Suez Canal — Jim Winslett

I thoroughly enjoyed today, even though we didn’t do anything. Sometimes, those days are the best. The entirety of the day was spent in the Suez Canal, which is the “other” big canal after Panama, which we sailed a few years go. I gotta say, the locks in the Panama Canal are fascinating and incredible to see, but the Suez, with no locks at all, is much more interesting in terms of things to see from your balcony.

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It’s a study in contrasts, and I always find contrast interesting. One minute, you’re floating past lavish resorts with lush greenery, swimming pools, and palm trees. Minutes later, you’re looking at the barren Sahara desert.

The canal itself is fairly narrow for most of its length, and so traffic flows in one direction at a time for most of its length, requiring ships to book a slot for passage. There are plans to double the canal to allow two-way traffic the entire length of it, but that's not yet a reality.

Twice during the journey, however, there are lakes that are large enough to hang out in until the direction of travel goes the correct way. It seems that the canal is set to have ships move from the seas to the centre in the morning, then from the centre to the seas in the evening. At least that’s how it’s going today. As I’m writing this, we’re sitting in the Great Bitter Lake with about 30 other ships, waiting for our slot to head into the Red Sea.

Along the way, we saw a magnificent bridge - which is called… wait for it…. the Suez Canal Bridge. Truth in advertising, that. Regardless, it’s really impressive.

Just ahead of us was an MSC Cruise Lines mega ship. It holds 6000 passengers. No thanks.

We also saw a dual-track railroad bridge under construction. When finished, it will pivot and allow rail traffic over the canal. The turntable under this thing is huge and impressive.

We also saw some artwork on the sides of the canal. I thought at first they were painted, but on closer inspection, I could see that they’re mosaics.

There were two things we passed along the way to the Great Bitter Lake that I can’t identify. I tried to find them on maps and even attempted to reverse image search on Google, but the wifi on the ship is too slow. The pics would time out before google would even start searching. Do any of you know what these are?

So it was a relaxed, easy day today, capped off nicely by the fact that there was lobster on the buffet menu tonight. It was good. And that’s about all there is to report today- but there’s another brutally long tour day tomorrow. Until then, enjoy this pic of a fishing boat in the Suez Canal.