Day Ninety Five April 10 - Palm Sunday Welcome to Israel!! I was up at 05:00 to see the ship sail into the port of Ashdod. It is one of three international seaports for Israel with the others being Haifa (the largest) and Eilat. The Nowegian Jade is also in port with its capacity of 2,402 passengers and 1,037 crew. From our stateroom balcony later that morning, I counted 25 ships waiting outside the harbour to either unload their goods or to load goods o...

Day Ninety Two - April 7 We woke up just in time to see a glorious sunrise overlooking Malta. Even Janice was up excited about our visit to this island. Little did we know that would be the best thing of the morning. Shortly after 08:30 the captain came over the intercom to make the announcement that due to strong winds and the difficulty of entering the port, the difficult decision was made to cancel the Malta visit. As I mentioned in an earlier blog, it is ne...

Day Eight Six April 1 Well it looks like my blog for April 1 was deleted and it was not an April Fool's Day joke. For those who may have read the blog before then some of the information maybe repetitive. After seven straight sea days crossing the Atlantic Ocean we made our to the island of Maderia and its wondeful city of Funchal. We were not the only ship in port as the P&O Acadia and Viking Jupiter were also there. Our arrival time today was 11:00 ...

Day Ninety one - April 6 We are today in Trapani which is on the west coast of Sicily and is the capital of the Province of Trapani. Its population is near 68,000 inhabitants and is considered an important fishing port and the main gateway to the nearby Egadi islands. We arrived at 08:00 with all aboard at 18:30 with departure at 19:00. Our ship is docked directly on the main street of Trapani. If you were to look at a map of Trapani you will notice it is on a...

Day Ninety - April 5 Before I write about today I thought I would provide a brief note on the weather situation yesterday, April 4. Again the upper deck was closed due to severe weather conditions and strong winds. The high temperature was 12.5C or 54.5F, wind speed 34.2 knots (39.4 miles/hour), apparent wind speed strong gale 45 knots (51.8 miles/hour) and large waves of 11.5 feet or 3.5 meters. All the pool deck furniture had been removed and pushed to a corn...