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I'm back from our 18 day cruise starting in Dubai and ending in Athens.  Some quick impressions:

1.  The UAE seems to have an unsustainable model, only 20% of the population is "locals".  The rest are "support staff", and not really delighted about it.
2.  Oman has universal mask mandates.
3.  My wife was a bit disappointed with Petra, it was about as I expected, there are a ton of "shops" in the remains and aggressive sellers.  That was a long day trip, over 13 hours.  Jordan has poor roads.
4.  Egypt is really a third world country with poor roads.  We did another 13 hour day trip to see Luxor and Valley of the Kings.  The main road has a large traffic hump every km, the bus would speed up, slow down, over and over.  You see every kind of conveyance on what often is a four lane "divided" highway.  Egypt has built several million person "new cities" from nothing (desert).  
5.  The ports in these countries are massive, even Oman.
6.  Israel has roads about like the US.  We did one trip to Jerusalem and another to Nazareth and the Sea of Gallilee. 
7.  The quality of the tour guides vary massively, and is important (duh).  The lady in Egypt went on and on about how great the government was.  One dude in Israel went on and on about how great socialism is and said things about Jesus that are "not Biblical" at all.  We had a very good one in Jerusalem fortunately.  
8.  Jerusalem, the Old City, to me, is a rat warren of Arab shops and narrow streets, and yes, we visited the Armenian and Christian quarters also.  I would not go back.  My wife is religious so it meant a lot to her.
9.  You see English "subtitles" nearly everywhere, and American fast food joints and Coke signs.  I was amused at how many Starbucks are in Athens.  There is a McD's in downtown Luxor, Egypt.  US "culture" is pervasive (movies and music etc.).
10.  We had a great tour of Cyrus due to the tour guide.  This island is divided by the Greeks and Turkey, not pleasantly so.
11.  Rhodes was on the stop, we did a tour, OK, fine.
12.  The drive from the port to our hotel in central Athens was pretty depressing, but the area around the hotel was fairly upscale, the Parliament building, embassies, parks, etc.  We walked to the Parthenon and paid a lady 80 Eu for a tour of the Acropolis.  We had some great food in Athens.  Athens has large mountains around it, probably 1,000 meters or so?
13.  We had a pretty large stateroom with balcony that helped a lot as we had four days at sea at one point in a row.  The food is good overall, the "upscale restaurants" were not really better than the free ones.  The Garden Cafe was quite solid.  The ship is nearly 94,000 tons, we would feel occasional "movement", 2402 passengers and 1200 crew.  It was very easy to find a spot with nobody else there.  There was a very nice "bourbon bar" on six.
14.  We had the "free beverage package", which isn't free of course.  We signed up for another tour and declined it, and took the upgraded club balcony suite instead.  We had three "free" meals at their upscale restaurants which were "OK", but nothing special.  One was "french" (not).
15.  We did not tire of the cruise really but are glad to be home.  The flight from Istanbul to ATL was tiring, but the flight from Toronto to Dubai was ... a killer, sort of, 12+ hours.
16.  Folks who say the US is a "third world country" need to get out more.

My wife said it exceeded hers by a fair margin.  I think net it met mine.  I enjoyed seeing the Suez Canal as much as anything, some of the other stops where kind of things you "have to see", like Petra (if you are in the area).  The long bus rides were rough as were the two long plane segments.  I think the only place I'd return would be Athens.  My wife says Cairo is a thing to see, but we didn't go there.

I enjoy meeting various people from here and there and learning more about different cultures, which all happened.  The passengers included a fair number of Asians though many live in the US.  We met Brits and Canadians and Aussies in good numbers.  I was told the average age was 65, which sounds right, we had a LOT of really older folks aboard, and some with walkers or in wheelchairs.  My wife got a bit annoyed in Jerusalem that one older guy kept asking the guide to slow down.  He really shouldn't have made that excursion, but I told my wife it probably was a dream of his.  And of course we had a goodly number of really fat people on board.  They often would stand in some choke point unaware of others.

I thought we might get bored with four consecutive days at sea but we didn't.  We saw zero shows, we were usually tired by 9 PM.  We heard various musicians playing in bars etc. at times, they really were not very good.  They usually had some playing by the pools.  I got in a hot tub once by myself after going to the gym a bit.  We waded in the Red Sea, it's not red, but it was cold.  

Yes, no stops in those other places for obvious reasons.  The Captain made an announcement we were entering pirate infested waters around Yemen but claimed things were under control.  A radar repeater in the bridge viewing room showed a French frigate about 30 nm away from us.

I've never heard of Petras, what's that?
I'd look forward to the canal bit, too.
I've never considered the temperature of the Red Sea.  Good to know.
Who says the US is a 3rd-world country?  Maybe the tent cities of homeless people, but more than that?  

I'd rather cruise from Anchorage to Acapulco thru the Panama canal and then from Belize to Nova Scotia

Many stops along the way

maybe July to July

This is the "Siq", or narrow canyon entrance to the city, quite interesting I thought:

This is the main port in Oman, Salalah, part of it anyway.