The breakfast at the Amman Airport hotel was a variety of breads, pastries, cereals, meats cheeses yogurts and the usual assortment of hot dishes that could pass as the quintessential English 'fry up'.The plan today is to pick up our hire car and drive down to Wadi Musa, the town that serves the historical UNESCO world heritage site of Petra. We took the hotel shuttle back to the airport and found the car hire stand without any difficulty. The assistant w...

The main attraction that got us cruising is not as you may think free food 24/7 (although this comes mighty close!!) It's not even being waited on hand and foot or even the wall-to-wall trivia. The main lure to this form of holiday for us is that it is always a pleasant experience to wake up somewhere new every day. Even when you spend 5 continuous days at sea on a Transatlantic crossing you wake up somewhere new every day!! Surely waking up to nothing but se...

Temp: 86F 30CDistance travelled: 3059 nautical milesAquaba is the only port of Jordan. It lies at the end of the Gulf of Aqaba. This is the smaller of the Gulfs that flank either side of the Sinai Peninsula that flow in to the Red Sea. Jordan only has a coast line of 26km (approx. 17 miles) flanked by Israel to the West and Saudi Arabia to the East. From the port you can clearly see the Israeli resort of Eilat or if you look the other way, the nothingness of the ...

Today we arrived in Aqaba. Aqaba is Jordan's only port and is at the top of the Gulf of Aqaba. If you picture the red sea with 2 prongs at the top, we have just come through the Suez Canal in to the left prong (the Gulf of Suez) then made a sharp left turn into the right prong!! Aqaba lies at the very end of this prong. 4 countries converge on Aqaba. Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula. In fact the ship passed the popular Egyptian resort of Sharm El Shiekh. The dai...