Day 13, Our Final Day: Petra, One of the New Seven Wonders of the World
The final day of our trip was also the finest. Sara and I awoke before the sunrise in a small town just outside of one of the recently named New Seven Wonders of the World: Petra. We were in Wadi Musa, Jordan, staying at a hotel recommended by our taxi driver from the night before. The previous day, before crossing into Israel, we had found a little hole in the wall in which to eat...
Read MoreDay 12, The Bomb Scare at the Israeli Border
As Sara and I sat on a curb just inside the Israeli border waiting for our new friends to make it through their interrogation by the border guards, the sirens at the checkpoint suddenly sounded, a female voice barked out commands over the loudspeaker in Hebrew, the border gate slammed shut and a man ran across the driveway, gun in hand. We had already made it through the checkpoint and...
Read MoreDay 11, Laid-Back Dahab After One of Us Almost Gets Left Behind
As the sun came up on Day 11 of our journey through Egypt, we were greeted with incredible views of the desert meeting the sea. We were in the 15th hour of our 14 hour bus ride and it looked like we only had about three hours to go. We finally pulled in to Sharm El Sheik, not our final stop, but a chance to get off the bus for a few minutes and stretch. Since our bus did not have a...
Read MoreDay 10 1/2, One of Us Stayed Awake on the 18-Hour Bus from Luxor to Dahab
Flip often makes statements such as “… one of us will have to stay home and take care of the baby”, or “one of us will have to go on site and take care of this server crash…” And somehow, when he makes such statements, that unfortunate “one of us” always ends up to be me. So on this long-dreaded 18-hour bus ride, “one of us” stayed...
Read MoreDay 10, Lesser Known Luxor
For our final day in Luxor, Sara and I arranged for a private tour of some of the lesser visited sites on the West Bank. We had decided to splurge a bit and opted for a van with a driver and an Egyptologist to show us around for a half day. Our cost for this was about $70 U.S. and it was worth it. Mohamed, our tour guide, recommended that since we had seen the ‘major’...
Read MoreDay 9, Luxor’s Valley of the Kings and Then Back Into Real Egypt
Our final morning on the ship began with another pre-6am wake up. We were docked in Luxor and had toured the East Bank the previous day. Today we were destined for the West Bank. In ancient Egypt, the Egyptians buried their dead on the west side of the Nile, due to the setting sun which symbolized moving on to the next world, so all of the tombs, up and down the Nile, are found on...
Read MoreDay 8, If You Can Only Go To One Place In All Of Egypt…
Our last full day on the ship promised to be memorable. We were scheduled to see Edfu, travel north through a lock and end up in Luxor, where we would tour Karnak Temple and Luxor Temple. It was going to be a busy day and we had to awaken at 5:30am in order to disembark by 6. Traditionally, cruise ships would contract with horse-drawn buggies to carry its passengers the short...
Read MoreDay 7, How To Book a Five-Star Cruise For Less, Oh, and Kom Ombo
Sara and I awoke on Day 7 in a nice comfortable bed, groggily stumbled a few yards to the dining room for our breakfast buffet and checked our day’s activity list to see what was planned for us. We were aboard our five-star Nile cruise ship, still docked in Aswan. The plan of the day consisted of free time in Aswan until 2pm, at which time we would sail to Kom Ombo, a temple...
Read MoreDay 6, Aswan And The Start Of Our Nile Cruise, That Is, If We Can Find The Ship
To bring you up to speed, Sara and I had been traveling through Egypt and we have reached Day 6. Our story currently puts us in Aswan, in Upper Egypt, which is actually quite far south (since the Nile flows South to North, the southern part of Egypt is referred to as Upper Egypt, while the northern part is considered Lower Egypt). This is the day that we will board our luxurious...
Read MoreDay 5, A Day Sailing Beats a Month in Town
Sorry for the delay in this post. We have been moving our house, so the past couple of weeks have been hectic. Sara and I arrived in Aswan via the sleeper train at about 10am. We had booked a Nile cruise, but did not board the ship until the following day, so we had a day in which to relax and explore. [Show as...
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