Adventure of the month

Roman Amphitheater The Pillar of Pompey The New Library of Alexandria Prior to arriving in Cairo, my friend and I had concocted a remarkably ambitious plan for our third day that would have us taking a 9 hour night train to Luxor, seeing everything in approximately 12 hours and then taking a ride across the desert to Hurghada to catch our flight the following afternoon. Heat, exhaustion and the realities of Egypt all collided to persuade to us to reconsider. Instead, we happily accepted the suggestion of Mohammed, the night manager at our hostel and now, our travel coordinator and opted to do a much more civilized 2-3 hour day trip to the ancient capital city of Alexandria. The day started off as was now the norm. Tusin, our driver dropped us off at an ancient Roman ampitheater, we bought the tickets and then lacking a tour group to shadow, found some Americans with a Lonely Planet guidebook we could borrow to try to discern what we were looking at, all the while avoiding ...

The Nile: not just a condition characterized by the ability to disregard reality Morning at the Pyramids of Giza The Pyramid of Khufu Pyramid at the Saqqara necropolis And inevitable vendor at the Saqqara necropolis Statue of Ramses II at the Memphis Museum The Mosque of Mohammad Ali at the Citadel Abolution fountain within the its courtyard It is a lso known as the Alabaster Mosque for its interior The Sultan Hassan Mosque Outside the Church of Saint Barbara in the Coptic quarter Note the Pyramids way in the background . I think I need to come up with some shorthand way of saying that I had some time off, a chance at cheap airfare and not much else, because there is definitely a pattern to be discerned here. This past Monday, after a nano-second of thought, the last-minute destination chosen was Cairo. Without sufficient time to plan an itinerary, Diana and I put our fate in the hands of a tour operator who...