Musings on the Pride - Nov 17 - Dec 5, 2012

RachelG · December 15, 2012

Wow, really enjoyed your report. This sounds like a great trip. A part of the world I want to visit, hopefully in a couple of years with my son who is a fluent Arabic linguist. Now that would be amazing ( ESP if he didn't let the Saudi guys know he could understand every word).

seabournaddict · December 15, 2012

Seabourn used to include that excursion as a "freebie", sadly those days are over and now only Ephesus and Boi Bumba in the Amazon are offered as "Seabourn Experiences".

arzz · December 18, 2012

A quick note to anyone who plans to be in Dubai. We had a very difficult time there with money. No one would accept an American Express credit card. Our other credit cards were sometimes accepted, and sometimes rejected. For one thing that we wanted to do we could not get any of our credit cards accepted (and we travel with a few) and ended up having to use cash.

This was particularly disappointing when we were forced to pay for something and could not use the credit card that we carry that does not charge a foreign transaction fee.

As such, we needed more cash -- a friend who was on the cruise with us had her ATM card rejected and kept by a cash machine so we did not wish to risk our ATM card.

We are just old fashioned enough to carry some traveler's checks as back up. The money exchanges did not wish to cash them, but our hotel cashed them and converted the cash to AED for about a 3% fee.

I do not know what was going on, but since we are home I have checked and all of our cards are OK, working fine, and have no bogus charges on their accounts.

We might have been in an embarrassing situation had we not had the ancient form of currency known as the traveler's check with us.

It is best to know in advance.

And, if I can figure out how to do it, I will post some pictures soon.

arzz · December 18, 2012

RachelG -- let me know if you plan to travel with your son -- I would love to be a fly on the wall and find out what they were talking about! :D

RachelG · December 18, 2012

RachelG -- let me know if you plan to travel with your son -- I would love to be a fly on the wall and find out what they were talking about! :D

It will be another 2 years as he has a restriction on his passport till 2014 regarding going to certain Arabic countries due to security clearance, but when that restriction clears, we will definitely be going. I think it will be great fun, esp after he listens for a while then starts talking back in Arabic.

JaneBP · December 18, 2012

I had a similar experience with my smattering of German. I was in Philly on the bus and some people speaking German were making very nasty remarks about some of the other bus passengers. I let them know I could understand them and thought they were very horrid to say such things. Fortunately, the objects of their disparaging talk did not have a clue.