Yesterday we went through the Suez Canal. This area is different from the Panama Canal in that there are no locks and the canal is much wider. It was interesting here, however, that passenger ships have priority over cargo ships. There is a holding area where ships anchor and wait their turn to pass through the canal. Local pilots board the ship and navigate the ship through the canal. As we cruised north, the west side of the canal had some small cities along the way as well as security check points, while the east side was sand as far as the eye could see. It took us about 6 hours to pass through the canal. The next morning we anchored at Port Said where most passengers took overland tours to the pyramids and the sphinx.
Since we had seen these on our own while in the Cairo area, we opted to stay at the port. We also were crazy and decided to watch the NCAA Basketball tournament semifinal games. They were broadcast live, hence starting at 12 midnight. It was 5 am before we finished. It was a day of rest for us on the 6th.
This afternoon we managed to go out to the city of Port Said and take a horse carriage ride. Tin got a haircut that turned out to be shorter than he had planned. Tin was not prepared to have his facial hair removed by two pieces of what looked like dental floss. He said it was painless, but it certainly was interesting for Sue to watch. This city is near the desert and we got our first taste of a sand storm while we were in port here. At first we thought it was perhaps pollution, but later in the day the visibility got worse and worse. While we were out it even was a little bit hard to breath without feeling you were getting a lot of sand.
We will be in transit to Athens, Greece for one day.
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