We say goodbye to Luxor and the Upper Nile region We had a great visit to Luxor. We saw and learned many things that will keep us occupied for a long time after this trip is over. The best thing - we got to sleep in this morning! We had breakfast and were picked up at 9:30 for the flight back to Cairo which has become our second home in Egypt after initially arriving there, returning from Alexandria by train and now returning from Luxor by plane...home sweet home. The Luxor airport is very nice, an international airport as it [View Full Entry]

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Luxor and the Valley of the Kings (NOTE: The blog from the 27th has been updated with all the photos including our camel ride and photos taken inside the Great Pyramid of Giza. Still no progress on the return of posting streaming video, will continue working on that.) We got up early and met Hamby in the lobby of our hotel to head for the airport for our 7:30am flight to Luxor. As usual, Ahmet did a great job driving although there wasn't much traffic at 5:30 in the morning, even in Cairo. We had arranged for a box breakfast [View Full Entry]

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A side trip north to Alexandria by train We got up early (theme of this journey!), picked up by Hamby, our trip transfer lead, and driven to the Cairo train station by our driver, Ahmed, where we were experienced yet another bout with culture shock. Trains in Egypt are not what they are in Europe, not even what they are in the States (Amtrak), but they are available to all people for low cost in order to move up and down the Nile cities (where 98% of Egyptian population reside and have so for thousands of years). Under the direction [View Full Entry]

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Days like today just don't happen very often! ***Update on Technical Difficulty - it appears that the streaming video service for Travelblog is not functioning properly. With great disappoint, we will return our concentration to text and pictures and do our best to keep caught up - J&G*** ======================= We have talked about long travel days...and they were...but all that is worth it when you have a day like we had today. Today we had our first encounter with Egyptian antiquity - the Great Pyramids and Sphinx of Giza. After breakfast, we found an ATM in the hot [View Full Entry]

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Set a new record for time on a plane during a 24 hour period! We have set our third all time record during this trip. The first was 12.5 hrs LA-to-Auckland, then we bested tht by one hour during the Sydney-to-Singapore-to-Beijing run. Yesterday, we topped 14 hours in the Beijing-to-Singapore-to-Cairo run. Can't tell you how many movies we watched, how much food we ate, how much music we listened to or how much sleep we got...but we made it! We were offline the day before as the hotel near the Beijing Airport did not have Internet connectivity. That overnight was a [View Full Entry]

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Set a new record for time on plane during a 24 period! We have set our third all time record during this trip. The first was 12.5 hrs LA-to-Auckland, then we bested that by one hour during the Syndey-to-Singapore-to-Beijing run. Yesterday, we topped 14 hours in the Beijing-to-Singapore-to-Cairo run. Can't tell you how many movies we watched, how much food we eat, how much music we listened to or how much sleep we got, but we made it. We were offline the day before as the hotel near the Beijing Airport did not have Internet connectivity. That overnight was a [View Full Entry]

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Our day exploring the Terra Cotta Warriors Another U.N. World Heritiage Site, one of several we have visited Today we awoke, had a great international buffet breakfast, met Sally and our driver and headed out to the Terra Cotta Museum, a Terra Cotta warrior factory and government store, lunch and a visit to the Terra Cotta Warrior reclaimation site at the base of a mountain outside Xian. Hot day, 100 degree F, but a dry heat (yeah!). Bought Ginny a sun umbrella to help ward off the heat. She fit right in with the locals. We headed to the Museum [View Full Entry]

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[url='/Videos/3952.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3952.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Xian, China Our first intra-China airline flight Lisa and Mr. Dong picked us up at the hotel in Beijing this morning for the ride out to the Beijing Airport. We just missed a major road closing as some important Chinese delegate was arriving from the Airport and all the military transports were positioned to shutdown the highway at any moment to allow them to pass. We got lucky and made it through. We got to the airport and instead of dropping us off for goodbyes, Lisa es [View Full Entry]

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[url='/Videos/3922.html' onclick='dialog("/Videos/3922.html?popped=1","tbvideo",600,600);return false;'] Panda in the Beijing Zoo Took our time today, slowed down and enjoyed some time on our own We slept in this morning and started our day with an early lunch. We were off the tour circuit and away from our guide and driver today. We went to the concierge in the lobby for directions to the Beijing Zoo. We were out to find and film a Panda bear. The process was very straight forward and easy. The hotel has a special card where they write in Chinese where you are going for the [View Full Entry]

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Hutong Tour; A pedicab (bicycle rickshaw) drive through old Chinatown So this is what Hollywood shows us. A rickshaw, tight weaving streets and Chinese people living their lives. We have driven nearly all around Ring 2 today and I can tell you that construction cranes dot the horizon in all directions and awsome large building after large building passes by. There doesn't seem to be an a center to it or an end to it. Rapidly disappearing in all this new growth are the homes clustered along narrow streets called Hutongs. Our tour took us through the Hutong surrounding the [View Full Entry]

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