Last night's dinner in the Sterling Steakhouse was very good, except for the steak. The service, appetizer, soup and desert were great, the steak just wasn't cooked correctly and I should have sent it back. We had a good bottle of wine and they had a special cake for our anniversary. The wine list has a good selection of domestic (Californian) and wines form Chili and other countries at reasonable prices. The ship also allows you to bring on one bottle per person. You could probably bring on a bottle at every port if you wanted to.
They also put balloons and a sign on our cabin door for our anniversary.
I've picked on everyone so I need to tell a story on myself. Today we needed to get up early (6am) to go to Petra. The travel clock that we brought has two alarms, well the second alarm woke me a 1:00 am and I got dressed before I looked at the clock which read 1:18 am. Evelyn was not happy.
Of the 630 passengers on the ship about 400 took the tour to Petra. We left at 8am and arrived in Wai Moses round 10am. We didn't have a very good guide. He didn't have the English skills to communicate with us, so we didn't get a lot of information. We walked in and out about 4 1/2 miles. It was down hill going it, but up coming out. The options were a carriage pulled by a donkey, a horse ride or donkey ride, or last but not least a camel. The weather was good, not too hot and a nice breeze was blowing. Petra is very impressive, but I like Ephesus better.
Petra wad built somewhere around 400BC and you can also see evidence of Roman repairs from around 100AD. All of the buildings and tombs are carved into the very sheer canyon walls. The Treasury and the theater were the most impressive in addition to a system for providing gravity delivered water through a simple aqueduct system. It's a good walk and you can go at your own pace. Dusty it is.. Because of the height of the canyon walls and in some areas how narrow the passage is, it provides natural shade and even cool breezes. It is well worth seeing. It is one of the 7 wonders of the world along with the Taj Mahal, The Pyramids, The Great Wall and 3 others I will have to look up.
We had lunch a hotel which was excellent, they had a whole roasted baby lamb.
After lunch we did some shopping and returned to the ship around 6pm.
For the next two days the dinning room is open seating because of the length of the tours, but we ate in the buffet and it was good. They had roast duck as good as what I make.
The bus from Aqaba to Petra is about 2 hours each way. Although Jordan has brought up the educational level of it's citizens to a mandatory 10th grade education there is still considerable poverty and a small middle class.
Sent from my iPad
Hal
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