Early Snow

Here comes my worst nightmare.........Snow already. Today with golf on my busy schedule, I couldn't back out and had to deal with the snow. Playing with a white ball, I lost plenty and was cold on top of all the penalty strokes. This is John getting ready to hit his tee shot and never see his ball again. This snow hasn't hit London this early since 1934. I sure don't understand what all this fuss is about global warming.

Fall

Here we are in the fall season and getting ready to turn back the clocks. Southern England is located about 50 degrees latitude, which is about the same as southern Canada. So this is just like being back in Washington State except we get very little snow. YEA! The leaves turning color and are quite beautiful, but they are falling as fast as the stock market. It creates major problems on the golf course. I can loose a golf ball right in the middle of the fairway because of the darn leaves. But I guess I shouldn't complain too much since that's my biggest problem right now.

Home Again

Here's the rest of the story since we were evicted Sept 10 th. We were feeling lucky to find a new built flat in Guildford so no more worries... wrong! With a new lease signed, a completion date, and a move in date, we were set. So the moving truck arrives and things go bad. It seems with property prices falling, the property was reappraised and the value came down123,000 pounds less than the landlord agreed to pay a year before. Therefore the bank wouldn't fund the loan and we couldn't move in. Our things got sent back to storage. In the meantime here's where we lived: (1) 5 days in a Guildford pub.(2) The Hilton for 4 days in London. (3) A company furnished flat in Canary Wharf, London. (4) 2 days with a friend in London. (5) Another company flat in Canary Wharf. (6) With a tip from good friend Simon, another penthouse flat came open at Trinity Gate right where we started. We only have to take a different elevator now to our flat that we moved into last Friday. Can you believe it! We sure meet a lot of people with these moves. I wish I knew why they call houses flats in Europe. Roommates are called flat mates, we will have a flat warming party, instead of a house warming party. I sure don't hear anyone calling a house wife a flat wife. So the top center of the picture is where we are now, the top right is where we were before....Hope we can hang there for a while.

Cairo Egypt

Cairo is the 3 rd biggest city in the world with 26 million people, catching up with Mexico City, and Beijing China. We got a taste of the city streets because we had an hour ride to the Cairo airport. I felt like we would have been safer on this camel after our car got run into by a donkey pulling a cart. I'm not kidding, these carts are even on the freeways.

Pyramids of Giza

Our final two nights were spent at the historic Mena House in Cairo. This hotel was built in 1860 next to the Pyramids of Giza and the great Sphinx. Again thousands of tourists flock to these Pyramids that are over 5000 years old. We crawled into the biggest Pyramid which took us into an inside chamber. It was quite a squeeze getting past people coming out. The tour guide said that still nobody knows how these Pyramids were built.

Luxor

Luxor was the city on the Nile where our cruise ended. We toured in the 115 degree heat but held up ok. This is the Karnak temples and it's impossible to even get a picture that shows just how massive it really is. These columns are about 10 ft. across and have granite blocks on top that weigh up to 3 tons. I got no idea how they built these. In the lower picture is a statue of the Scarab Beetle. The myth is that if you run around the beetle 3 times, it will bring you good luck for the rest of your life. If you do 7 laps around it you will be blessed with fertility. We both made darn sure we stopped at 3.

Valley of the Kings

This is actually up on a mountain, and so popular a sight that an estimated 10,000 tourists a day visit here. We went into several tombs and couldn't believe the vivid colors and carvings that looked like they were recently done. These tombs date back to 2600 BC, and have lasted so long because of very little rain and almost no humidity. The most famous is the tomb of King Tutankhamun which was found in 1929. It was hidden for so many years because it was found directly under another tomb. The Egyptians have security with guns at every tourist attraction and at every hotel where we stayed. Tourism is their biggest asset so they take it very serious.

Lauren

Lauren from Detroit, (lower picture) on the cruise with her family had never been on a blog so Lauren this one's for you. This is Julie, Lauren, and Prem from Baltimore. We Americans had the biggest showing on this cruise. Meeting all of these great people is what makes these trips worth while. We gathered up a crowd from several separate tables our last night and had our feast at one large table.

Night time on the cruise ship was a blast. After a great dinner the first night, there was entertainment in the lounge. We had Egyptian night with native Egyptian dancing and guess what... We thought we were going to the show, we didn't know that we were going to be the show. We both got drug onto the stage along with a few other brave souls. I even got a lesson from a belly dancer but couldn't get a picture. This made the cruise a little more fun.

Sonesta Star Goddess

This is the tour ship that we spent 3 nights on. It took about 20 hours to reach our destination at Luxor. The ship had 33 state rooms that were furnished to the max, complete with flat screen TV's and wireless Internet. The food was the best, with a different theme each night. We took advantage of the pool on the upper deck when weren't out on a tour. There are over 500 cruise ships operating in this short section of the Nile River. This cruise is very popular for tourist from all over the world.

Philae Temple of Isis

This Temple was our second stop in Aswan. This beautiful Temple was a victim of the Aswan High Dam. With an incredible multimillion dollar project this temple had a coffer dam built around it and it was moved to higher ground. It now sits on an island and is accessed by small tour boats. We felt like we were back in Arizona with the mid-day temp hitting about 115

Aswan High Dam

This Dam is a must see for all tourists. It was completed in 1970 and is the largest embankment dam in the world. This dam was built to control the flooding of the Nile River during the rainy season, and to release water during times of drought. It forms the 3 rd largest reservoir in the world which is called Lake Nasser. Unfortunately the reservoir covered some Egyptian temples that were built about 2600 BC.

Movenpick Hotel, Aswan Egypt

This was our first stop on a 1 week Egyptian tour, to celebrate our 25 th anniversary. We flew into Cairo on Oct 2nd, and with a delayed flight we found ourselves running through the international airport to barely make our connecting flight to Aswan. We finally arrived at the beautiful Movenpick Hotel after midnight. Since we didn't speak Arabic very well we had a little trouble communicating. But on our arrival we were met by a driver connected with our travel agency who took care of us until we reached our hotel. With a few tips thrown out, we got to our room with all of our luggage. Egyptian currency is the pound, and it's 10 Egyptian pounds to one English pound or 5 pounds to one US dollar. Now we are back in England and can catch up on the Blog.