiting a number of smaller chapels and viewing many of the icons before heading to the Jaffa Gate to leave the old city of Jerusalem and board our bus. We were delayed in leaving, though, since two people got turned around and were lost. A friend knew their cell phone number and eventually the tour guides found them and brought them back to the bus.

After an enjoyable lunch, we headed to Ciaphas’ house where Jesus was questioned and possibly held in a cell overnight.  One very interesting fact pointed out by Dr Maier is that these recently excavated steps (picture on the right) that lead to the Brook of Kidron were highly likely to have been walked on by Jesus as he moved to and from the Garden of Gethsamene. After this last stop we headed back to the ship, arriving just 5 minutes before the All Aboard time, mostly due to heavy traffic in Jerusalem.

After dinner tonight we attended a production show by the ship's singers and dancers, which we thought had a rather trite theme, although the aerialists were quite good.  We followed that with a talk by a NASA ambassador about space exploration. 

We are looking forward to not using the alarm clock tomorrow morning, and enjoying a quiet sea day!

Holy Lands Cruise - Bethlehem and Jerusalem

Wow! What a long day!  We spent most of it in Bethlehem, then to Jerusalem before heading back to the ship.

We started at the Shepherds Field, where reportedly the shepherds were  first told about the birth of Jesus.  Dr Maier give the a believability rating of 4 out of 10, saying that it could have been at any cave in this area.  The site is about 3 km from the manger scene so that does make some sense. There is a church built there (as with any other major site!) but the people use that to support the credibility of the site. The church had beautiful murals inside it, but besides the cave where the shepherds reportedly rested, there was not much else to see.

We then visited an olive wood carving factory.  It was very interesting to hear about their wood selection since the trees from this area are dried for 3-7 years before being considered, and wood from higher altitudes is not considered at all due to cracking.  They used a wood-duplicating matching to do the first 80% of the work on their mass market products.  When we went upstairs to the store, we saw that the products they turned out were beautiful, and many with a fabulous 4 figure price.  We did buy a small Holy Family figurine for ourselves (and not the near life-size nativity in the picture, which was priced $35,000!).

Next we went to Manger Square, with three churches: one Eastern Orthodox, one Roman Catholic and one Protestant.  The Eastern Orthodox one has the reported site of Jesus birth. The line to see this moved quite well for 45 minutes, then came to a complete halt for about 20 minutes. We’re not sure what was going on, but apparently some kind of ceremony.  Once the line started moving again we were up against a deadline of a Mass being started there soon, so we were hustled through.  At least we got to see it, if not spend a respectful amount of time viewing it.  This photo with the Star is reportedly the place of Jesus birth.
We finally got to lunch by 1:30 (this is after having an early breakfast at 6 am) and enjoyed a nice buffet.

After lunch we headed to Jerusalem for pictures from the Mount of Olives. The views of the city from there are fabulous, as you can see the entire ancient city.   The wall in the photo was built around 600AD and surrounds the Temple Mount.

 It was starting to get dark as we left there and headed for the Garden of Gethsemane.  We heard a talk about the ancient olive trees there, which become hollow as they age.  We then headed into the Church of All Nations right next door, which had a beautiful mosaic behind the altar.

 After departing,  it was dark when we headed for the Wailing Wall.  It was interesting to see it lit up at night.  Since men and women are required to pray in separate sections, Mary and I split up.  I prayed two psalms at the wall. Since he women's side is smaller than the men's,  Mary was only able to touch it by reacher over several ladys' shoulders.
After that we had a long bus ride back to the ship, where we arrived around 7 pm. Back to Jerusalem tomorrow to walk the Via Dolorosa and see a few other sites.

Holy Lands Cruise, Northern Israel

We had an early start today as we docked at Haifa and then headed inland to visit the Sea of Galilee area. As we drove, our guide informed us that the sequence of stops would change due to an "around the lake" bike rally going on today.   We did see a lot of bikes as well as traffic,  but were able to see everything on our itinerary.

Our first stop was the Jordan River, a popular spot for people to be re-baptized, by immersion. Two of our party did so, while a few had their baptism commemorated by having some water put on their head in a short ceremony. It is a very pretty place and the water is an unusual green color.  I dipped my foot in the Jordan, and later got my picture taken with author and tour speaker Dr Paul Maier.

Next we headed for Capernaum.  This is a city that was abandoned in the 4th century and only excavated in the last 100 years. Dr Maier said how this was an archeological treasure since they did not have to sift thru many layers from modern times to get to Bible times. A synagogue dating to the 3rd century has been reconstructed, but right under it is the floor from when Jesus was there (as Dr. Maier said, "These very boulders heard Jesus' voice").  Also next door is the house where apostle Peter lived and Jesus preached and that is apparently intact from when Jesus was there.  Unfortunately the eastern orthodox church saw fit to build a church on top of the site of Peter's house, but it is still very visible, as you can see in the bottom photo at the right.

 We also visited the church of the Beatitudes (left), where it is said that Jesus gave His Sermon on the Mount.  That was followed by another church where Jesus reportedly did the miracle of the Loaves and Fishes, and and one where Jesus reportedly asked Peter 3 times "Do You Love Me?"

But one of the more intriguing things was just seeing the Sea of  Galilee as we drove around it.  It is one of the sites given a "10" by Dr. Maier on his scale of authenticity. 

Our lunch was most interesting, starting with appetizers of cole slaw, pita bread, hummus, and barbecue sauce. It was quite a surprise when the main course platter was served, with 10 of what they called "St Peter's Fish" on it; the entire fish -- head, tail, scales, eyes, and all!   It was actually quite tasty, but you had to be careful about the bones.  It was served with some roasted potatoes and fried onions. 

On to Bethlehem and Jerusalem tomorrow.

Celebrity Constellation

After our late night last night waiting to hear about Mary's mom (I think we got to sleep about 1 am ship's time) we slept in a bit this morning as we have another sea day before three days with all-day excursions.  We did both successfully clear Israeli customs today (face-to-face meeting required) so we have our cards that allow us to enter Israel.   Whew!  8-)

We had two lectures today.  Rev Jones did a dramatic reading of the crucifixion of Jesus from the Gospel of Mark in the morning.  It was well done, wth a few minor things added for emphasis.  The afternoon lecture by Dr Maier covered several of the stories surrounding Jesus' birth, putting them into historical context.  He had some interesting perspectives on each story.  He does add some humor to his lectures.  For example: "Young women should look to marry an archeologist, since he'll get more interested in you as you get older!".

I have not posted many ship pictures yet so today seems like a good day for that. They had Halloween decorations in the Atrium.  The ship also has two pools, one inside and one outside which is good if you have inclement weather.

 Since we had a clear sky as the sun went down, Mary got some great sunset pictures as you can see here.

We went to the production show this evening.  It was a British group called The Revolvers who played a nice medley of 60's hits, not that any of these musicians were alive then!  We did not get to the theater until 10 minutes before show-time and were pleasantly surprised to find lots of available seats.  I guess being on a smaller ship (2200 passengers) with a theater that has two balconies helps with the overcrowding of the shows. 

On to Northern Israel tomorrow!