Just a short note to apologise for the time lag in getting this latest round of updates to you all. The last couple of weeks of our trip has been absolutely full on and we have had a bit of trouble finding both the time and the Internet access to do our updates. Now that we are settled here in Venice for the next few days and our schedule as slowed down to only about 5-6 hours of walking a day <sigh> we hope to get some catching up done. Hope you are all well back home - wherever that may [View Full Entry]

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We drove down to a seaside town called Cesme today to visit the castle of St Peter. Cesme is a lovely little town and the castle was well looked after and very interesting. There was a museum inside that mainly contained nautical exhibits as the castle featured in many famous sea battles. From standing on the battlements we could see across to the Greek Islands - well we were assured by Mum and Dad that we would have been able to if it wasn't raining :) We headed into the village for lunch and had our first Pide which is a [View Full Entry]

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It was a big day today as we had a lot to fit in. We headed out for our private tour of Ephesus nice and early. It was only about 1 hour out of Izmir and in no time at all we were at the Temple of Artemis one of the 7 Ancient Wonders of the World. As you can see from the picture thanks to earth quakes and some good old fashioned looting there is not a lot left of the original 136 columns. It was interesting to see that in one shot you could get pagan temple, Muslim Mosque [View Full Entry]

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Another lazey day today with an outing into Izmir to look at some shops and check out the new Marks and Spensers that has just opened here. Had another nice lunch at a cafe and a walk along the sea front. We managed to make some Skpye calls home which was just lovely as the web cams were all working. We spent the rest of the day veging out and we will not be too late to bed tonight as we have a big day tomorrow at Ephesus. [View Full Entry]

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We headed out to Sardis today to see some Roman ruins. It was a nice drive out there as the Turks are no where near as crazy as the Egyptians on the road. We stopped first to see the temple of Artemis which was huge and after a picnic lunch supplied by Mummy we then headed over the road to the main complex which was really impressive. The ruins were quite different to the Egyptian monuments that we have been used to looking at. Everything smacks of a culture that did not have to dedicate all of it resources to food [View Full Entry]

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We went out to Foça today which is a lovely village that sits right on the Aegean. We had a great lunch in a little restaurant on the harbour and then walked through the town. We then headed off to try and find a place for a swim. We did not realise that here in Izmir "beaches" are owned and you have to pay to use them. After driving up the coast a bit we did find a nice little spot that we could climb down to and we had a fantastic swim. The water was swimming pool clear and had [View Full Entry]

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Today was a bit of a rest day with our only adventure trying to find a replacement 16GB SD card for our little computer as Graham has managed to fry the one that is in there <sigh>. We went out to dinner tonight right on the cordon which is the sea front here at Izmir and watched to sun set as we ate. [View Full Entry]

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Well not such an auspicious day for travel today however we made it here safely. After surviving our last drive throught Cairo with the same maniac driver that took us to Dahab and back we were greeted at the airport with perhaps the biggest shambles that we have seen yet. Cairo airport is definitely something that has to be experienced. If you are ever travelling out of Cairo then we suggest that you either get transfers too and from your airport or leave at least 5 hours to check in :). When we got to the airport it was so busy [View Full Entry]

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Our last day in Cairo. We did not get up to anything too adventurous but managed to do some washing so that we do not stink out Mum and Dad when we get to Turkey and managed to get the travel diary up to speed. Our tour is now dwindling with only 5 of us left. It feels a bit strange now that the tour is over and there is no one here to look after us and tell us what we should be doing and where we are going out to dinner. We made a quick trip out to a [View Full Entry]

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After our first sleep in and another non-breakfast box breakfast we spent today relaxing and snorkeling in the Red Sea - just beautiful!. Dinner was at a place called the “Funny Mummy” which is filled with lots of cats - so many cats we were given water pistols to chase them away! No sleep for us tonight as we leave at 11.30pm to travel to Mt Sinai which is a 2 hour drive west of Dahab and then about a 2 ½ to 3 hour climb to the peak to watch the sunrise tomorrow morning followed with yet another breakfast box [View Full Entry]

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