November 6 – 17 Before dinner I made my way down to the bar area of the hotel for a beer that put an exclamation point on a full day of sightseeing, having visited Abu Simbel, one of the sites in Egypt that had been at the top of my list.  We’d hit the halfway […]

November 6 – 17 As I was finishing my beer others in the group joined me for a hasty round and then we made our way to the hotel’s dock to board our ferry for the trip down the Nile to Elephantine Island where we’d partake in our Nubian Dinner.  Our host for the evening, […]

November 6 – 17 We returned to the Hotel AraCan to clean up and relax before taking off for the central train station and our overnight journey to Aswan.  This would be the first time for Joanna and I to spend a night in a sleeper compartment (we’ve done some overnights early in our marriage […]

November 6 – 17 At the start of the tour, Mahmoud collected 515 EGP ($34) from each of us to handle the tips downstream as he referred to it, that is those he would dole out to busboys, drivers, and anyone else providing a service.  This concept would be tested when we got involved with […]

November 6 – 17 Mid Saturday afternoon we checked out of the Marriott and took a taxi to the AraCan Pyramids Hotel, on the outskirts of Cairo in Giza, our lodging for the night, the first of our scheduled Egypt Adventure tour with Intrepid Travel out of Canada, which would last eight days and include […]

November 6 – 17 And so, it began, a month of international travel starting with Egypt and finishing with Mexico, two countries we’d not been to with the exception of multiple forays into northern Baja California.  We were curious to see how different, or similar, mainland Mexico would be from Baja, especially given that we’d […]

November 1 – 6 After returning from Arizona we spent the next three days preparing the house for a month’s vacancy, excepting some visits from friends and family taking advantage of its near the beach location.  The night before our flight we celebrated by taking in a concert featuring one of our favorite live performers, […]

October 18 – 27 We left Tombstone on a clear morning with blue skies that would follow us all day.  We decided not to stop in the downtown area (if you could call it that) to see the tourist street, multiple blocks of recreated late 1870’s cowboy town playing off the famous shoot out at […]

October 18 – 27 We began the tour by meeting our fellow participants as they showed up later in the afternoon on Saturday, then formally convened at 4pm to meet our two Adventure Cycling Association (ACA) tour leaders, Sue Davendonis and Christi Horton.  We gathered in a circle behind the ever-present ACA trailer for a […]

October 18 – 27 We spent the next few days at home preparing for what would now be an extended period of time away, traveling for a little over a month to North Carolina, Egypt, and then Mexico.  But first we’d take off for over a week and  meet up with Adventure Cycling to participate […]