April 7 - 8, 2008 Cirali, Turkey We took a 1½ hour bus ride to the small beach town of Cirali on the Mediterranean coast of Turkey. On first arriving we wondered why our travel company had sent us here as this is a very quiet resort town and most of the businesses were just opening for the season. We took a walk into the village for a late lunch and had a look at the very nice beach area. The next morning we spoke to the owner of the hotel ( a Turk who lived in Canada for a few years ), The Canada Hotel, about things to do in the area. We found out there is a very nice old ruins of an important ancient city called Olympos that is a good hike down ... read more

April 3 - 4, 2008 Cappadocia, Turkey. Wow !! What an interesting place. Cappadocia is roughly in the center of Turkey at some altitude in a hilly and mountainous region. The hills and mountains of this region are composed of a soft sandstone type of material and for thousands of years people have been digging into the hills creating caves to live in and for monasteries and religious sites. Even today the many of the caves are occupied by local families and many new caves have been created to store vegetables and other products as they provide a near perfect constant cool storage environment. Our hotel, Gamirasu Hotel, is part of one of these old cave settlements and the rooms, restaurant etc. are all caves cut into the hills. Some rooms have been “improved” with additional ... read more

Egypt General Comments. We have to comment on our very positive general experience in Egypt. We liked Cairo very much. This is a very nice city ( a little too big and busy ) with friendly people, good accommodation and very good food. We loved the trip to Aswan, Luxor and the Nile River, and we enjoyed our 2 days at Sharm el Sheik and the resort. Alexandria was a great finish to a very nice visit to this part of the world. Traveling in predominately Muslim countries takes some getting used to with all the time out for prayers and the early morning wake-up call everyday with the very loud call to prayers from all the mosques ( over 1000 in Cairo ) and some very formal rules related to Islam including not being able ... read more

March 28 - 29 Cairo, Egypt Friday morning we were picked up for some more sightseeing in Cairo. We began with a visit to several big Mosques and a local shopping market and finished after lunch with a visit to the very impressive Egyptian Museum. You could spend a few weeks in this place if you wanted to see all the exhibits. They tell us that about 3% of what they have is on display and the rest is catalogued and in storage. They have done an excellent job as the museum is laid out in different time periods to make it easier to follow how things progressed over the last 5 or 6 thousand years. Unfortunately unless you are an expert in this history it becomes a little overwhelming. Still a very interesting place with ... read more

March 24, 2008 Luxor, Egypt Monday morning we had a very early wake up call to beat the large crowds that visit the many temple sites in Luxor. Luxor was the capital of the united North and South Egypts for many hundreds of years and because of this many important sites are here. These include the Valley Of The Kings and The Valley Of The Queens on the west side of the Nile and the Luxor and Karnac Temples on the east side. The Valley Of The Kings has many excavated burial tombs including a very small but very famous tomb, The tomb of King Tut. Famous because it was one of the only tombs found that hadn’t been looted and all the artifacts were still in the tomb when it was discovered. King Tut was ... read more