November 2010
28 posts
Photos
Here’s the link to my picasa album for the “best of” collection from the trip. It’s a little large, 233 pictures but that’s nothing compared to the 13K+ I whittled it down from!
Enjoy!
Egypt November 2010
Aswan
Aswan seemed like a nice city from the time we spent there. The Nile is very beautiful there.
Once we got off the freakin’ bus we went on a boat ride to the Nubian Village, we were allowed to sit on the roof of the boat as it traveled against the current to reach the village. It was nice to see the stars after spending so much time in smoggy Cairo!
After we finished checking out the Nubian...
The Bus
Instead of blogging about individual days from the tour I thought I would wrap up this travel blog by talking about of a few of the tour highlights, starting with THE BUS.
We were supposed to take an overnight train to Aswan from Cairo, do the Nile cruise from Aswan to Luxor and then take another overnight train back to Cairo. Unfortunately the tour company was having problems with the Egyptian...
Noooooooooooo
Just another reason why I hate Internet Explorer… I just wrote a nice update and tried to submit it, the Internet connection is a little iffy here and it errored when I submitted, I pressed the back button to try again… all the text was gone!!! YAY!
Firefox or Chrome would have kept the text there for me… thanks IE!
See you all soon, we`re about to board the shuttle bus to the...
Heading home!
Well my trip to Egypt has finally come to a close! It was sometimes crazy, sometimes stressful, sometimes (OK… often) uncomfortable and definitely not hassle free but I enjoyed it so much and am so glad to have come.
I will definitely be returning to Canada with a new appreciation for the cleanliness, the space and the fact that there are actually rules! I hope Canada never becomes...
thecoucher asked: Hey Dan. It's been fun reading your blog entries. Certainly brings back memories of my time in Cairo. As you have noticed, we usually found it best just to "rent" a taxi for the day although it did involve several trips to brother-in-law's jewelry stores and brother-in-law's carpet stores and ... You are really going to enjoy the Egyptian history once you get out of the...
Smog
Another small entry!
In almost every city we’ve visited deep down in my throat has burned and I’ve gotten a cough, I’m so glad it’s not like this back home!
Our tour leader said that Cairo is the second most polluted city in the world behind Tokyo! INSANE!
Egypt
Am I glad I came? ABSOLUTELY
Would I recommend coming? ABSOLUTELY
Am I glad to be heading home? Like you wouldn’t believe!
Will I ever come back? I can’t almost guarantee not!
More blogs to come... in a couple days time
I’m way too tired right now to write about anything right now and need to use the internet to find a hotel in Zurich.
I've had a great time in Egypt but...
My god I can’t wait to come home!
See you all soon!
vernonling asked: How are your fish doing?
creativechris asked: have you and Adrian slept in any nautical themed single beds?
Abu Simbel
One of the optional excursions we’re going on is to visit Abu Simbel, it’s pretty close to the Sudanese border. It’s a couple hours ride from Aswan… the INSANE thing is that you have to go in a convoy, all the tour buses meet and have police escorts, one in the front, one in the middle and one on the back…. and then they spread police officers on the buses too!!
The...
Pyramids and Egyptian Museum
Today was the first day with our tour group, we visited the Egyptian Museum early in the morning, there’s so much stuff there and it’s so packed with people that you don’t know where to look! One thing I found insane was that they had most things out in the open, you could touch them (you’re not allowed, but you could). Even things like wood sarcophogii, things that will...
Yesterday... a day packed with disappointment
We thought we’d start the day visiting Zamalek since it’s supposed to be very nice to walk around… not so much. All the embassies and expensive banks are on the island there but there are walls everywhere so it’s a pretty lame walk. We did however get to go up the Cairo tower, the highest structure in Cairo, it gave us a great view of the nile and the city (and smog!)
Next...
Hiring a taxi personal taxi driver...
Today was our best day in Egypt yet!
We met with some of the other Canadians we originally met at Ahmed’s wedding for breakfast, they’re ending their trip today and offered to take our suits home! YESSSSS, I’m so glad I don’t have to carry that along for my tour, it literally took up about half of my bag!
The neighborhood surrounding their hostel is SOOOOO much nicer than...
Alexandria!
So yesterday we had our day trip to Alexandria!
I was rocking 3 hours of sleep when we got up at 7 in order to make it downstairs in time for our 8 AM pick up…. Around 8:30 we had front desk call our tour company, the tour was delayed until a 10:30 pick up since Friday and Saturday are the “weekend” here and the library wouldn’t be open at the right time for us. We popped...
tylerlikesthisphoto asked: Does a foreign culture make you seem like more or less of a weiner?
dave-edmunds asked: Was it a "dry" wedding reception?
Questions
If you want to you can send me a question (or just a comment) by using the “Ask me anything” link.
What are you waiting for?! Get on it!
More craziness
Something else crazy I should mention is that the Mina House Hotel was the most secure place we’ve gone so far. Lots of places have metal detectors and x-ray machines but you generally just get waved through. The Mina House looked under our cab with mirrors (for bombs I’m assuming) before even letting us on the complex. I also figured the metal detectors were just a formality there too...
Ahmed's Wedding
The event that kicked off this whole trip was that our friend from university, Ahmed, invited us to his wedding, yesterday was the big day!
On the facebook invite Ahmed had written that it started between 6 and 630 so Adrian and I rushed there and made it just in time, while making our way to the hall we saw Ahmed - dressed totally normal - and he told us the wedding didn’t start until...
I should also mention the cabbie told us we were...
A day late! Nov 4
Had no time to write abut yesterday…. and you’re about to find out why!
We started our morning by visiting the Cairo Citadel, it’s a pretty fascinating complex and it’s really a shame you can’t explore it more! We got an education in Baksheesh that day, right when we got in the main area of Citadel a guard asked us if we wanted to see the museum, we said yes. He...
Gas is a little over 20 cents a litre here
First full day in Cairo!
Today was our first full day in Cairo! We realized yesterday that neither of us had brought a watch so we wanted to try to find one today for sure. We started off the day by heading to the Egyptian Museum, just as a landmark, we didn’t visit. We walked around the main square downtown for a bit before heading to the American Museum in Cairo to be a map. At first we couldn’t find it...
Made it!
We’re finally in Cairo after a good 20+ hours of traveling. Nothing too eventful happened on the flights other than they gave us chocolate at the end of the Zurich to Cairo flight and I left it in my pocket with my mp3 player… gooey mess!
We met a nice Egyptian guy who lives in the states but was on his way to visiting his family in Zurich. We got him to write out the Arabic numerals...
More last minute drama
Today I was doing a (nerdy) trial run of packing all my bags. I’m blown away that everything is actually going to fit! It wouldn’t have come close to be a problem if I didn’t have to lug a full suit (including shoes) with me to Egypt!
I recently bought a 32gb SD card for my camera after my boss, Jim, told me I would probably take way more than 600 pictures (how many fit on a...
October 2010
8 posts
Our Hotel in Cairo
After a bunch of confusion (there are two hotels named Swiss Inn in Cairo, Swiss Inn Hotel Hotel and Swiss Inn Hotel) we’ve figured out for sure where we’ll be staying in Cairo, check it out!
http://www.swissinn.net/nile/index.htm
Want to get updates?
Check out Tyler’s article on Google Reader, you should be using it!! http://www.tyleroneverything.com/2009/09/16/bgi-really-simple-syndication/
I’ll even make it easy for you… here’s the rss link: http://danedmunds.tumblr.com/rss
What are you doing reading this?!? GET TO IT!
The Itinerary
So the genesis of this whole trip was that Adrian and I were both invited to our friend Ahmed’s wedding… in Egypt! To be honest, at first I wrote it off but after talking to Adrian we decided we would go and use it as an excuse to kick off a trip to Egypt.
Once we decided we wanted to go we had to choose a tour to go on. If it had been another place, like Europe or something, I...
Egypt!!
I’ve finally found a use for this tumblr account (other than making sure no one else can have it!), I’m going to use it instead of e-mail or blog updates to allow friends and family to follow my upcoming trip to Egypt!
I think it beats e-mail because… a) If I forget anyone in my list I can just point them to this later. b) I don’t have to log on to my e-mail or blog on...