A Bold Claim But Vienna Is Up To The Challenge!! From Munich to Vienna (or Wien) takes about four hours on the train and travels through some more of that beautiful countryside. I find it hard to describe why it's so beautiful as I have seen so many amazing things on this trip so far including landmarks and scenery, but for some reason the vistas from the train windows here are extra tranquil and serene as they roll by. Vienna is a gem!! With history coming out it's ears from the era of the Kings that ruled most of Central Europe, the Habsburg monarchy, Vienna has a wealth of architectural delights from the Museumquartier housing the Leopold Museum, to the ostentatious Parliament House and the Hofburg (or imperial palace). A walk around town shows Vienna as ... read more

With A Royal Route To Get There Leaving Petra, we had a couple of stops before we got to Jordan’s capital, Amman. First on the agenda… the ruins of one of the Crusader’s Castles at Shobak. Built around the 11th Century, it was taken back by the Arabs later and embellished in a more Arabic style before an earthquake in the early 1900’s made it uninhabitable. During the time of the crusades, the area was split up in to principalities with each of the castles presided over by a noble or prince to safe guard the route between Europe, Damascus and the holy city, Jerusalem. This route came to be known as the King’s Highway and although not a highway by today’s standards, back then the traffic doing a pilgrimage to Jerusalem made the road an ... read more

Stopping At Mars On The Way Leaving Aqaba and the Red Sea behind, we turned back into the desert for an off planet experience. Wadi Rum is almost like visiting Mars, so much so that nearly all the movies that need to depict Mars uses it for their set. Movies like Mission To Mars and Red Planet have been filmed on site, not to mention Transformers 2 and the countless Lawrence Of Arabia films and documentaries. T.E. Lawrence (AKA Lawrence of Arabia) lived in the area with the Bedouins as an archaeologist before the Arabic Revolt when he took the side of the Arabs and helped set them free to run their own countries, becoming a hero of the people in the process. To this day in Jordan there are many bridges, highways, buildings and businesses ... read more

A Unique Combination... Today was the official wrap up day for our tour group as I was the only one going on to Jordan and the girls were all splitting up, with some going to Hurghada on the Red Sea for some snorkling and diving and the rest heading back to Cairo to either head home or carry on their travels to other corners of the globe. So what better way to start our last day off than with a donkey ride!! Up and about before the sun could punish both us and the donkeys too much, we caught a water taxi across the Nile with another Gecko's tour group, and were paired up with a donkey each according to size and weight and given the most rudimentary instructions before heading off (pull back on the ... read more

Confusing?? I’ll Explain… Egyptian History 101 Egypt’s Pharaonic history dates over 3500 years and is split into three kingdoms, Old, Middle , and New Kingdoms. During this time and even until today, Egypt itself is separated into five regions. Upper Egypt where the Nile river flows from, Lower Egypt including Cairo, Alexandria and the Nile Delta, The Western Desert from the Nile River West, The Eastern Desert from the Nile River East (obviously) of which both are populated by the Bedouin Nomads, and Sinai Peninsula which is part of the Asian continent and not part of Africa. Hence South being Upper Egypt and North being Lower. These two areas were where the great civilisations of Ancient Egypt were concentrated, along the fertile banks of the Nile. This river not only provided sustenance for the people and ... read more