Monday, March 09, 2009

Exploring Egypt and Jordan (the country)

Tomorrow, we are headed off on another adventurous journey - this time to Egypt and Jordan. We are going on a tour organized by Lindblad Expeditions and National Geographic.

Our first stop is Cairo and we are arriving two days ahead of the start of the tour. So, I've arranged a couple of days of interesting activities before the formal program begins. No......we are not going to sit down with the Palestinians and the Israelis to try hammering out a peace agreement. And no....we are NOT going carpet shopping. (We've done far too much of that in Morocco and India.)

One day, we are going to take a cooking class in a woman's home and learn to make several Egyptian/Middle Eastern recipes. (Get ready for an invitation to dinner at our house and a showing of a DVD of our photos and video - just like watching boring home movies when we were kids.) The next day, I hired a guide to show us around sites in Cairo that our tour isn't going to visit - lots of mosques, churches, and even a synagogue.

This all assumes we arrive in Cairo - I think the chances are pretty good. We've flown the Air France flight from LAX to Paris a couple of times before and it's reliable. The Paris to Cairo leg I'm not too sure about.

If you want a good laugh and see a bit of Cairo ahead of our dinner, check out Anthony Bourdain's show on The Travel Channel. If they broadcast his episode visiting Cairo, it's hilarious. He went the entire trip and refused to visit the pyramids. It's also on The Travel Channel's website and YouTube for viewing.

Check out the map below and the links to the itineraries for our tour to each country.



Trip Itinerary (Egypt)



Trip Itinerary (Jordan)