We’re in Salalah, Oman. We didn’t book any port excursions because the only one that looked interesting was full by the time we got around to booking. Salalah, whose current claim to fame is that it’s the main container shipping port for this part of the world, doesn’t have a cruise port terminal, and there’s nothing interesting one might walk to. Most of the view from our ship is of the container loading dock. It’s like staying in Long Beach near the Queen Mary.

On one of my favorite podcasts, one of the hosts occasionally talks about “when I lived in Scotland.” They are referring to having spent 3 months in Scotland doing the Fringe Festival, which is hardly “living in Scotland.” Three months isn’t even the limit of a tourist visa. But if that person can claim residency for three months, it means that I will be able to say that, once upon a time, I lived on the last ocean liner in the world.