OK! ok! ok! We never posted the DATES of when we will be gone... oops! And, of course, all of our friends have reminded us of that glaring error.

We leave January 3 and arrive back January 22. Due to the splendid connections that modern airlines now offer, we fly from Charlotte to Detroit... (Detroit?) and from thence to Amsterdam with a 9 hr layover (not a bad thing - we'll pop into town and see if it's likely to be our next travel visit!) and then to Cairo, arriving at 2:00 AM Saturday... AM, folks, as in Anti-meridian, as in Morning.

The plan is to taxi to a hotel at that point - We would like to stay at Sheapherds's Hotel, only because it was the upper-crust spot for the 19th century archeologists to congregate and we'd just like to say we've stayed there.

The trip is, in order:

Cairo -> Aswan -> Luxor (Thebes) - Alexandria ->

Siwa Oasis -> White Desert -> Cairo -> Charlotte!

We will travel by plane, rail, Felucca (sailboat from Aswan to Thebes), 4x4 into the desert, and with an armed police escort to Abu Simbel (south of Aswan) because it is about 5 km from Sudan... not a happy country just now...

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The latest REAL news is that Tom Ponsonby has ALSO joined our merry band... He's a Bass in the Saint Gabriel choir (as is Bill Collins) so there will be 5 of us leaving our footprints in the sand. We don't know if he has purchased H2's for walking, but we will continue to badger him about it until he does.

This actually works out well, since if we run out of money, we can entertain as "The Three Basses" and will have 2 people (Bill B and Lisa) to whip up the crowds and pass the hat... er, kafia. Tom is usually bedecked by a dozen cameras, so the best pictures posted here during the trip will likely be taken by him, assuming we can post ANY photos.