This was not, however, the itinerary we had signed up for; as the name of the cruise "Egypt Gems and the Holy Land" implied, the main destination was to be Egypt, with an overnight stop in Luxor and a day each in Sharm-El-Sheikh and Sokhna (Cairo).
Then, with less than a month to go, the big bummer. Seabourn cancelled all port calls in Egypt, resulting in a couple of nice substitutions: Kusadasi in Turkey, a second day in Israel, and a day in Mykonos (which is lovely but we've already been to), but overall a great disappointment. Anyways, we immediately set to figuring out how we could do Egypt after all, and after some quick thinking decided to do it pre-cruise.
The most challenging part was changing our outbound flights to go to Cairo, not Mumbai, two days earlier than planned, and to arrange for a two day tour of Luxor and Cairo and then make it on time for embarkation in Mumbai. It all worked out really well and now we're all set to go, just as new travel advisories for the Middle East are issued!
So, from Vancouver to Cairo and Luxor, then on to Mumbai, Oman, Jordan and through the Suez Canal to Israel, Turkey and ending in Greece, here we go. Follow us as we travel through 5,000 years of history, I'll try to update the blog every couple of days.
