Hey everyone! I just got back from 8 days in Egypt! It was absolutely amazing. I went with my friend Booter and it was quite the adventure. I decided that for this particular trip it would be much easier/better if I joined a tour group instead of doing my usual just fly there and figure it out. I'm very glad I did. It would have been relatively easy to get around, but there is very little of Egypt that I haven't seen now with the exception of Alexandria but I have been told that it wasn't really all that exciting anyhow. We started in Cairo, spent the night there, took an overnight train to Aswan, then 3 nights on a cruise ship going down the Nile River which took us to Luxor, and then another overnight train back to Cairo where we spent another day. All along the way we were seeing some of the most amazing history that goes back as far as 5,000 years. The temples of the Pharaoh's and their God's, the pyramids and Sphinx, dinner at a local village, the tombs of some of the greatest Pharoah's and some museums as well. The sheer size and detail of some of these things is immense and even more amazing is that we still can't figure out how some of it was done even with todays technology. It's all so beautiful. Hand carvings and the hyroglyphics. Amazing. Add in the local culture and you have some comedy as well. I went with a friend who has very dark skin and looks like some of the local tribes that still exist in Egypt known as Nubians. Because he looked Nubian, but had an American accent he was the center of attention more than he wanted to be. Street vendors would call out to him and call him brother and try to sell him things. Me, having blue eyes and light hair was also an attractant. I had people taking pictures of me and asking if they could take pictures with me. Between all of this and the stories that went through the whole week our poor guide was a wreck. He kept saying our entire group was a disaster, but he loved us. As much as he might hate to admit it. There were 10 of us and all Australian except for me and Booter. We were quite the motley crue. Some of the highlights were Booter trying to kiss the Nubian Chief's wife at dinner (a MAJOR no no- she was muslim), rode a donkey through the desert to a temple- me falling off a donkey on my butt, Booter being picked up and carried away by one of the locals, our tour guide carrying me through the market trying to sell me-he got offered 3.5 chickens (not sure how you get half a chicken but sure), a few camels, and an Egyptian husband, went on a hot air balloon ride, I got a massage by one of the locals at the perfume shop we all visited -like Booter wasnt supposed to touch/kiss the Chiefs wife, the men arent really supposed to touch women unless necessary and helping them... massage doesnt count as helping apparently. Our guide almost freaked out and got very worried. It wasnt uncomfortable for me, it was a standard massage, but it was a very big no no for their culture. We all thought our guide, Ahmed was going to start a problem with the guy. Top it off with because Booter and I looked so different we kept getting free things or very big discounts and a lot of attention from the locals and our guide was just very confused by it. He kept saying this was the most bizarre tour he had ever been on. Our whole group was great though. We all got along great and 2 of them are probably going to ocme out to visit me in the next week. They were traveling to Spain but are goin to change it to Lisbon to see us! Yeah!

So much history and stories about each temple, and the carvings, influence of the Greeks and Christians, and all the unknown things about the history. This was my favorite trip I've ever taken. Pictures coming very soon!