We are somewhere in the Red Sea but we are not sure where. The TV map that has shown our journey so far has been off for 24 hours now. When Bill went to complain they gave him some cock and bull story that the satellite from Norway was not working. I then wrote a complaint saying that if the satellite from Norway was the problem then we needed the captain to give us regular updates. This Italian captain does not relate to the passengers at all. Today when I did my walk there were three small vessels off to the port side of the ship. Nobody told us whether they were pirates or fishing vessels. I presume the latter, since nothing happened, but our previous Canadian captain would have told us. One of the passengers told me that he saw dolphins off the side of the ship, but we were not told about this either. My guess is that at the moment we are somewhere off the coast of Eritrea, or we may be further afield off the coast of Sudan. One lecture today was “Gods and Goddesses” by the Egyptologist, Akri. He is teaching us an Arabic word a day. So far I cannot remember any of the words, and lost the piece of paper with them on. An interesting story he told was of Alexander the Great. Alexander asked to speak to the priests of Egypt when he first came to their land, because he knew that the Egyptians loved their gods. Alexander asked the priests who their greatest god was. When they told him, he asked to be taken to this god’s shrine. Alexander entered the shrine and spent four hours there while the priests waited for him outside. When Alexander finally emerged, he said to the priests that the god had spoken to him and given him the mandate to rule Egypt. This was why the priests and people of Egypt accepted him as ruler. Unfortunately, today was the last lecture to be given by our much loved and knowledgeable historian, Andrew Stuart. He spoke on the Nile and the people who went looking for the source of the Nile over the years. One of the guys who went looking for the source was a man called Baker. He married a girl whom he had bought as a slave, called Florence. She went with him on his search for the source of the Nile dressed in her Victorian garb and on foot. What a strong woman! We learnt the Pride of Erin today. Both of us remembered doing this dance in our childhood, and the little grey cells seemed to function on recall, so we coped quite well. Instead of eating in the dining room tonight we went later with Valerie and Tom to the horizons bar. This feeds people 24 hours a day. We did this as Tom had a late appointment with the acupuncturist, as he hurt his back bending to pick up his shoes. He said he felt a lot better after the acupuncture. Earlier in the day he attended a lecture on Acupuncture and Back Pain, so thought he would give it a go. There is nothing you cannot get on this floating hotel, except, it seems information on where you are exactly in the world. (Barbara) Some photos below from last night and today. (Bill)
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