World Cruise Day 108/152 - Sea Day - sort of, and more testing

Cruise day: 108/152

Ports days: 48
Sea days: 60
Countries: 18
Continents: 5
Ports: 35

Sleep - it is one of the important things in life.  When you have an 11-hour tour and take a ton of photos, and have to get them processed, and then have to load them into a blog, and then have to write the blog - two things happen.  First, it appears that you start writing run-on sentences.  Second, you don't get much sleep as you're up late processing and writing.  Then, they tell you to shift time ahead an hour and you lose more sleep.  What is the net outcome of this? This.

Just my normal, goofy-looking self?  Look more closely...

Look at the logo - the writing is backwards - look at the buttons - they're on the inside...yes, I put my shirt on inside-out and went to breakfast.  Arlona didn't even notice - probably sleep-deprived as well.  Lucky for me, our friend, Steve, pointed it out over breakfast so I could fix it and look perhaps a little less ridiculous all day.

That was the start of our sea day today. I flipped my shirt around and went to bridge lessons.

After bridge lessons and play, we blew up at trivia.  Our new Cruise Director, Kate, came onboard yesterday after completing her required quarantine in Cairo.  She and Assistant Cruise Director, Sarah-Leanne ran the trivia today contributing every other question.  It's going to be a long remainder of the cruise with Kate's questions as they are decidedly harder!

We had 14 out of a possible 22 points and were completely out of the running today. The failures:

• The largest pink diamond in the world at 182 carats, the Daria-i-Noor, is in the crown jewels of what country?
• Iran
• Fashion firsts - what are the first names of the following designers:
• Halston - Roy (missed this one)
• Givenchy - Hubert
• Versace - Gianni 
• Quant - Mary
• Head - Edith
• Foreign exchange - the pound sterling is the fourth most traded currency. What are the top three traded currencies (bonus for in order)
• #1 - US Dollars (got this)
• #2 - Euros (got this)
• #3 - Japanese Yen (missed this one - guessed Chinese Yuan - not even on the list)
• Lady Elizabeth Killigrew, Mary Read, Rachel Wall, Grace O'Malley, and Anne Bonny all shared what profession?
• Pirate
• Sesquipedalophobia is the fear of what?
• Fear of long words - kind of ironic having that be an 18-letter word, isn't it?
• Oneirology is the study of what?
• Dreams
• True or false - there is a piece of classical music that takes 18 hours to play?
• True - sort of - Vexations is a musical work by Erik Satie that is designed to be played back-to-back 840 times accounting for its 18-hour duration
• There was a tie-breaker today - when was Winnie the Pooh first published?
• October 14, 1926

Around noon, we completed the bulk of our roughly 140-mile sail and dropped anchor off the coast of Israel, near Ashdod.  Before we will be allowed into Israel, not being the trusting type, refuses to accept any of the 107 PCR tests that we have taken over the last 107 days that were processed in the certified laboratory on the ship.  Therefore, here we sit until they test every single person on the ship and do their own analysis.  We had a conflict with the time we were scheduled to get tested so we went a little early.

Viking had provided us with a waiver that we needed to sign.  When we got there, Viking collected them, threw them out, and provided the new, correct waiver that Israel provided.  We signed them and proceeded to the passport inspection station.  They entered our passport number into a phone, scanned the barcode on our testing vial, and sent us to the technician.  They swabbed the inside of both nostrils and the inside of both cheeks. Different swabs.  That was it.  It was organized and well-run.  Now, we all wait for our negative results.  There is currently zero COVID on the ship as of yesterday's tests, so I expect all this testing was a waste, but we'll see.  If everyone tests out OK, we'll be docking in Ashdod around 11PM tonight once another cruise ship moves from our assigned berth. Perhaps my attitude is just because I'm tired. :-)

Arlona went to art class this afternoon. The painting is a two-day project so you won't see it until the next sea day on Thursday as we sail between Haifa, Israel, and Rhodes, Greece.

As we sat and spun in circles off the coast of Israel, I took a look outside.  At one point, I could count over 20 ships at anchor.

I heard a loud sound and saw this military vessel cruising around the ship.

The amount of water this threw up was incredible, especially as it wasn't cruising very fast

This evening, we received a travel document for Israel that Viking prepared.  The Viking Daily said that anyone that failed the PCR test would be immediately notified, so for now, no news is good news.  Personally, I like definite communication - you're good to go or you're not, but I have to go with the no communication option as that's what we get.

The cruise consultant, Hamed, let us know tonight that the excursions for the three new ports on the Viking Homelands had finally been released, so we got online after dinner and booked our final excursions for the last two weeks of this trip.

Assuming that we don't get a call tonight, we'll be in the Star theater tomorrow morning at 7AM for our 7:30AM departure to Bethlehem and Jerusalem.  This marks the start of three 10+ hour days in a row with Nazareth & Sea of Galilee on Tuesday and Caesarea, Tel-Aviv & Jaffe on Wednesday, both from Haifa. If you think we're tired today, check in with us Wednesday evening!

Speaking of tired...we're tired and have an early day tomorrow, so I"m wrapping this up for the day.