Category: Uncategorized
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Cairo
It’s mid afternoon and most of us are sacked out in the hotel lobby doing things. The kids are playing, Jordan working on tickets and our personal bodyguard Hassan just finished skunking Avery and Bryce at arm wrestling before strapping on his gun and taking the three single boys on a walk. After a night…
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Arrived
We’re at our hotels in Cairo. Heath and Daidre went with Ray and Carol to the Hospital. We’re hoping they can really help him feel better. He’s miserable. So glad we’re finally here. Almost midnight. We’re tired and a little weird.
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Exodus
Eventually, like 4 hours eventually, we made it across the border to our waiting bus. It’s a nice, modern affair with cushy seats and blue curtains. We were given our mineral water and then our convoy headed out. We’re traveling with another tour bus and two police escorts. A tourist police rode in our bus…
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Waiting
Night was good. Now we’re slowly, slowly crossing the border into Egypt. It’s a typical overseas border experience. Four stations to exit Israel. Get this paper, get that paper, pay the exit fee…. Meanwhile Ray has been feeling really sick so he fainted on us. We continued to exit Israel with him in a wheelchair,…
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Eilat
We’re safely (we think) ensconced in our hotel rooms in Eilat. Well, the guys who dropped off our rental cars aren’t, as they were having some trouble finding exactly where to drop them. With the country all at half mast, nothing is as straight forward as it should be. We tried to visit Old City…
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Blissful Silence
No missiles in the night! Seriously! Well, apparently there were a few up North, but we didn’t see or hear one. Absolutely amazing. The pre-warning went off, but never advanced to “Take cover”. We slept well. I’m guessing most of Israel did. It also cooled down a little, and I had to wear a light…
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Good Day
We had a good day. In the morning some of us hiked up Mt Arbel and explored the fortress and caves. It was a little cooler, thank goodness, so that made it much more enjoyable. Israel heat is brutal in the summer. Our boat captain friend David decided last minute that we could risk going…
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Plan B
We slept well, only interrupted by one missile attack. But it was nothing half. We are much closer to the action here, and the booms sometimes shake the ground. Also the very real threat of falling shrapnel is always on our minds. Some of the group ended up in the shelter for a while, but…
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Galilee
We got the all clear at 3:00am and it lasted till late afternoon. That was blissful! We packed all our belongings, scrubbed and buffed the apartments and headed North. Is that stupid? Who knows. We don’t know anything anymore. The roads had a decent amount of cars on them, so that felt good. We arrived…
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Uncertainty
Ugh. This is getting so old. I know, I know, we’re not suffering, we have everything we need, including but not limited to water, and everyone is doing an excellent job of being cheerful. We can get out and about and can stay in our beds if we want during the attacks, but we’re getting…
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Still Kicking
And so it was a normal day. Normal is relative, but we left town, got fierce hot and sweaty, ate delicious food at Bethlehem and successfully crossed four checkpoints with no issues. We’re all so grateful to be in a non targeted area. The minibus picked us up at 8am and we headed down the…
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Brilliant Blue Sky
It’s morning and the sun is already blazing on the house, slowly turning our bedroom into an oven. The roosters are crowing and I just fed the sleepy looking kitties. Heath and Matt are cooking breakfast and the world is slowly coming alive. I am hugely grateful for the mundanity of it all. Not everyone…
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Calm
There is something absolutely breathtaking about watching a large orange moon rise over distant mountains right after a missile attack. The contrast is almost jarring. It’s almost 11pm and time to get off the rooftop and go to bed. There were two major waves, with hundreds of missiles flying overhead and we stood on the…
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Still Alive
But experiencing a radical “firework” show. Not very much fun. A little bit interesting. Iran’s 100 or so latest missiles were intercepted and we watched the orange tracers seeking them out and exploding in the air. Not quite above us, but nearly. This caused way to much cheering in our town, and now the IDF…
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Lockdown
I’m sitting on my bed in Abu Dis, bored out of my mind. We’re supposed to be going through Hezekiah’s water tunnel, strolling through Jerusalem streets munching falafel, but no. Sirens woke us at 3:00am and that’s when we first found out about Israel’s attack on Iran. It’s also when Israel basically went into Lockdown,…
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Botherations
As in harassment,bothering, annoyance,bugging, aggravation, bedevilment, and sometimes funny. Warning: Image might be triggering, for sure to Nette. Carriage Drivers It’s seems rather negative to write a whole blogpost on the things in Egypt that would keep me from going back, but as they were a very real part of the trip, an issue of…
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Feast Or Famine
Navigating the intricacies of eating during Ramadan in Egypt Traditional Food Egypt knows good food. And it’s cheap. When we ate better, things like large shawarma wraps or massive bowls of Koshary, with a side of coke, it was right at $2USD a person. For the meals when food was scarce and our only options…
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Tours and Guides
A brief outline of what we saw and the people who took us. Pyramids Egypt is liberally sprinkled with pyramids, and since I already talked about the Giza ones, we’ll move on to Saqqarah and Dashur, places an hour or so from Cairo that are actually much more interesting than Giza. While the pyramids themselves…
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Transportation
Getting from point A to point B and coming out alive. Train The comforting clunking of the rails and the gentle swaying of the train made sleep easy. At least for me. We were in the last car, so the whistle was a distant noise whenever we crossed a road. Occasionally other trains would pass…
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Street Things
Stuff we encountered while out and about in Egypt that was memorable If I had to describe Egyptian cities with one word I would say “hectic”. Cairo in particular is a wild swirl of street vendors, classy shops, horses, smog, shisha bars, beggars, mini busses, ancient taxies, pastries, all overlaid with the smell of sewer…
It’s a Small World 