Cruising the Arabian Sea, November 16
Firstly, I have a correction from my last post. - yesterday, the country I pointed out on the starboard side was Eretria not Ethiopia! I knew it began with an E!!! And I knew it was somehow connected to Eretria - With over 100 million people, Ethiopia is easily the most populous landlocked country on earth. When Eritrea seceded in 1993, Ethiopia lost access to its coastline, impeding its economic growth and limiting the nation's ambitions of becoming a dominant region.
So today we’re still in the pirates world but not for long now. We know there hasn’t been a passenger ship attacked in recent years but that still doesn’t mean we don’t carry attack equipment on board along with specialists to operate this equipment if needs be. We still keep curtains and blinds closed at night and know the drill. And the ships crank up their engines so that it’s more difficult for pirates to attack!
Today on the pool deck they ran the English Country Fair! The English country fair dates back to the 15th century when local traders included games in their stalls to attract attention and this then led to the pleasure of a fun fair! It’s a Regent tradition to hold these fairs and so there were game booths available for play, each represented by each of the departments about the ship. Guests had 30 minutes to play the many different games and with each game played a raffle ticket was given out. At the end a lovely array of gifts were won - like French champagne, a Swarovski crystal bracelet, travel bags, perfume, and lots more. As they say, you can’t win it if you don’t enter, and that was me!!! Couldn’t be bothered playing games in the wind and heat!! But I did watch and it was a huge success judging by the fun everyone had.
Shared a table tonight with nice people from Alabama. I went to the show afterwards, was a bit of fun with three couples chosen to answer questions about each other. Some of the answers were risqué and priceless.
Tomorrow its Salala, Oman! Yippee, another mosque!!!