GinnyNJohn

London ala carte! A day on our own. We got up early and headed down the street to the "Muffin Man" for an English breakfast that was very good before taking a taxi to Buckingham Palace for the "changing of the guard". Security was evident everywhere, as you can expect, and the crowds were big. We did our best to take pictures and film the action. The sound was fantastic. We came away with a sense of accomplishment and pride that we choose not to change our tour plans in London given the recent events - that would be just what they wanted us to do so we pressed on. We stopped to take a picture of the Princess Diana memorial walk emblem placed in the sidewalk adjacent to Buckingham Palace then down the street ... read more

Highlights of Paris; The Louvre, The Eiffel Tower, The Arch of Triumph and the Cathedral of Notre Dame We headed out on foot from our hotel down the street about 3 blocks and then crossed over into the square surrounded by the The Louvre. As you know, the Louvre is huge and we have already had first hand experience with ancient Roman, Eqyptian and Chinese historical artifacts so we set our priorities to the following four world class art objects; the Mona Lisa, Napolean & Josephine Coronation, Winged Victory and the Venus de Milo. Searching for these four items within the Louvre enabled us to pass through galleries of stunning world class art including French paintings, German, Flemish and Dutch paintings, Egyptian, Greek and Roman antiquities, sculptures reflecting compexity and astonishingly lifelike along with the ... read more

We are back online, out of Italy, in Paris and most importantly, Ginny is doing great! Here is the summary: we traveled from Rome to Florence (7/6) where Ginny came down with a sore throat and temperature. We camped out at the hotel and were not able to see Florence, guess we will have to go back!. We were pressed by schedule to move onto Venice via Eurostar speed train (7/7) where we were able to spend two nights, cancelled our tour and made time for Ginny to rest. We called a Doctor (7/8) who arrived by boat to our hotel, on a Sunday nonetheless, who diagnosed Ginny with a secondary infection of her left lymph gland as a result of the earlier sore throat. She prescribed antibiotics and with some good luck and quick ... read more

Up for breakfast at the hotel and a taxi ride to the train station where we caught our train to Naples. We met our driver in Naples as planned. Funny story here...our driver was talking to another driver while holding the sign with our name on it. In true Italian form, the driver was "talking with his hands" so expressively, that we weren't sure if it was our name or not because it was flying all around. A good laugh and introductions then off to the Mercedes Benz van to Pompeii to hook up with Stefano, our guide for the Pompeii archilogical site. As you may know, Mt. Vesuvius (a pyroclastic gas volcano, not lava - the most dangerous type) exploded in AD79 erupting for 3 days and killing the inhabitants of Pompeii. Pompeii was ... read more

Journey from Egypt to Italy via Austria We experienced a beautiful sunset over Cairo, went to sleep and got up for our journey to Austria. We exchanged gifts with Hamdy at the airport and moved on to our Austrian Airlines (a United Airlines Star Alliance partner) where we had business class seats out of Africa to Italy. Due to flight availability and scheduling we needed to link through Vienna where we overnighted at the airport (a NH Hotel, like a Novatel hotel) then back into the airport for our flight to Rome. Funny story here...we landed in Vienna and behaving as the road warriors we are, got our bags and headed for the exit to find the shuttle to the NH Hotel. We got outside and did not see where the local hotel shuttle stop ... read more