Just about everything is free on the Regent Seven Seas Explorer, even tours.  However, you can pay more for more expensive alcoholic drinks and even certain meals.  We each paid $179 for a special lunch with expensive wines and fine cuisine.  The menu. It all started with a Kir Royale, followed by a Cloudy Bay Sauvignon Blanc from Malborough, New Zealand.  This is the wine that first made a world impression.  Now most of the really good white ones come from this region of the country.  We had a Tuna/Avocado Poke with this wine. Then another breakthrough wine, a 2016 Chateau Montelena Chardonnay from Napa Valley, California.  The 1973 version in 1976 won the  Paris Judgement , when nine French judges blind tasted white and red wines, and this Napa Valley wine came out with the highest score, red or white.  There was a 2008 film,  Bottle Shock .  The reputation of California wines thereby made a spectacular leap. Served with seared scallops.  Portions were small, thankfully. A  2018 Loui

SORRY, BUT SATELLITE CONNECTION IN ARABIAN/INDIAN OCEAN WAS NONEXISTENT.  So today, two postings. Two days ago, I shared some facts about petroleum, and how this resource would run out in less than 50 years.  Notice that President Joe Biden  opened up oil trade again with Venezuela .  They only have more oil reserves than any other country, even more than Saudi Arabia.  So, anyway, what are countries of the Arabian Peninsula doing about the inevitability of running out of oil in less than half a century? The United Arab Emirates is attempting to gain the travel interest of the world by building the biggest of almost everything.  They figure that people would want to visit a country with these attractions.  It seems to be working. Dubai in particular began with pearls, shifted to oil, and quickly ran out of this resource, so turned to finances and tourism, t hrough having : Ain Dubai, the world's largest Ferris Wheel, which opened last year.  From ground to top, 820 feet.  Each of i

We departed Muscat and are sailing to Mumbai, India.  The   Arabian Peninsula  is a largely ignored part of the world by most visitors.  Under 1.25 million square miles are most of the world's oil.  It is relatively small compared to the USA, which has 3.8 msm and 335 million people.  The AP has a population of 86 million. Saudi Arabia  36.5 million Yeman  33.7 million UAE  9.4 million Oman  4.6 million Kuwait  4.3 million Qatar  2.7 million Bahrain  1.5 million The cities with the two largest population are in Saudi Arabia:  Riyadh 7.5 million and Jeddah 4.8 million. However, in 1950 the population was only 9.5 million, mostly Bedouins in the desert.  Then oil was discovered,  first in Iran in 1908  by the British.  But the story of oil goes back to 600 BC, when the Chinese first found this liquid.  More recently, there was Colonel Edwin Drake's 1859 oil well in Pennsylvania, and within a decade came John D. Rockefeller and the Standard Oil Company.  Then in 1901, Spindletop i