Geo: 58.1447, 7.99828With the time change, we were all awake quite early, but with the blackout curtains in place, no one was in a hurry to get up. Our first port of call was to the Kristiansand, on the southern coast of Norway. We weren't docking until after lunch, so we had the morning to explore the ship, shop a little, and Anna and I played our first round of trivia -- which we won! With all the nationalities on the ship, all of the announcements were made in (and most crew members speak) five languages -- English, Italian, German, French, and Spanish. This made some of the organized events, such as a trivia, pretty elaborate affairs, what with all the translations. The line did a good job of adjusting things to meet the language challenge. ... read more

Geo: 55.6763, 12.5681The flight was completely full, though the cramped quarters meant that most of us got little to no sleep. We arrived on schedule and welcomed the news from the captain that the outside air temperature in Copenhagen was 50 degrees. This was our first time to Copenhagen airport in literally more than 25 years, and it was admittedly a little challenging to navigate. We finally located the Avis car rental counter and (unsuccessfully) tried to clear up some confusion on our rental, but we finally got a set of keys and incomplete instructions on where to pick it up. After asking several people, we finally found our way outside and walked across to a massive parking garage, where our tiny Hyundai i20 awaited us.When our port of departure was moved from Copenhagen to Kiel, ... read more

Geo: 38.9821, -77.5386We've spoken of visiting the fjords of Norway, and Scandinavia in general, for years, and while we knew we'd get there someday, we just weren't sure when. Nearly a year ago I saw a good airfare offer on SAS for the non-stop flight linking Dulles and Copenhagen. Working from there, we looked at two trips on our bucket list, for which Copenhagen was a good launching point. We broke it down and chose between two cruises -- at the time, both of which were to depart from Copenhagen. One went to Poland, the Baltic countries, and St. Petersburg, and the other visited the Norwegian fjords and Sweden. For various reasons we opted for Norway. Just before we booked, however, the port of departure was switched from Copenhagen to Kiel, in Germany. Not looking too ... read more

Geo: 38.9657, -77.4942Security at Istanbul Airport was much more overt and took more time than in Tel Aviv, which still surprises me. Still, it helped that we did not need to check in for our flight for check any bags, going instead straight to security. By the time we were all done and cleared, we had just enough time for a quick snack and we were at the gate ready to board the flight to DC. Ironically enough, we ended up boarding exactly the same plane we had flown from Israel the night before. I had taken a picture of the nose, which had a city name on it, and they matched. Alas, our flight to Washington was completely full, so not the room to lounge around as we'd had before.The flight was 11 hours, and ... read more

Geo: 41.0245, 28.9881There was a substantial checkpoint as we approached Ben Gurion Airport. They boarded the bus and checked our passports, but that was it. I still had visions of when I flew out of this same airport more than 25 years ago, when it was quite a madhouse and I distinctly remember the man squeezing out all of my toothpaste to search for explosives. This was in my mind as I prepared to run a security gauntlet that never came.Before we could check in with the airline, we had our passports inspected and answered some very basic questions. After check-in, we approached the security screening area and I girded my loins...unnecessarily. There was absolutely no back-up. They did not make us remove our shoes, or belts, or even take tablets/laptops out of the bag. I ... read more