Friday, April 03, 2009 Aswan, Egypt Today was basically a free day for me. This morning there was an optional tour to Abu Simbel. It seemed quite pricey to me and so I opted out. Those who went had to get up at 4 am, leave the hotel at 5 am, fly to Abu Simbel, look at the monument and return to Aswan in time for lunch at noon. The price was $250. Instead, I got up at 5:30, called Pat and went back to bed from 7:30 to 10:00 and even skipped breakfast. We...

Thursday, April 02, 2009 Aswan, Egypt This morning started out a little rocky. I tried unsuccessfully for over an hour to get onto the Internet. I finally gave up and since I had promised Pat I would call I decided to use my calling card. I tried dialing from my room and this did not work either. I went down to the lobby and had to have the operator place the call for me and so not only did I have to use the minutes from my calling card but I had to pay a sma...

Wednesday, April 1, 2009 Cairo/Aswan, Egypt We checked out of our Cairo hotel and set out for our day's excursions. The highlight of the day was a visit to the Egyptian Museum of Antiquities. Salah gave us an excellent guided tour for two hours showing us and explaining selected masterpieces in chronological order. The museum was started in 1902 and has more than 120,000 items on display with 150,000 items stored in the basement. Cairo is in the process of ...

Tuesday, March 31, 2009 Cairo, Egypt Our first outing of the day was Coptic Cairo. This is the oldest part of the city. The compound lies within the walls of the 1st century Roman fortress of Babylon.The Hanging Church is the most beautiful of Cairo's churches and has an ornately decorated interior consisting of three barrel-vaulted, wooden roofed aisles, ivory inlaid screens and a finely carved marble pulpit. While sitting on the pews we were given a lectu...

Monday, March 30, 2009 Giza, Egypt I was happy that I was able to sleep the whole night through which sometimes does not happen with jetlag. I talked with Pat before going down to the breakfast buffet. The streets are very active this morning with thousands of blaring horns and the air looks very polluted compared to yesterday. In, I believe 1977; a friend and I wanted to see the King Tut Exhibition while it was traveling through the United States. Ticke...